"The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied. — 180 Proof
But sticking to perdurance, it strikes me as a subset of the induction problem. If one takes Humean premises then proof of perdurance is impossible. If one takes Aristotelian premises then familiarity with the nature of the soul can allow one to understand that it has the property of perduring. These are two top-level approaches. — Leontiskos
Yes, the idea of the body being the best picture of the soul seems right to me. I am also reminded of Spinoza's "the soul is the idea of the body".
And what else can the idea of hylomorphism pertain to but the body? — Janus
What are you taking this to actually mean to the discussion? — AmadeusD
Not at all an attack - i just see the pretty stark practical difference between arguing for "bodily" changes manifesting lets say, intangibly, and actually positing an intangible. — AmadeusD
I never know what to make of common-sense-use of language when it comes up against either its actual meaning, or where it illustrates something clearly untrue such as like "His soul left his body at that jump-scare" where it could be illustrating a genuine dissociation (albeit, extremely transient). — AmadeusD
Familiarity with the soul shows that it perdures, just as familiarity with wood shows that it burns. — Leontiskos
This gets at the idea of distinctions without any difference. If one person says that we are conserved in existence at each moment and another says that we are recreated at each moment, and there is no adjudicable way to distinguish these two views, then what are we even talking about at that point? — Leontiskos
We can define 'soul' as "the interconnectedness of those experiences," but in that case the original question seems to simply morph into the question of whether this "soul" exists. — Leontiskos
Now the commonsensical interpretation is that her body is the same but her soul is different. — Leontiskos
"Does positing something like physicalism provide an answer to the OP, for or against?" — Leontiskos
That seems to do the same as Descartes, dogmatically attributing duration to the soul without deeper justification. — Lionino
If we say however that experience is something that flows and cannot exist in a single point time but instead needs to exist in an interval of time, I think doubting the interconnectedness is equal to doubting the self (which Descartes gave the final argument again). For Kant, we must think in terms of space and time, I am willing to accept this idea. If it is true, it may be because there is no snapshot of the mind, it must exist as persisting in time, for as we create a snapshot of it in an instant it is no longer a mind but something else. Like a river, if we create a snapshot of it, it is no longer a river but a lake.
I think the subscriber to substance metaphysics is able to doubt that the interconnected of those experiences exists because it is premised on a snapshot of the soul being possible; while process metaphysics will say that there is no consciousness on an instant of time. — Lionino
Substance metaphysics works under the assumption that there is such a substance that can be located in an instant of time (a snapshot), and for one to say that the substance is not being created and annihilated each instant, one has to say that the soul persists through time. — Lionino
Process metaphysics however will not commit to there being a substance that can be located in time, but that the soul is something that itself exists through time, and thus is also defined by it. — Lionino
So when I am alive and experiencing, it is not something that happens in an instant but something that happens constinuously, there is no consciousness without time. Therefore process metaphysics doesn't have to prove the persistence of the soul, it is premised in that metaphysics. — Lionino
As soon as we prove our own existence, the existence of the self, and we are premised in that self existing as a constinuous entity (process) rather than a discrete one (substance), we know that the self endures. — Lionino
I think this post from another thread is relevant https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895615 — Lionino
I don't find that to be true. In fact for me it is evidently false — Lionino
The problem with physicalism is that it does not address the sensation of "forever here". This is recognised by physicalist philosophers too: — Lionino
The objection is presumably something like, "Oh, well the difference is her memory, and her memory is part of her brain, and her brain is part of her body. So it is a bodily change after all." But this is a strange and non-commonsensical way to talk. It is really an elaborate theory of the relation between grandma's lack of recognition and the putative underlying physical causes, and when we talk about "body" we aren't usually talking about such things. For example, you wouldn't go home to your family and tell them, "Grandma experienced a bodily change today." — Leontiskos
Are those three all the same thing in the context of this thread? — Leontiskos
Right, but these two statements of yours seem to be in tension. If it is not evident that grandma's previous ability to recognize her family is merely physical, then it cannot be evidently false that her lack of recognition is not a bodily change. — Leontiskos
If I recall correctly, many Medieval thinkers equate conservation with creation, such that there is no difference between a substance which is conserved and a substance which is annihilated and created. — Leontiskos
This is part of what I was getting at with the "no adjudicable way to distinguish these two views" comment. — Leontiskos
But what is the difference between building an answer to the inquiry into one's premises, and begging the question? This seems to be precisely what a petitio principii is. — Leontiskos
If the question here is whether there is a proof for perdurance, then it is the same as the question of whether the process thinker's premise is provable. — Leontiskos
but I don't think remedying that goofiness solves the question of the perdurance of the soul. — Leontiskos
So do you then see my claim about wood as 'dogmatic'? — Leontiskos
Then we might ask whether the soul from 2020 perdures into 2021, and whether the soul from 2021 perdures into 2022, etc. — Leontiskos
In that view, what I propose is that the self could be characterised as a chain of experienced patterns that emerge subjective experience. In simpler language, the ‘self’ would be fluid, the union of many mental elements which grow (or decrease, in the case of dementia) through time, and often when we try to analyse (literally meaning untie) this process we end up atomising it in a given moment — and as someone brought up previously, some philosophers say this is a mistake based on objectifying the mind.
Consciousness then (or the soul etc) would start at birth or whenever we wanna say we first become conscious (mirror test?) and ends in death. — Lionino
This can't be essential (part of your essence) because the set changes over time - we both add memories, and lose them. — Relativist
they suggest God could basically copy your memories into some immaterial form that attaches to your soul — Relativist
this seems an ad hoc rationalization — Relativist
Going straight to the point, I would not say that loss of some information, be a memory or else, implies that someone's soul has been swapped. Their mind/brain has changed accidentally to a small extent (in losing that information, I am not talking about the demented condition as a whole), but essentially it is the same. — Lionino
But then you see how it doesn't make sense for them not to be distinct? If our consciousness is being annihilated and created every time, aren't we then dying and a copy of us with the same memories being created each time in an empty-individualism fashion? I think that is starkly distinct from our conscious experience persisting. — Lionino
To answer all questions and statements in your posts: yes. But it does not triviliase the proposal because we have two different options for the soul: process or substance. We must choose one. Is it findable in a snapshot of time and space? Choosing substance leads to the problem aforementioned; choosing process seems not to. — Lionino
Descartes is not confusing anything, he is using 'substance' in the metaphysical sense then telling us what substances there are — the mind and the body. — Lionino
Well, we know from experience that wood burns. We don't know from experience that the soul lasts, as we are very much philosophising about the subject that experiences. — Lionino
True. I think I address that point in a previous post: — Lionino
Consciousness then (or the soul etc) would start at birth or whenever we wanna say we first become conscious (mirror test?) and ends in death. — Lionino
Well, you haven't nailed down what you mean by 'soul'. — Leontiskos
What then would be an example of a soul that has changed non-accidentally, and to a large extent? — Leontiskos
and to a large extent? — Leontiskos
"What if, without your knowing it, your soul is being annihilated and recreated at each moment?" — Leontiskos
Some say you died, others say you kept living.If all your atoms are dissolved and then [are sent] over to another place at nearly speed of light, then reassembled, did you die and went to eternal sleep and what is created a perfect copy of you? Or is it you and you simply lost consciousness for an instant? — Lionino
then how does this tell us that the experienced pattern at birth is connected to the same chain as the experienced pattern at death? — Leontiskos
Why not say that it ends at dementia, or coma, or brain-death? — Leontiskos
the union of many mental elements which grow (or decrease, in the case of dementia) — Lionino
Why not say that it goes beyond death? — Leontiskos
Why not, for that matter, say that it ends at a stroke that turns out not to be deadly? Or the day you have a religious experience? Or trip on LSD? — Leontiskos
An Aristotelian substance could almost be defined as something which is known to perdure, in the sense that it self-subsists. As this thread shows, Descartes' "substance" cannot be known to perdure and is explicitly claimed not to self-subsist, and is therefore not a substance in the classical sense. — Leontiskos
I think it is a false premise to associate Cartesian dualism with hylemorphism — Leontiskos
I have more experience with its perdurance than with the combustibility of wood. — Leontiskos
for the classically Aristotelian view of the soul is different from both, and does not posit that the soul is "findable in a snapshot of time and space." — Leontiskos
The subject that experiences the "eternal here". — Lionino
To change a soul essentially would be to swap souls. We don't consider people to swap their consciousness, they are born with one and die with that same consciousness. — Lionino
Brain-washing or memory loss. — Lionino
If you get cloned then die, you stop experiencing — Lionino
Some say you died, others say you kept living.
If it is the case that we die, we stop experiencing, and someone else with the same genes and memories as us keeps living.
If the soul is constantly annihilated and another one spawns in its place, the idea is that we are living only for a fraction of time, to then die and be replaced by a clone that will start living right after us, to then die again and be replaced too.
There is a difference between dying and keeping living, just like there is a difference between dying after being teleported or keep living. — Lionino
This gets to the separate argument that perdurance is the prima facie view, and that it should stand if there are no good objections. — Leontiskos
Perhaps because, if there is no experience that happens at a point in time, but only experiences that happen through time, we cannot separate one experience from the other. And the continuity between those experiences is indeed the psychological continuity, which is allowed by the spatio-temporal continuity of brain states. — Lionino
Quotation mark!, "death" there stands for brain-death. I think the word 'death' itself is typically meant as brain-death (¿is there another kind?). Coma may be seen neurologically as a long and/or deep sleep. Dementia is a fast decrease of mental elements, leading ultimately to brain death — Lionino
No evidence of consciousness after brain-death. — Lionino
Because there is nothing about these facts that would make us think we are actually dying in that moment if one doesn't subscribe to empty individualism. Meaning: if we are closed individualists in a substance metaphysics, choosing those scenarios as the moment of the death of a consciousness is arbitrary and perhaps straight up wrong. — Lionino
Well, in a way you could say Descartes' substance is defined as something to perdure. The matter then is whether that substance (1) exists or a substance (2) that has the definition of a substance (1) except perdurance. — Lionino
1) Change exists
2) A single substance, let's call this the first substance, cannot undergo a change
3) This means that we need another substance, let's call this the second substance, to cause a change in the first substance
4) The second substance must have the ability to experience and cause
5) The second substance must be changeless
6) The second substance, I call it the mind, is immortal since it is changeless
Actually, change occurs. What exists is the present, and its propensity to change - arguably because of laws of nature.1) Change exists — MoK
What's your basis for claiming there is such a thing?2) A single substance, let's call this the first substance, cannot undergo a change
Clearly, you have some metaphysical paradigm in mind, but you're only giving vague references to it. Maybe (just maybe) it's coherent, but you need to show why this paradigm should taken seriously, while explicitly defining it3) This means that we need another substance, let's call this the second substance, to cause a change in the first substance
Well, all I need to start my arguments is that change occurs. What are the laws of nature and how they are enforced in nature is beyond the scope of this discussion.Actually, change occurs. What exists is the present, and its propensity to change - arguably because of laws of nature. — Relativist
Well, I have an argument for it: Consider a change in a substance. By substance, I mean something that exists and has a set of properties (I call the set of properties the state) like the position of a falling apple which is defined by its altitude to the ground. By change, I mean that the state of the substance changes over time so for example the altitude of the apple reduces over time. Now consider a change in the state of a substance, from X to Y, where X and Y are two states of a substance by which Y occurs after X. X and Y cannot lay on the same point in time since otherwise they would be simultaneous and there cannot be any change. Therefore, X and Y must lay on two different points of time. This means that there is a gap between X and Y. By gap I mean an interval that there is nothing between. But the substance in X cannot possibly cause the substance in Y because of the gap. That is true since the substance in X ceases to exist right at the point that the gap appears. Therefore, a single substance cannot undergo a change.2) A single substance, let's call this the first substance, cannot undergo a change
What's your basis for claiming there is such a thing? — Relativist
Let's see if we could agree on (2). We can move forward if we agree on (2).3) This means that we need another substance, let's call this the second substance, to cause a change in the first substance
Clearly, you have some metaphysical paradigm in mind, but you're only giving vague references to it. Maybe (just maybe) it's coherent, but you need to show why this paradigm should taken seriously, while explicitly defining it
...
The rest of your argument depends on the above. — Relativist
If time is continuous, there's no gap. If time is discrete, it still doesn't entail a gap, so it's an unsupported assumption.Therefore, X and Y must lay on two different points of time. This means that there is a gap between X and Y. By gap I mean an interval that there is nothing between. But the substance in X cannot possibly cause the substance in Y because of the gap. That is true since the substance in X ceases to exist right at the point that the gap appears. Therefore, a single substance cannot undergo a change. — MoK
Looks like we can't move on.Let's see if we could agree on (2). We can move forward if we agree on (2). — MoK
The gap exists in the discrete time as well as the continuous time. The gap however is arbitrarily small in the continuous time. If the gap is zero then all points of time lay on the same point therefore there cannot be any change in time.If time is continuous, there's no gap. — Relativist
If time is discrete then it entails a gap. That is true since time exists on a discrete set of points with an interval between which there is nothing.If time is discrete, it still doesn't entail a gap, so it's an unsupported assumption. — Relativist
The quantum field is the substance.What is "substance"? If the world is a quantum field, evolving over time consistent with a Schroedinger equation, what is the "substance"? — Relativist
Let me know if we can move forward.Looks like we can't move on. — Relativist
Sorry, I don't buy it. It seems a contrivance to lead to some desired conclusion, or the product of naivetee. But of course, I haven't yet seen your argument that shows it metaphyisically necessary that a gap exists. Got one?The gap exists in the discrete time as well as the continuous time. The gap however is arbitrarily small in the continuous time. If the gap is zero then all points of time lay on the same point therefore there cannot be any change in time.
If time is discrete, it still doesn't entail a gap, so it's an unsupported assumption. — Relativist
If time is discrete then it entails a gap. That is true since time exists on a discrete set of points with an interval between which there is nothing. — MoK
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