Considering man never directly experiences anything other than mind, I am very curious what such a proof would look like.
I see your point. But the notion of a Soul separate from the Body goes back at least to ancient Egypt. Descartes merely made the distinction formal in order to allow physical Science to proceed without concern for controversial metaphysical assumptions. — Gnomon
The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? Be very careful when you respond, as it's easy to miss the fact that what 'grasps meaning' is itself never an object of perception. It is, to allude to a Hindu doctrine, 'the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the unthought thinker'. Descartes' error was to conceive of this as something that exists, which leads to the intractable problems of how 'it' interacts with 'the body'.There is no 'it' as an objective reality but at the same time, it's impossible to deny the reality of the thinking subject. There's a cognitive shift required here - mind is the condition of all knowledge, all statements about what is or isn't, but mind itself is unknowable. — Wayfarer
Man directly experiences the world around him. He directly touches it, looks at it, tastes it, listen's to it and so on. These aren't indirect interactions. — NOS4A2
This is a standard way of describing how ‘man’ interacts with ‘the world’, sure. But consider this:
To listen is to mentally interpret the vibrations of the eardrums in response to vibrations of surrounding air molecules in response to vibrations of other molecules.
To look at something is to mentally interpret differences in the speed and strength of light particles from a number of sources as they reflect off the retina from reflections off a variety of surface molecular structures.
These aren’t direct interactions in reality. How we experience the world is through a series of complex relations with our sensory systems and with the relative structure of the world. To say that ‘man directly experiences the world around him’ as an argument against the importance of ‘mind’ is to be ignorant of the actual systems and relations that constitute both ‘man’ and ‘the world’.
What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL
When we think we see an object, we are not actually directly experiencing it, but instead looking at an image that our mind creates. Thus, we are not directly experiencing the object.
We could go even further. Our mind doesn't experience the object directly, but neither do our eyes. Our eyes experience light; not the object itself.
Where do you draw the line between processes and processing? Obviously none of the pre-processed data is ever directly experienced, albeit experienced by one's faculties.
So if there's no mind driving matter, why are all faculties enabled to an end-product autonomous overseer? If we have to go through the analogy of eyesight, we could substitute eyes for fiber optics and brain for a TV - so who's observing?
I explained how the mind produces our vision; not the eyes. And this is not disputed, at all. If we saw directly through the eyes we'd be seeing everything upside down.
We are now in the early stages of producing humanoid robots. I doubt that anyone would think the current models have souls, but people typically find them eerily life-like. It's only a matter of time until we're faced with moral questions such as those addressed in Sci-Fi (WestWorld).Such things have arrived? — petrichor
The duality can be demonstrated as simply as severing any body part.
Unless the mind is plugged in to the body, the body has no battery life and is a body no more, but a pile of flesh.
The disparity between creature and carcass is clear, there's nothing to prove - but if you've got a better explanation for this disparity, do share.
We are now in the early stages of producing humanoid robots. — Gnomon
now that Science has allowed us to create human-like autonomous robots — Gnomon
Yes. That question has perplexed scientists for years, since they don't accept the existence of a black-box Soul. Ironically, most of their mechanical hypotheses imply, but don't assert, the existence of some kind of Homunculus, a ghostly version of the Self that views the "cartesian theatre" in the brain. But that's essentially what a Soul is supposed to be : an immortal ethereal twin of the physical body -- with some unique features : Life & Consciousness.The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? — Wayfarer
As I said, we are in the early stages of robotics. And I am also skeptical of Sci-Fi stories of conscious robots . . . in the near future.Before we claim to be making something like a human, first make a very simple robot that can feel pain. — petrichor
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