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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 19, 2018 - 09:00pm PT
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I'm sure there's something that we can disagree upon.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 19, 2018 - 09:09pm PT
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I was taken with some of Jung's thought on soul. He seems to have been another person oriented to question / investigating what was below the surface of obvious consciousness experientially. I've been told by some folks at the schools I taught at that there was a budding orientation to research that would make obvious the author's subjectivity in his personal involvement in the topic of investigations. It was curious to me, as I have been trained not to admit that as a scholar. I mean I'm down with Geertz and his followers, but I always thought that there was supposed to be this "distance" maintained in the write-up.
Right now I'm finishing a book on the Recognition Sutras by a fellow who can be found now and then to be selling the religion's approach to tantra. I can't help but object.
But, you know, it's a new world order. Everything should be up for scrutiny and dialogue.
Oops, sorry. There I was going all postmodern again. Darn.
(Some rather cogent writing here in this thread recently.)
MB1,
We might have a few notes to compare about the profession of scholarship. I became disenchanted, and it was not about the nuts and bolts of the business.
Be well, all.
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WBraun
climber
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May 19, 2018 - 09:29pm PT
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Understanding the soul depends completely on the Science of self-realization.
The foolish gross materialists do no such science and thus remain completely clueless with only mental speculation passed on as projected fabricated knowledge.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 20, 2018 - 07:55am PT
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Dingus Milktoast: With all due respect I think you're wrong.
Not from my point of view. I’d say that the majority of the writers here (and in climbing) are more technically oriented to material issues than the softer issues one might find in the humanities (which might include spirituality, consciousness, etc.). The most technically oriented material issues are likely found in physics. I’d say there is a palpable bias, and I don’t think that one needs to read between the lines to feel it.
In order to be fair, sometimes one needs to write more than what one wants to say simply.
I think your complaint might equally be a complaint about style. I get that all the same complaints often from my wife, who always wants to know (i) what action is being suggested and (ii) certainty / definitiveness of what I’m talking about. When it comes to being, I really can’t respond to either issue as she wants.
As I perceive you, you seem to be an action-oriented guy. Great. You and my wife might get along famously. She was recently invited to stand in for a board member on a committee I serve on around here, and within the first 10 minutes, she was asking people what they were really talking about and lining up an agenda / action plan for the next period. The poor committee chairman could only get a word in edgewise now and then. Sure, we probably got more done (clarity) in that meeting than in past meetings, but it tended to be a rough-and-tumble experience for some of the board members. (I learned to pick my battles with her.)
Cheers.
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WBraun
climber
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May 20, 2018 - 07:58am PT
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Opinions are useless for the knowledge of the soul ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 20, 2018 - 08:14am PT
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^^^^^^
Ha-ha. Except for your own soul. Then you’re the person who knows more about it than anyone else.
It’s like consciousness. No one knows more about your own consciousness than you do.
One needs to be careful here, lest one starts presenting concepts and theories or other people’s articulations. Knowledge invariably refers to things “to know,” and “things” can be very difficult to pin down.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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May 20, 2018 - 08:55am PT
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How do you define something that you are not sure exists? Experience the existence and a definition becomes unnecessary. Does anyone else see the futility? How else could we frame the question of Soul so that a higher degree of certainty could be applied or is this even possible?
If one sees the soul as embryonic and growth is involved then we might have a metric. Can then a soul grow to the point where it automatically sees other souls? Have you ever looked into someones eyes and realized that there was not a soul there?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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May 20, 2018 - 10:01am PT
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If a future "objective" machine with a billion times our capacity investigated a human brain and watched human behavior it would never suspect anything like experience.
Now see it's statements like this I have to call BS on. You can't possibly know this.
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Dingus, you're a smart and thoughtful guy. Have you thought this through? Think about it:
The objective machine would by definition be entirely devoid of subjective "contamination" that might possibly compromise its objectivity. It would be a super duper investigative tool that theoretically could grock onto every objective physical aspect of the brain, pull measurements and render calculations etc. based on observable objective stuff and the forces involved.
How would phenomenological experience register in the objective machine? And register as what?
What you're hoping for here is not that an objective analysis can scientifically "explain" subjectivity, which is logically incoherent, rather that Identity Theory (basically objectivity and subjectivity are identical) can be proven to be true at some later date, perhaps when our objective machine takes a crack at the brain.
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WBraun
climber
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May 20, 2018 - 12:48pm PT
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Have you ever looked into someone's eyes and realized that there was not a soul there?
Then that person would be dead stone (not alive).
Go to the morgue and you'll see plenty of that.
Life means the soul is there.
Without the soul, (the living entity itself), there would be no animation of the material body.
The gross materialists are just clueless mental speculators ......
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 12:49pm PT
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I’d say there is a palpable bias, and I don’t think that one needs to read between the lines to feel it.
There certainly is, and there are many regular contributors to the Taco Stand that have flatly stated that philosophers don't do anything of value, while absolutely everything that can be explained has been or will be explained by physics.
Of course, not everybody here "fits onto that graph," so to speak. And I do appreciate DMT as one of the notable exceptions. But denying widespread bias on this site is a denial of the graph. I've had to learn over time about the "culture" here, and that culture can indeed be graphed with most of the "data points" representing materialism/naturalism.
I agree with DMT that Ed is a more respectable physicist than others I've known and regularly conversed with. But that fact is not a denial of bias on this site (well, in society in general today).
In general, on this site and in society at large, physicists enjoy vastly more prima facie respect than philosophers. In large part, that is a failure of professional philosophy to market itself. Seeing itself as the last bastion of the ivory tower elite, it doesn't "deign to produce popular material." And the publish-or-perish demands do not levy any "credit" for popular works. This has (finally!) been recognized by the elites of the elites to the point that a recent APA (if memory serves) presidential address revolved entirely around the FACT that professional philosophy is destroying itself on the PR front.
So, much of peer-reviewed analytical philosophy is too dense, voluminous, and often filled with symbolic logic for lay people to wade through. And we have precious few Kakus, etc. Couple that with the fact that once philosophy has produced results, new academic disciplines emerge from those results, and very quickly the "child forgets the parent," so that philosophy doesn't get the credit for, for example, linguistics, etc.
Finally, it is a fact that most people readily recognize that they cannot "do physics" at even a minimally competent level. But most people DO believe that they ARE "doing philosophy" at a minimally competent level. And, sorry DMT, but rigorously demonstrating that this presumption is false is not quick or easy. So the entirely false notion that "everybody's opinion is as valid as everybody else's" takes root and flourishes.
I try, and I'll continue to try, to "be succinct," but brevity introduces necessary limits upon depth. Or, I can do depth with brevity, but then (as I repeatedly have) I'll just be accused of question-begging or "outrageous" presumptions. I'm honestly amazed that nobody's bagged on me yet for my pretty bald assertions about what I believe that Kant has PROVED. LOL
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 01:14pm PT
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To further elucidate what John is referring to, DMT, here are a couple of articles that are both accessible and reasonably thoroughly cast what "identity theory" is about:
https://arigiddesignator.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/kripkes-refutation-of-identity-theory/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
Now, I should hasten to say two things:
1) Physicalists about mind/soul are going to believe in some flavor of reductionism. But there are many flavors, and Kripke attacks just one in what I reference above, the so-called "identity theory."
2) A thorough understanding of what Kripke is really saying depends upon a pretty huge spectrum of philosophy of language, modal logic, and epistemology. The Stanford article does a good job of outlining some of that context, but even it is "brief" compared to the actual context in which Kripke writes.
It should be noted that in his teens, just "doodling," Kripke invented (or perhaps "compiled") the "modal semantics" that are now the gold standard in philosophical discussions about modality. Kripke spawned an entire literature of possibility and necessity. He is, of course, presuming that his account of naming and necessity is correct, and I think with good reason.
This is not to be confused with so-called "Kripke Semantics," as the focus of the above is strictly modality. This article does a decent job of explaining the development of modal logic:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal-origins/#KripPossWorlSema
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 01:15pm PT
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Because we know it would induce a WOT.
Indeed, and necessarily so.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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May 20, 2018 - 01:38pm PT
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Werner, I would use the word spirit where you have used soul. I see a distinction. And the gross mental speculates, that's what it does. The subtle experiences and becomes gross by relying on speculation. Bwahahahaha.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 03:58pm PT
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I don't think it's necessary.
Tell you what. Read any of the articles I linked to just above and then give us the one-paragraph Cliff's Notes of it; and when you do, be sure to not appear to be issuing bald assertions or begging any questions.
Be sure to not leave out anything important regarding what the symbolic logic is conveying.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 20, 2018 - 04:08pm PT
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Thanks for your commentaries on philosophy, Richard. Reading an expert discussing their professional subject areas (as Ed does with physics) is illuminating.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 04:15pm PT
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^^^ Thank you much, John.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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May 20, 2018 - 04:55pm PT
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Madbolter has a lot more patients than I do. Modern philosophy is a peerless tool per the study of mind, but to absorb the vast tool kit is such an arduous study that few who could (and not many can) ever bother. And as he pointed out, philosophy floats in such a remote cloud these days it has basically made itself a bit player. Too bad, really, because so many of the arguments used to espouse theories like identity theory are so transparently illogical.
Some arguments are simply impossible, now and forever. For example, the water in the sea can never be a mountain. We find ancient sea shells on mountains and in the desert, but never is the sea a body of water and a mountain at the same time. That’s the wonky thing with identity theory, whereby objective brains states are said to concurrently be subjective states – exactly, identically, meaning, “no difference of any kind.” Heads IS tails. We are right to wonder … how so?
As mentioned, few appreciate Nagel, who said that phenomenological life is not a calculation. Many scientists doubt this, feeling that if subjectivity cannot be “explained” by scientific language (quantifications), this places some limits on science. But if we play Nagel’s words out with a practical example, most anyone can see the holes in Identity Theory, and what Thomas was getting at.
Consider the belief that once objective brain function is better understood, subjectivity can be posited in scientific terms. That is, a causal sequence can be charted out that goes from firing neurons to feeling states, and every step of the way can be scientifically represented, the entire process of which provides an objective “explanation.”
Look at another objective process where science has nailed down the objective causal chain, in this case, the kreb cycle, the primary metabolic pathway through which aerobic energy is released from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in a useable form.
The cycle is generally laid out in a six step progression, scientifically nailing the objective changes along the way, from step 1: citrate synthase, all the way to step 7: fumarase, and finally, step 8: malate dehydrogenase.
The cycle is complete at Step 8, when the Malate dehydrogenase recreates the Oxaloacetate substrate and moves electrons from the NAD+ to form NADH, the last energy produced by the Krebs cycle.
Note that Step 7, Fumarase, and Step 8, Malate dehydrogenase, are scientifically (measurements) delineated as DIFFERENT OBJECTIVE THINGS, and the differences are represented and made clear through quantitative, physical indicators, like carbon atoms, etc.
However, it is impossible to posit mind in the same way, using quantifications directly derived from external objective things or phenomenon.
We can work up an ever increasing galaxy of objective cerebral functioning, but at some time, to complete the process whereby the objective brain “creates” or births or sources mind, we need to cross a threshold – just as we did with the kreb cycle, between step 7: fumarase, and step 8: malate dehydrogenase, which signifies the end of the cycle.
That threshold per mind is when subjectivity arises as a real phenomenon.
It hardly needs explaining that quantifications derived from observable physical phenomenon stop at the threshold of phenomenological experience. We simply cannot get to step 8 of the kreb cycle, so to speak, and capture subjectivity itself with objective calculations. The statement itself is illogical and absurd.
If we failed to do so with the kreb cycle, if we only got to (step 7), we wouldn’t have scientifically “explained” the cycle at all. We needed to nail down what step 8 WAS (fumarase) in objective, scientific language (numbers), for the cycle to be scientific.
But once we get to the threshold of phenomenological experience, we have to opt out of quantifications and start using terms like emergence, and so forth. It would never be accepted as a scientific fact if we got to step 7 in the kreb cycle and simply said that step 8 “emerged” from fumarse. You have to provide the objective proof, or else you’re not doing science, or at any rate your findings are not in scientific language.
Refutations of the above seeks to posit the “precursors” to subjectivity in some bucolic form as it percolates “under the hood.” But a strictly objective investigation of that percolation can never include subjectivity or else the description would, by definition, not be objective. The subjective can only be implied, given a statistical value, etc. It can never be captured as both an objective function and a phenomenological fact.
As Madbolter’s article pointed out, brain states and mind are correlated, maybe even concomitant phenomena. But nobody can “explain” mind with only reference to physical facts. As Searle pointed out, pains and brain processes are simply two different kinds of phenomenon, and calling them the same is basically calling your Uncle your Aunt. You can do so, and some will believe you, but it never makes it so. And when it comes to directly measuring the phenomenological, no one has a clue as to what that would look like. That doesn’t make the subjective “magic,” it just means it is not, itself, objective, as a desert is not the sea.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 20, 2018 - 05:52pm PT
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So, I'd like to hear about a single empirical proof in the deductive sense. Science does induction rather than deduction.
scientific theory can be deductive, scientific experimental evidence inductive, science is both.
I've provided many examples, the deduction concerning the existence of the Higgs boson was prediction of theory, we confirmed that prediction by experiment. The theory has been around pretty much since the early 1970s, and used extensively in describing the universe. The fact that we confirmed the prediction can certainly be taken as a "proof" of the deduction.
What is the "inductive" reasoning that lead to the theory? The unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces is based on the existence of 4 fields and their couplings to matter: the γ (photon) and the W⁺, W⁻, and Z⁰. The γ is massless while the W⁺, W⁻, and Z⁰ all have very large masses. If the electroweak theory is "correct" there must be an explanation of how these field particles acquire their masses.
The idea of dynamic symmetry breaking was introduced as an explanation, a "background" field that interacts with the four fields differently, but in such a way as to have them acquire mass through this interaction. This background field is the Higgs field, of which the Higgs boson is the quantum propagator.
I don't see the induction here, perhaps I don't understand how the phrases "deduction" and "induction" enter into science. In was sense was the theory "induced?"
When the Higgs boson is taught from now on, the sense of "proof" will be very strong.
Science is not just a set of empirical facts.
If you are referring to the large topic of induction in philosophy, e.g.:
The Induction Problem
I think I will wait for you professional philosophers to sort out what is important and why.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 05:55pm PT
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Very nice summary, John (although pretty solidly in WoT-land)! ;-)
You're obviously very widely read, and I've really appreciated your ready grasp of extremely abstract concepts! In another life, you could have been a professional philosopher (not that anybody sane would want to be).
I'll employ your summary as a jumping off point to the idea that most similarly-well-read Christians I've encountered like to take the above ideas and make the leap straight to God, something like, "See. ONLY God could create such a thing as mind/soul," while they then smuggle in all sorts of theology.
Even if it's the case, as I believe, that some sort of dualism is correct, and that the mind-body connection (because there IS one) will remain forever beyond our ken, it's an outrageous inferential leap to God! And those who purport to make that leap are "not showing their work" in some really crucial ways, because such "work" will not withstand scrutiny.
So, although I'm some sort of Christian, please don't "read" anything I've said as that I'm making a comparable leap, like, "Whatever 'mind' is, as a metaphysical entity it is necessarily not empirically accessible. Therefore the Judeo-Christian God exists."
There are so many deeply intractable and in-principle problems in a careful discussion of mind/soul that I personally believe that no compelling "positive account" will ever be produced. Kant's account is more a "negative" error-theory, basically saying: "'It' has a certain function, and we can know that such a function must be in operation for experience to emerge at all. But what 'it' IS and how it connects with the empirical body is by-definition and necessarily forever beyond us, as all we can hope to know is anchored in the empirical world."
So, it turns out that in philosophy of mind we can be pretty good only at saying, "Well, THAT'S not it. Try again."
We WANT to know more than we in principle can, so Hegel emerges after Kant, and by the time we reach today, there are countless speculative accounts and religious explanations. But I remain in-principle pessimistic that anything substantive in the way of a "positive account" will ever emerge of mind/soul. And you sure shouldn't leap from a "negative account" to "God did it!"
Now, on that pessimistic note, let the speculations continue, and more power to you. Good, clean fun.
(Thanks again, the Johns!)
Cheers.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 20, 2018 - 05:58pm PT
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When the Higgs boson is taught from now on, the sense of "proof" will be very strong.
Science is not just a set of empirical facts.
So, if I'm reading you correctly, you are saying that the Higgs boson is the ONLY metaphysical entity that could logically-possibly produce the phenomena observed by experiment. Is that what you're saying?
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