Blah! I Vant To Suck Your Blood!
Whoop de doo. Not much to report right now. On to thoughts. I've been wondering about whether or not the soul survives death of the body, which has led to some curious scenarios. It of course begs the question: "How does the soul affect personal identity?" As to that, I haven't the foggiest. If we buy into emergentism, the conscious mind is a non-physical effect that emerges from the complexity of the human brain. Unfortunately, this tells us nothing about what exactly "soul" in the immortal sense is. Furthermore, the existence of some immaterial separate entity that affects our consciousness is not totally ruled out, though it does fall victim to Ockham's razor. So my question to my readers is this: What about ghosts? Discuss.
6 Comments:
Ahh, the soul question. I think that I have become a physicalist. A soul is not necessary for several reasons. First of all, there is bodily resurection. What that means I have no clue, but I'm pretty sure that you don't necessarily need a soul. Secondly, God is all powerful. If he felt like creating thinking things without a soul He could. That we can't put our stubby fingers on consciousness doesn't bother me at all. I'm pretty darn sure that consciousness has nothing to do with emergentism or the synergy of our neurons or electo-chemical thoughts. Our consciousness could be exist by sheer force of His will and we could never identify what was going on. God never said everything had to make sense. What fun would that be? If He wanted to make resurect you in some meaningful form for eternal bliss/damnation I'm sure he could do it. This also gets rid of the problem of the soul and time. Assuming God and the eternal reward/damnation are outside of time and space (as the term "eternal" denotes) just how does a material or immaterial soul get there. Now thats the poser.
Respond either in your blog or to my email account.
DMZ
That's what I'm talkin' about. So you've become a Christian physicalist a la van Inwagen, eh? Interesting. Your arguments make sense, but I don't think they really prove anything except that it is logically possible that we are purely physical beings. Sure God could have created us as purely physical beings. He could also have created us as beings with opposable penises. But He didn't. Saying that it's logically possible doesn't convince me.
DMZ Responds:
I look upon most in the Philosophy of Mind study with disdain. The scientists don't know enough philosophy and are too naturalistically biased to do well and the philosophers know too little science and have their own biases to do well. Not to mention that so little is known about the way the brain, not to mention consciousness, works that any real study of the metaphysical aspect is laughable. (Don't tell Hans I said that by the way!)
You do have a point that I have only really stated logical possibilites. Actually, I stated logical possibilites to create an abductive argument... which worked to the effect that you were not specifically convinced of my point, but that was not the entire purpose. You said discuss... not browbeat!
What does interest me in all of this are near death experiences. What the heck are those all about? Especially if there really isn't an immaterial soul. If not, when all brain function stops then there, by definition, you stop existing. Does lack of oxygen creat a lucid hallucination? How much conciousness is needed to retain memories of things that were said? This gets more at the fundamental question of "what is consciousness" or "what counts as being self-aware." One interesting possibility opened up by near death experiences is zombies. What you have with a near death experience is something that really shouldn't have any "what it is like" (ala Nagle) having "what it is like." Run now Will... the undead approach!
Oh, I've picked up a few useful tricks over the years, such as a nifty little trick called "turn undead." At any rate, near-death experiences leave me totally confused as to how they occur. The peculiar thing is the similarity that they share with one another, even though separate cases have no connection to one another. The strange thing is that the individuals involved have quantifiable experiences, that is, experiences that have some sort of meaning, rather than some totally abstract experience with no connection to external reality. I certainly enjoy it.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Thre are basically two types of near death experiences. Lots people seem to "float" up out of their bodies and watch as things happen. Thats just weird. Not to mention that they recall actual conversation, and when revived they can speak to what they heard. Does this mean that when you actually die you retain "consciousness" as you float away. This ties back into the original ghost question. There is also the "visit heaven or hell" near death experience. These are a little odd because there are so many varied experiences. Just very odd.
Yeah. Nobody really knows how to make sense of them. They're like something out of the X-Files. Not that there's anything wrong with them. Just damned befuddling.
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