You're not providing an argument or engaging with anything I've argued.

I haven't denied that God is a simple object. God is a simple object. God is a mind and minds are simple objects. Therefore, God is a simple object. How much clearer can I be? God. Is. A. Simple. Object.

Minds, being simple, don't have locations. Why? Because they don't occupy space. Why? Because anything that occupies space is divisible and thus not simple.

So no mind occupies space. Simple things don't occupy space.

Now, a) how does being simple do anything to address the problem of the trinity, if problem there be? and b) what objection do you have to anything I have said? NOte: what I have actually said, not bizarre views that you've decided to attribute to me.

And are you engaging with the topic with that post? No. Hypocrite.

Also, you might have noticed that I engaged with the topic. Solving a problem is to engage with it.

Shall we go through it? A cube of clay and a sphere of clay and a pyramid of clay can all be made of the same clay. A cube isn't a sphere, and a sphere isn't a pyramid. Nevertheless, one and the same lump of clay can be a cube, then a sphere, then a pyramid. So....God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit can all be one and the same mind, even if they have incompatible properties.

That's called engaging with the topic.

That's not the only way a reconciliation could be achieved either. One and the same thing can simultaneously answer to different descriptions (though not incompatible descriptions). Once more: The David, a sculpture by Michelangelo and a giant lump of marble in Florence are all one and the same thing under different descriptions. So, God and Jesus and the Holy spirit could all be one and the same thing under different descriptions.

That's engaging with the topic too.

I have also pointed out - and this is metaphysically interesting and challenges what many theists think about God - that God will not have any properties essentially, for God is all powerful and thus does not 'have' to have any property. Thus any property the person of God has, he does not have to have.

If you don't find that interesting, then you're dead philosophically.

Er, I did. Premise 2 is demonstrably false.

Why don't you try and engage with an argument rather than just asserting stuff?

Now, back to the trinity: is there any contradiction involved in the idea that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one and the same mind? No. None. There is no contradiction in the idea that a cube of clay, and a sphere of clay and a pyramid of clay could all be one and the same lump of clay.

What about 'The David', a sculpture by Michelangelo, and a lump of marble in Florence? Could they all be one and the same thing? Yes.

So, there's no obvious contradiction involved.

For some bizarre reason you actually want there to be, so that you can just appeal to mystery (for under that banner, anything goes).

Back as well to your claim that there are things higher than Reason. No there aren't, and I demonstrated why. Either you think there's a reason to think there are things higher than reason - in which case you're confused as you're appealing to Reason's own authority which only serves to establish that there is nothing higher than Reason - or you think there's no reason to think there's anything higher than Reason, in which case you've got nothing to say in support of your claim but are saying it anyway. Which is it? They exhaust the possibilities. But that's an argument and you don't like those.

Re arrogance: a doctor is not being arrogant when they diagnose you with cancer, are they? You reply "but I don't think I do have cancer" and the doctor says "er, yes you do - here is the evidence", and you then reply "don't be so arrogant". That's confused. What's arrogant is not engaging with arguments - not engaging with evidence - but thinking it sufficient that you think something for it to be so.

Your position is self-refuting and thus false. For the claim that agnosticism is the rational default is itself a claim that you are asserting as true, not as likely true as false, yes?

Also, there are some propositions whose truth it is not reasonable to be agnostic about. For instance, the proposition "I am thinking" and "I exist" and "there are reasons to believe things".

Most people will agree with you, however. For they are weak and want always to have an excuse not to follow an argument to its conclusion, for often arguments lead to conclusions we dislike and people do not like finding out that the world is not as they want it to be.

Setting aside all that rubbish, — Gregory

What rubbish? You mean the ruthless reasoning?

I'll point out to you — Gregory

On whose authority? You're an expert on this sort of thing are you?

I'll point out to you that humans have soul (life), reason as its power, and will is element mixed into reason so it can operate. — Gregory

Gibberish. Again, save it for the hippies. (A soul is an object, but 'life' is something souls have - to treat soul and life as synonyms is a category error).

Humans have a soul. A soul is another word for an immaterial mind. Minds are simple objects. That is, they lack parts. That's why they're immaterial: any material thing one can conceive of will have parts and thus will be complex, not simple. That's why God is simple. He's simple becasue he's a mind and all minds are simple.

God is an idea we chase — Gregory

Er, no. Again, save it for the camp fire and your unwashed hippy crystal buddhist friends. But under Reason's cold hard stare, that makes no sense whatsoever. God is not an 'idea'. Ideas are mental states. God is not a mental state. Ideas are 'about' things. THe idea of a chair is 'about' a chair. The idea of a chair is not itself a chair. We can have the idea 'of' God. But God is not an idea. Anyway, none of this is bullshitty enough for you, is it? Anyway, everything you're saying is total nonsense, it really is.

I disagree. Perfection necessarily entails flawlessness. Not knowing something is a flaw. — Pinprick

I explained why that is not so. Literally. Did you not read it?

I'll do it again. Read it this time. Velasquez's portrait of pope innocent X is perfect. So is Da Vinci's Madonna of the rocks. Part of what makes Velasquez's portrait perfect is his loose brushwork. But that's not what makes Da Vinci's Madonna perfect. It doesn't have loose brushwork. If you took one of Velazquez's strokes and put it in the Madonna, it would constitute a flaw.

So what would constitute a flaw in one context doesn't constitute a flaw in another. Can you understand this? It isn't hard.

Thus, you could have two people who are perfect, yet different. And one of them could be perfect in part because they know everything, and the other could be perfect in part because they don't know everything. Again....two paintings, both perfect. One of them is perfect in part because of its loose brushwork. One of them is perfect in part because of its disciplined brushwork. See??

Knowing everything can be a perfection in one context, and not a perfection in another. It depends on the person's other features. And again, I actually gave you an example of a way in which 'not' knowing everything could contribute to one being perfect. If you are perfect but don't know it, then you are humble and that could actually be partly why you are perfect. Again: one way of being perfect is to have - among other virtues - the virtue of humility. A being who believes that she is herself perfect does not have that virtue. Thus, not knowing something can sometimes be a virtue, and thus can make someone perfect.

Now, God doesn't have any of his properties essentially. So, nothing stops the person of God going from being perfect in one way, to being perfect in another. There is no contradiction, no problem here. God can know everything one day, and then decide to make himself less than all knowing, and remain perfect throughout.

Don't just say "I disagree - lack of knowledge is a flaw" - you can't make something true just by repeating it enough times. And wisdom doesn't come from cleaving unthinkingly to a store of superficially plausible sounding maxims. Lack of knowledge is 'not' always and everywhere a flaw. Sometimes it can be a perfection.

And I love Buddhism. — Gregory

I am not surprised. I imagine you like crystals too.

All spiritual ideas are truly about spiritual practice — Gregory

Obviously false. Save it for the Buddhists.

Your idea of God is anthromorphic still because human souls have parts while God's does not. — Gregory

Er, what? Did you read what I said? Minds - all minds - are simple. That means they don't have parts. You can't have half a mind. That's true of all minds. Like I say, you're confused (and you like being confused, yes?)

The Trinity is what makes perfect simplicity rational — Gregory

I don't think you're qualified to talk about rationality.

You seem very confused to me.
I have explained already why there is nothing higher than Reason and why anyone who thinks otherwise is demonstrably stupid.
Reason is a person - a mind. So not an abstract we know not what. A person. And she will have the omni properties. So the person of Reason and God are one and the same. See? (No, obviously).

I explained too why God has no essential properties: it would be inconsistent with being omnipotent. That's why there are no necessary truths if God exists. Nothing that is true has to be true if there's an omnipotent being.

Simplicity - I don't know why you think I deny God's simplicity. I don't. Minds are simple objects, so God's mind is simple. But 'infinitely' simple is just nonsense of the sort mystery junkies like you go in for.

You also seem to think that God's existence can't be proved and have a dislike of those who seek to show God by rational means. God's existence can be proved and it is perverse to dislike the attempt to do so. It shows a corrupt nature. You prefer mystery over clarity. Like I say, Buddhism will love you. Style over substance.

You seem as well to have a faulty understanding of faith and knowledge. To know something there has to be a reason - specifically an epistemic reason - to believe it. But you do not have to know that there is, for that would set one off on an infinite regress. Some things are therefore known without the knower knowing that there is a reason to believe them. Thus if anything is known, some things are known by faith. But that doesn't mean that everything is known by faith or that that which some know by faith cannot be known by others via reason. Someone who has faith God exists can have knowledge of God, but so too can someone who believes in God on the basis of a proof.

What’s confusing to me is that Jesus is typically considered by Christians as flawless, or perfect, and divine. — Pinprick

There can be more than one way to be perfect. Being perfect, then, does not have to involve having one set of unalterable characteristics. One can change one's characteristics and still be perfect.

To me that means he must have perfect knowledge in the same way God is presumed to have. — Pinprick

It should now be clear that this does not follow. One can be perfect and know everything - and one's knowing everything can be part of what makes one perfect - and one can be perfect and not know everything - and one's not knowing everything can be part of what makes on perfect. For again, there's more than one way to be perfect. Take Velasquez's portrait of pope innocent X, and Da Vinci's Madonna of the rocks. Both might qualify as perfect paintings, and it might be the loose brushwork on the Velasquez that partly contributes to its perfection even though that same kind of brushwork on the Madonna of the rocks would detract from its perfection. They are both perfect, but for different reasons.

So, anyway, omniscience can make an omnipotent omnibenevolent being perfect, but that doesn't mean that omniscience is essential to perfection. Thus the mind of God can divest itself of omniscience, still be the same mind, and still be perfect. Sometimes, for instance, it seems that a person can be better for not knowing something than for knowing it. Take being perfect itself. If you believe you are perfect - which would be a requirement for knowing it - then that may actually make you less than perfect. Someone who is perfect but does not believe it, displays a humility the perfect person who knows he is perfect lacks.

But if that’s the case, why all the questioning of God by Jesus? Shouldn’t he have known his fate (crucifixion) and agreed with it if his consciousness is one and the same as God’s? How could one feel forsaken by one’s own consciousness? — Pinprick

You're conflating consciousness with mind. There is no such thing as 'a consciousness' . There are conscious states and then there are minds that bear them. You have conscious states and by virtue of being in them you qualify as 'conscious'. But talk of 'your own consciousness' is confused. And it is contributing to your confusion above. God's mind and Jesus's mind can be one and the same mind, without having to have the same content. I am the same mind as the mind I was yesterday, and yesterday I wrote a note to myself telling myself to do something today, something that I cannot today fathom the reasoning behind. There is no problem with this - I am wondering why I told myself to do X.

Seems to me, then, that you're seeing or making problems where there are none.

But three boxes, one inside the other, are not one and the same box. I could not say of one of the smaller boxes that it 'is' the larger box.

I do not know what Christians are committed to saying about the trinity (if anything). And so I do not know why the 'same entity, different properties' proposal doesn't put the matter to sleep. Certainly an object that is spherical is not cuboid at the same time and so one cannot coherently say of an object that it is spherical and cuboid at once.

But God is like 'bachelor' in that it denotes a person who has certain properties, namely the omni properties. The mind that has those properties will remain the same mind if they divest themselves of them, either permanently or temporarily, just as a bachelor remains the same person after getting married even though he no longer has the status of a bachelor.

Perhaps many theologians think God has his omni properties essentially or something - but in that case I think they are confused and misunderstand the nature of omnipotence. They must think there is something impossible about divesting oneself of these properties, even though an ability to do so would have to be included in being omnipotent. So God doesn't have to be God, he just is. That is, God is God by God's own grace. And if that's true, and I fail to see how it couldn't be, then the person of God can have different properties at different times and still be one and the same person.

But like I say, I do not know what doctrines about the trinity have been formulated or to what extent any of it is anything anyone is committed to by scripture. So, I have heard people describe it as 'three persons in one godhead' or something like that. Well, I do not know why anyone would interpret it that way as that doesn't give you one person, but three seperate persons in one location. Maybe it's just tradition or something. But anyway, what good reason is there for rejecting the 'same person, different properties' analysis?

But to go back to your cuboid, spherical and pyramidal objects.

How about taking (1) a circle/sphere to represent God, (2) a square/cube inside the circle/sphere to represent the Holy Spirit, and (3) a triangle/pyramid inside the square/cube to represent Jesus? — Apollodorus

No, I don't think that works. I take it that one wants to say that God, Jesus and the Holy spirit are all one and the same person or mind (i tend to use mind and person interchangeably, but some may not). But that's not what you've described. A box that contains another box, which in turn contains another box, are not correctly described as 'the same box'. They're distinct boxes.

A cube of clay that is then formed into a sphere and then into a pyramid is one and the same lump of clay through all of these transformations. The same clay, but with different properties. By analogy, God, Jesus and the Holy spirit would be one and the same mind, but with different properties.

By the way, did you just think of that trick now, or did you read about it somewhere in connection with the Trinity? — Apollodorus

It's all me - I haven't read anything whatsoever about the trinity, but I am sure someone else will have made the same point somewhere. (Although perhaps not, as theologians are hobbled to some extent by their commitment to respecting scripture - though as I do not know what scipture says on this matter, perhaps it doesn't - and many theistic philosophers seem to insist that God exists of necessity, or has certain properties of necessity or is only 'omnipotent' in some rather weedy way, and this all may prevent them helping themselves to the kind of understanding I've proposed.....but I don't know as I am not religious ,and I am not sure to what extent they are respecting scripture....I mean, I do know that Jesus shares my view of omnipotence and not theirs).

God is the same as his power and his love and his justice and everything about him. He is one thing. That is what monotheism is about. — Gregory

No, that's confused. Power, love etc - these are properties of a mind, but they do not constitute it. You are conflating an object with its properties.

I have powers, but I am not my powers (which is why, if I lose them, I remain the same person).

I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts (which is why I can have some thoughts at one time and different ones at another, yet be the same person throughout).

God is not his power. To qualify as God you have to be omnipotent. Just as to qualify as a bachelor you have to lack a wife. But that does not mean that the person of God - the mind of God - has to be omnipotent. That would be like thinking that if one is a bachelor, then one is incapable of having a wife, or that were one to acquire a wife, one would be a different person.

Intellect and will similarly refer to properties of a mind, not the mind itself. A mind can lose its will and still be a mind. And a mind can lose its intellect (which I take to refer to its capacity to reflect) and still be a mind. That applies to the mind of God as much as any other.

Indeed, I don't think any mind can have any properties essentially, not if God exists anyway. For if God exists, then there is a mind that can do anything, and thus that mind does not have to have any of the properties it actually has, for if it did then it would lack omnipotence. And no other mind or thing can have any of its properties essentially either, for that too would operate to limit the powers of the omnipotent mind, which is a contradiction in terms.

So every thing has the properties it has thanks to God, and that includes God. And thus God - or rather, the mind that is God - has no essential properties and can remain one and the same person through any transformation whatever.

I think so too. But the facts are as follows:

1. Jesus and God are one (“I and the Father (God) are one”, John 10:30).

2. The Holy Spirit (Power of God or “Power of the Most High”, Luke 1:35) and God are one.

(The Holy Spirit is God’s Power by which he acts in the world and which is inseparable from God.)

3. Therefore, God, God’s Son, and the Holy Spirit are One. — Apollodorus

Yes, I agree that we must be taking about one and the same mind.

I would take issue with the claim that 'the Holy Spirit and God are one' is consistent with understanding the Holy Spirit to refer to God's power or agency. For that's a category error. A person's power is not one and the same as the person, but is rather a property of that person. I have powers, but I am not my powers.

Imagine a cube of clay. I then alter the shape of the clay into a sphere. And then I alter it again into a pyramid. A cube is not a sphere, and a sphere is not a pyramid, but it remains the same object that is cuboid, spherical and pyramidical respectively.

We can, perhaps, talk of a God-object, a Jesus-object and a Holy-Spirit-object, just as we can talk of a cuboid object, a spherical object and a pyramidical object. They can all be the same object, but what differentiates them is their possession of different properties. The God-object has omnipotence, omniscient, and omnibenevolence. The Jesus-object can be one and the same as the God-object without having to possess any of those properties. This would then make sense of how it could be that Jesus might not fully understand God even though God and Jesus are one and the same person. The cuboid lump of clay can, in virtue of being cuboid, do things that the spherical lump of clay cannot (fit through a certain size of square hole, for instance). But this does not, of course, imply that the spherical lump of clay is not the same lump of clay as the spherical lump of clay.

Christians discover ideas that can be thought of but which are above reason. Those doctrines are amazing and mind expanding. — Gregory

Nothing's above Reason. For either you think there is a reason to think something is above Reason - in which case you demonstrate only that you are confused - or you think there is no reason to think there is something above Reason, in which case you have no case by your own lights.

Anyway, you're clearly more interested in being dazzled than in gaining understanding - sounds like Buddhism might be more up your street, or anything taht goes by the name of 'eastern philosophy'.

So your criticism is that my analysis is too rational. In other words, not bollocksy enough.

That's incoherent.

I am not a Christian and am unsure exactly what scriptural support there is for the trinity. For I seem to remember hearing somewhere that it is not explicit in the bible.

But anyway, I take it that a mind is indivisible and thus the mind of God - like any mind - is not divisible. It is thus one, not three. Nevertheless, take a writer of a film, who then decides to cast themselves in one of the roles, and also to direct the film. That person would get three separate credits. And when they play the role, we could talk meaningfully about the character of that person without what we say transferring to the character of the writer/director. And when they 'get into character' they might wonder exactly why some things are happening which made sense when they were in the role of writer/director.

So, I think there's plenty of scope to make some kind of sense of it without contradiction or metaphysical absurdity. But perhaps what I've just said conflicts with something in the bible, I don't know.

No, I've been talking about universal income throughout. No doubt the word 'polluter' confused you.

Who the fuck do you think you are? — counterpunch

Again with the outrage.

How can one meet unreason but with unreason? — counterpunch

You think I didn't make a reasoned case? Do you know the meaning of the words you are using. You seriously think I didn't make a case??

Er, what? No, rather than address my case for a universal income paid for by parents, you just told me to

bog off and die — counterpunch

after assuming that I am not useful. You think that's not an insult? You think taht doesn't make you someone who has a childish temper and can't treat an argument as an argument but has to take it personally?

Let me explain: when someone says "parents should pay all the taxes" and you reply "bog off and die" then you are being rude. Now, if the claim that "parents should pay all the taxes" really angers you and you think it is outrageous because you're a parent and it's all fuzzy in your head but the nasty reasoning man is saying things that seem to imply you're not a great person, that still doesn't make my claim an insult. It's a theory. And I can defend it to the hilt and will to all comers. And all comers will, like you, get angry and insult me and think that I was somehow insulting them, even though all I was doing was making arguments that show them to be unreasonable people with tempers. Of course, once you insult me I'll insult you back a lot better, but that's reciprocity and it is the basis of all civilization, isn't it?

I suggest you now resist the temptation to go on about me and try instead to address the philosophical case that I made for parents being the ones who owe the rest of us a guaranteed income.

With the greatest of respect, who cares what you think you're entitled to. — counterpunch

Because it is not just what I am entitled to, but what everyone who has been bred but hasn't bred is entitled to. And I am showing it by reasoned argument. So, you can not care, but if you're reasonable you will.

And now, rather than address the argument, you engage in witless insults. The world needs more of you.

You're now wandering horribly. Focus.

IF you've had kids, then you owe them a living. They don't have to earn it. You owe them it. I mean, you knowingly brought them into a dangerous world in which you have to work or die, other things being equal. That was wicked, and you owe them a living. (And you owe them protection from all the depraved monsters that live here). You owe them the lot: a good, dignified life, whatever it costs.

It is the basic intuition behind the idea of the universal basic income: we're all entitled - entitled - to a good life (until we behave like arseholes, of course). The world won't just provide it to us though. Not without us doing things. But we - we who have been bred but have not bred - are not the ones who owe it to ourselves to do those things, for our being here was in no way something we did to ourselves. It was what others did to us. So they ought to do what's necessary - they ought to work to provide us with the dignified living that we deserve (deserve, that is, until we make the same immoral decision they made and decide to breed). And if they don't, they can be forced: forced by the system, through taxation.

The state has, for many people, become the parent. But it is our parents who owe us livings. Not just all other people. Our parents specifically. I don't owe you a living, for example. Why on earth would I?

But most parents, by their very nature, don't do much planning and aren't particularly intelligent (for having kids is, as well as immoral, unbelievably stupid). And thus most parents can't afford it. So tax all of them. Make them all pay into a common pot - and tax them what it takes - and use taht common pot to provide the rest of us with the guaranteed income we're all entitled to (those of us who have not bred, of course).

It makes sense, you just don't like it.

Er, what on earth are you on about? Saying 'polluters should pay' is not equivalent to saying "I am allowed to pollute". I can only marvel at the reasoning skills that permit you to think that "polluters should pay" implies "I can pollute".

Explain how what you said was implied by anything I said. Go on.

No. Blimey. Baby steps. It is wrong to mug me and give the proceeds to someone who has less. That's wrong. Okay?

Now, would it magically become okay if you put the matter to a vote - shall I mug bartricks and give the proceeds to this person who has less than Bartricks?

No. Obviously.

Bert reasons: oh, so, er, you're now in favour of a dictatorship!!

No, Berty. It would also be wrong if a dictator decides to mug me and give the proceeds to a person who has less.

What you don't seem to understand is that our rights - the basic moral rights that a state, if it has any justification at all, is supposed to protect - are not a function of votes. You don't have a right to life and a right to non-interference because someone voted on it.

This isn't about democracy versus dictatorship. This is about what the state is entitled to do.

Let's say you need an organ. YOu'll die unless you get it. I have a spare one inside me. Are you entitled to cut me open and take it? No, obviously not. Can you hire someone else to do it on your behalf? No, obviously not.

You may ask me to give it to you. Perhaps I ought to give it to you - not denying that - but still, it's not something you're entitled to take without my consent.

And by extension, someone else is not entitled to take it out of me without my consent and give it to you. Right?

Likewise, if I have some spare money and you need it, you have to ask for it and rely on my generosity or the generosity of others, not just take it from me. And by extension, if someone else decides to take it off me and give it to you, then they have wronged me as much as you would have done if you'd done so.

Simple and obvious stuff.

What if I'm responsible for you needing the organ in question? What if I voluntarily did something to you without your consent that resulted in you needing an organ? Well, now it's plausible that I owe you the organ and that this is a debt that can be paid with force if necessary. So 'now' you may - plausibly - take the organ from me even if I do not wish to give it to you. And by extension, others may do it on your behalf.

Hence why it is parents - who, by their voluntary procreative decisions knowingly burden others with a lifetime of work among other things - owe those they create a living, a living that can be extracted by force if necessary. THus parents can justly be taxed to provide everyone (bar themselves, of course) with a minimum income. (More than minimum, incidentally - enough to live on with dignity).

But those of us who have been decent enough not to do that to others should not pay a penny. Not until or unless we start violating the rights of others.

Er, no. That quite obviously isn't implied by anything I said. Up your game.

Question begging. It is not the 'best' system. It violates rights.

My system is better. Make the polluters pay. That is, make make parents pay. They have violated rights and owe their offspring a living and others protection from their offspring. That debt can rightfully be collected. Thus taxing parents so that they pay for the problems they have created is just. Taxing others is not - it is extracting money with menaces, and that's wrong unless the money is owed.

Er, yes I do. That's kinda the point.

I do not voluntarily pay tax. I am taxed and if I refuse to pay I will be kidnapped.
It is unjust. Voting on it won't make it just. And there is no contract. I will be taxed on a transaction whether or not I agree to it.

so it's okay to mug me and to give the proceeds to the hungry person if there's been a vote on it?? What moral planet are you on?

If there is a starving person in the street, am I entitled to mug you and give what I take from you to the starving person?

Obviously not. I could point out that this person is starving and ask you to recognize that you have some obligation to help that person out, or I could get off my high horse and help them out myself. But what I would not be entitled to do is mug you for the starving person's sake.

Yet that's what the state does. It's unjust.

Unless it is those who created the problem who are being taxed to pay for it - parents, that is. But why should I be made to pay for the bad luck or fecklessness of your offspring? It is unjust to make me pay for the education of your offspring, or to provide a safety net for them should they make bad choices or be unlucky enough to have no marketable skills, or pay to have them policed and governed.

So by all means let's have a universal basic income - I agree that all innocent persons are entitled to lives of dignity free from the oppression of having to work - but for christ's sake make sure the right people pay for it. Tax the polluters: the breeders. Pay the cost - the full cost - of your silly and self-indulgent and immoral decision. Those of us who have had the good sense and moral insight not to subject others to a life of ignorance in a dangerous world full of random hazards and depraved people and in which you have to work or starve, should not pay a penny.

Despite your bald assertion, it is in fact a tautology. If a ghost picks up a rock and throws it, by definition this is not the nonphysical interacting with the physical. Rather, by virtue of throwing a rock, the ghost enters the physical realm, and textbooks must now somehow account for the physics of ghosts, or be incomplete. — hypericin

No, you're just confused. The claim that material entities can only causally interact with other material entities is a substantial (and false) claim.

Why are you so sure you're right, incidentally, when you're clearly not very good at reasoning? I mean, you really did give the woefully poor 'brain affects mind, therefore mind is brain' argument. And that really is a terrible argument. Yet you thought it was good - a zinger, yes?

It is a non-sequitur and needs supplementing with the causal principle to be valid - something I told you.

We're now discussing that causal principle. But it's just odd to me that you should continue to be so confident that you're right and I'm wrong, given that so far you've had a monopoly on being the latter.

Anyway, although this is no doubt utterly pointless as you're so convinced I'm wrong and you're right, 'causation' is a relation between things. So, if A causes B, then A and B are not the causation; causation is the relation that obtains between them.

The claim, then, that if A causes B, A and B must be things of the same kind is the claim that causal relations can only obtain between objects of the same kind.

That's a substantial claim - not a tautology - and it is prima facie false. If we have good evidence that there is a material world, then we experience its apparent falsity all the time - for my mind, which appears not to be material - seems to be interacting with a material world. That's good prima facie evidence .

Also, take another relation - liking. Liking is a relation between things. I like tea. I like the number 8. In both cases we have a liking relation - but one is between me and tea, and one is betweem me and a number. Tea is nothing remotely like the number 8, yet that does not stop me standing in a liking relation to both. It would be odd - perverse - to insist that liking relations can only exist between the same kinds of thing, such that persons can only like other persons and nothing else. Why on earth think such a perverse principle true? Well, the same applies to the causal principle. It's perverse - it is not self-evident to reason - and experience teaches us that it is positively false. Like the materialism that it is wheeled in to support, it has nothing to be said for it and plenty against. No wonder so many materialists appeal to it!

I find Goff's questions perplexing/confused. You quote him asking:

"where do distinct subjects come from? what ensures they share a common world of experience? i find these qs easier to answer on panpsychism than idealism." — spirit-salamander

I am an immaterialist on the basis of the evidence. That is, I believe there are epistemic reasons to believe immaterialism about the mind - and immaterialism about everything - is true. Whether there are prudential reasons or moral reasons or aesthetic reasons to think some other view is true, is neither here nor there. For those kinds of reason are not the kind that evidence is made of. As I am sure even Goff would accept, if there are prudential, moral and aesthetic reasons to think God exists, that would not constitute evidence that God exists. Likewise, if there are good prudential or moral reasons to think materialism is true, that's not evidence it is true.

I am not a dualist. I am an immaterialist about the mind. But, following Berkeley, I think everything that exists is made of minds and their contents. Immaterialism is a monistic theory, like materialism. It should not, then, be conflated with dualism - a theory that does no more than add the problems of materialism to an otherwise problem-free immaterialism.

Anyway, he asks 'where do distinct subjects come from?' Nowhere. Everyone has to say that about something. And note, as a panpsychist he would have to say 'nowhere' to the question 'where do the consicous states of the most basic units of existence come from?' So when it comes to the basic units of existence - that from which all else is made - the question 'where do they come from?' is misapplied. They don't come from anywhere, whatever they are. THey just brutally exist.

That's what I say about my mind. It doesn't 'come from' anywhere. It just exists. And that's true of all minds. They just exist. The external world 'comes from' them, or one of them. But they themselves come from nowhere, for they are not in a location and they are not made.

Consider this argument for immaterialism:

1. If an object is material, it is infinitely divisible
2. No object is infinitely divisible
3. Therefore, no object is material
4. If no objects are material and some objects exist, then immaterialism is true
5. Some objects exist (my mind, for instance)
6. Therefore, immaterialism is true

My mind is an indivisible thing - half a mind makes no sense - and thus has no parts (for if it had parts it could be divided into them). If a thing has no parts - is indivisible - it is simple. That is, it is not made of anything more basic than itself. It has no ingredients. As such, if an object is indivisible it has not been created, for there is nothing more basic from which one could create it.

Thus our reason tells us, if we care to listen to it, that we are not created - we are uncreated simple things. Immaterial things.

Goff, then, by asking 'where to subjects come from' shows only that he does not really understand how one might arrives at immaterialism about the mind.

What about the second silly question - 'what ensures they share a common world of experience?'?

Again, he seems not fully to understand the position he's addressing. There 'is' a common world that we are experiencing - he would agree to that, of course. The question is 'what is it made of?'. If we answer that question, that will help us answer his. Well, it is made of mental states. For I am aware of the world via my sensible experiences. But what do I experience? I experience sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. These are sensations. Thus the world of common experience - the world we each seem independently to be aware of via our own sensible experiences - is made of sensations. Not mine or yours, of course. My sensible experiences give me an awareness of a world, but do not constitute it. He would accept this too, of course, for otherwise what's he asking about? We all seem to be aware of a single, unified world - that is, our individual sensible experiences give us each a partial awareness of a single world of sensations. Thus that common world is not existent in our own minds, but is external to them.

Sensations can only exist in a mind. As the world of common experience is made of sensations - sensations external to my mind and yours - the world of common experience is made of the sensations of a single external mind.

So what ensures our minds share a common experience of that sensible world: well, what else but the mind whose sensations the world is made of?

I accept the force of this intuition. I do think that everything is conscious, and I do not think that the concept of consciousness admits of degree. Shape might be another good example of a property that does not admit of degree, I'm not sure. — bert1

Yes, there can be complex conscious states that can be broken down into their more basic component states, but one can't have half a conscious state. Even those conscious states that do admit of degrees - such as desires - can't be halved. One can desire things more or less, and desire something half as much as someone else, but one can't have half a desire.

This is one of the reasons I am an immaterialist, for if the sensible world is made of exactly what it appears to be made of - namely sensations, and thus mental states - we would not get the problem of infinite divisibility.

The only point I want to stress is that experience (consciousness) all the way down can be misleading, because it would suggest that particles or tables are conscious somewhat analogous to the way people are conscious. He doesn't say this at all. — Manuel

I'm not disputing that he doesn't say this, I am saying that it is the upshot of his position!

Again, return to shape - there's shape and then there are shapes. Different shapes can emerge from the combination of objects that are not that shape. But we're still talking shape here, so there's no radical emergence going on, right?

So, if he wants to say that consciousness 'emerges' in this way, then he'd have to say...well, what?

There's consciousness (analogous to 'shape') and then there are particular conscious states (analogous to particular shapes). So, if he was saying that molecules and what-not have particular conscious states, and that particular combinations of them can give rise to a different conscious state, then I'd agree that what we have here is emergence of the same sort as we had with liquidity. But now, of course, we really do have molecules having conscious states.

If, on the other hand, he's saying that molecules do not have conscious states but they can build things that do, then we have radical emergence. If, for example, a large enough collection of numbers became liquid, that would be radical emergence for numbers are not in the 'having a texture' game at all.

So again, I am not disputing that Strawson would deny my conclusions - I am sure he would - I am simply pointing out that there seems to be a genuine dilemma here. One can't have one's cake and eat it (or eat one's cake and have it, as the original saying was). Consciousness is either so radically different to all else that it must go all the way down - in which case we have a robust panpsychism worthy of the name, but also a conclusion so absurd it warrants rejecting the materialism that led to it - or we have consciousness not being so radically different to other states that a thing can be in, in which case we have no reason to be panpsychists in any meaningful sense of the word.

You phrase it is as if I were saying bears and apples could not interact. I am saying that the material and immaterial; better, the physical and non physical, can not interact. This is a simple tautology: if the nonphysical interacted with the physical, then it would be a part of the physical description of the universe, and so be physical. — hypericin

Let's just be clear. Your 'evidence' that the mind is material was initially that doing things to the brain has affects on the mind.

That is a very poor argument. Doing things to A affects B does not imply that B 'is' A. If I pour some water into a plastic beaker, the water will become beaker-shaped. If I distort the shape of the beaker, the water will similarly change shape. Clearly it would be silly to conclude that therefore the water is the beaker.

Yet that is literally how people reason when it comes to the mind and the brain.

You have now claimed that material objects cannot interact with immaterial ones. That is absolutely not - not - a tautology.

It is false. Manifestly. My mind - which remember, you've provided not one dot of evidence is material and gives every impression of being immaterial - interacts with my brain. So, my mind - something immaterial - interacts with something (supposedly) material.

But even if two radically dissimilar kinds of thing cannot causally interact - a claim for which there is no non-question begging evidence - that would not imply that my mind is material, but rather that all material things are in fact mental.

What you have described is radical emergence by another name.

I have not read Strawson on this, so I am relying on your characterisation of his position. But liquidity, you have said, is something Strawson accepts emerges, but he considers the emergence of a feature like this not to be radical. For an analogy, let's say that a rectangular object is, it turns out, made of lots of minute square objects. Well, the rectangularity has emerged for it really isn't present in any of the objects from which it is composed, but we do not have radical emergence here for this kind of property - shape - is not of a fundamentally different kind. Similarly, liquidity might be characterised as a texture or texture and behaviour combo. And although the objects from which a liquid is composed may not have that texture or exhibit that behaviour, nevertheless we do not have radical emergence here for we just have more of the same - that is, more texture and behaviour (even if the texture and behaviour are different).

But consciousness - on his view - is quite different. We're not talking about more of the same. And thus it cannot emerge. It must therefore be present all the way down. I don't see that you've said anything to block this.

Communicate what, exactly?

I can only assume that you think Strawson is not committed to attributing conscious states to everything. Okay. Why not?

Again, consciousness can't emerge - Strawson doesn't think so. So it is not - not - like liquidity.

So consciousness must be present - fully present - in the building blocks. If it is not fully present in the building blocks, then we have something coming out that wasn't put it.

You accept that shape is a good analogy. Well, the building blocks of a shaped thing themselves have shapes. Not potential shapes. Actual shapes. (And the appeal to potential is misleading anyway, as there'd be no reason to suppose it resident potentially but not actualized).

THe building blocks are not 'a bit shaped'. They're shaped. They'd need to be othewise we'd have the emergence of shape, which would be an emergence every bit as radical as that of consciousness.