Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are. This makes irrelevant your notes about mind and body, because it all depends on our decisions. For example, even a corpse can be considered morally deserving value and respect, if we think so: big buildings like Egyptian pyramids show this..

No, I am morally valuable even if I don't think I am.

a mindless foetus or a corpse both seem to be things whose destruction is not morally bad — Bartricks

Interesting! So, we're treating fetuses like corpses but then the crucial difference - one is alive but the other is not!

Moral value? I guess, going by what you said above about fetuses & corpses, life in and of itself, simply being alive, immediately and unequivocally, confers moral value. So moral value looks something like this:

1. Physical life. Moral value? +
2. Physical life + Mental life. Moral value? ++

That’s impossible: you are saying this because now you think you are morally valuable. If tomorrow you think you are not morally valuable, tomorrow you can’t say “I am morally valuable even if I don't think I am”, because this would mean that actually you still think you are morally valuable.

If roger thinks he has no moral value, it obviously doesn't follow that he actually lacks moral value.

I don't understand your point. I have argued that our minds are the bearers of moral value and that we can learn from this that our minds are immaterial.

I have never said that it follows. I said

Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are — Angelo

This means that what can be opposed to what Roger thinks is not what actually is, but what other people think. It is impossible to know what actually is, because any kind of knowledge is filtered by what we think. We can’t have knowledge without thinking. We can’t have knowledge of morality without thinking something about it.

Your position is asserted without any argument. It is implausible (if I think I am not morally valuable, that does not entail that I actually lack moral value). And it doesn't engage with the OP.
Imagine a detective lays out carefully some evidence that mark did the crime. And you just ignore it and declare that ghengis Khan did it.

There is no moral value to something that isn't material. You have it backwards

Again, address the argument. Don't just declare things as if you are God and if you say it, it is so. Argue.

But there is no argument in the OP

The possibility of the soul has to be proved, since it's nowhere in experience

It's existence has to be proved

It's value has to be proved.

Why can't meat have value?

Why can't meat think? To me it's obvious that it does. It does in animals

I followed the OP in my first answer

Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are. This makes irrelevant your notes about mind and body, because it all depends on our decisions. — Angelo

Mine is not an argument, but a reminder to take subjectivity into consideration. Your OP seems working just because it ignores subjectivity, you ignored the involvement of yourself in what you said in the OP. This is the general error of apparently objective statements: they ignore that they have been made by somebody.

I don't understand your point. I have argued that our minds are the bearers of moral value and that we can learn from this that our minds are immaterial. — Bartricks

Minds augment/enhance the moral value of the physical body. That, in my humble opinion, doesn't imply that the mind is immaterial.

okaaaaay.

You can say we’re morally valuable because we are close enough to a specific configuration of meat. A configuration where we deem that things that take it are morally valuable. None of what you said above necessitates souls, only proposes them as an explanation of moral value.

To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value. — Bartricks

False. You can say we are morally valuable because we follow a certain configuration of meat. Problem solved.

There's no argument to which you wouldn't have said those silly things.

Whether we have moral value or not is not an individually subjective matter. You are convinced it is. That's just confused. If I think I am morally valuable, it doesn't follow that I am. But even if your fallacious and ignorant view was correct, my op would still show that anyone who thinks they are morally valuable irrespective of their physical features or conscious states was, by virtue of that, an immaterial mind. Which is absurd - but just underlines the absurdity of subjectivism about those things that are not subjective. So, your subjectivism is both silly and doesn't challenge my argument.

Read the OP again. I do not hold the view you think I do

So value is objective but not necessary?

Maybe on an ontological level something simple is always completely one with some composite, everytime

What? No, moral value is constitutively determined by God's attitudes. So it is subjective but external.
And it's not 'necessary', because God can change her attitudes. But none of that is essential to my case. Focus!!
Just read the op and try and understand the argument. I mean, you don't even think there is an argument there, so I don't hold out much hope.

And you can't say that we are morally valuable because we are made of meat, because the meat itself is not morally valuable absent a mind inhabiting it. — Bartricks

What about functionalism? If a mind is a lump of meat functioning in a particular way, lumps of functioning meat can be valuable without there being any immaterial objects. I'm just going with your assumptions again here. I'm not a functionalist, but you haven't adequately dealt with actual materialist theories of mind here.

"Not because of the shape or size or colour or location of your physical body. For if your body was a different shape, or size, or colour, or location, this would not affect your moral value. Plus I myself do not seem to have any of those features, yet I seem morally valuable (it is my body - not me - that seems to have a size, shape, colour and location)."

Each body is valuable and unique

"It also seems obvious that when a mind is not present in a body, the body has no moral value and its destruction is not morally bad. For instance, a mindless foetus or a corpse both seem to be things whose destruction is not morally bad (those who think it is always bad to destroy a foetus, think a mind is always present from conception - which as well as being implausible, just underlines that it is the presence of a mind, not the presence of this or that physical feature, that is doing the moral work)."

Well abortion is immoral but that's a different question. The issue is live humans and what makes them valuable

"What about consciousness? I don't think so because a) when I am unconscious I am still morally valuable - it is not morally ok to destroy those who are unconscious, other things being equal and b) many conscious states are morally disvaluable - such as undeserved pain - yet a mind that is in undeserved pain does not thereby come itself to be morally disvaluable. I can have thoroughly bad mental states, yet still be morally valuable. So, if a mind can have moral value despite its conscious states having moral disvalue, then the mind's moral value is not grounded in its mental states."

It's grounded in biology. So you haven't addressed the issue

"It seems, then, that we are morally valuable because we are minds."

Why? All you made where asserions

"And we can also conclude that our minds are not our bodies, because our bodies would not be morally valuable were it not for the fact they have our minds in them."

Statement, not argument

"To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value."

Statement, not argument

"You can't say that we are morally valuable because of our conscious states, for they can be thoroughly morally disvaluable, yet we can still be morally valuable despite this."

Who said it was based on conscious states? That is not the issue

"And you can't say that we are morally valuable because we are made of meat, because the meat itself is not morally valuable absent a mind inhabiting it."


Statement, no argument

"Reflection on our moral value seems to reveal something about what we are, then. It reveals that we are not physical bodies, but immaterial objects."

This last sentence should have been the whole thread. You didn't make argument, like I said

The problem is when you speak of a mind you tacitly speak of the body, or at least you are unable to produce or point to anything else called “mind”. One is left to wonder what it is exactly you are ascribing value to.

What about functionalism? If a mind is a lump of meat functioning in a particular way, lumps of functioning meat can be valuable without there being any immaterial objects. I'm just going with your assumptions again here. I'm not a functionalist, but you haven't adequately dealt with actual materialist theories of mind here. — bert1

I don't have to, for if I can show that immaterialism is true, then I have shown that all materialist views about the mind are false. And that is going to include functionalism, if that's what functionalism is.

However, it seems to me that functionalism is compatible with immaterialism. For functionalism is the view that two functionally isomorphic mechanisms will both have mental states if one does (regardless of what the mechanism may be made of). But so understood it does not take a stand on what kind of thing is bearing the mental states in question. So, one could be an immaterialist about the mind 'and' be a functionalist. Someone could hold that we have immaterial minds associated with our brains, and agree that were a similarly functioning mechanism to be made out of silicon or copper or whatever, that it too would thereby get to have an immaterial mind associated with it.

So, if functionalism is a form of materialism about the mind, then my argument refutes it. I don't need to specify each materialist theory about the mind, when the argument implies that immaterialism is true. That's like thinking that if I have excellent evidence that John did the crime, I nevertheless still need to discount everyone else on independent grounds - no, the evidence that John did it is , eo ipso, evidence that discounts everyone else.

And if functionalism is not a form of materialism - and I don't think it is - then any credibility it has does nothing to challenge my argument.

Each body is valuable and unique — Gregory

Oh, okay. If you say so. I mean, they're not unique (entirely possible for two bodies to be qualitatively identical - presumably you think twins do not have mora value?) and you've sort of entirely ignored my argument that our value has nothing to do with our bodies, as we are morally valuable irrespective of what kind of body we have. But, you know, excellent point. You really are a smart one.

Well abortion is immoral but that's a different question. The issue is live humans and what makes them valuable — Gregory

Oh, abortion is immoral is it? Thanks for sorting that one out for us. I thought there was a long and intricate debate over it and a multiplicity of reasonable - or reasonable-ish - positions on the market. But silly me. If Gregory says they're immoral, well that's good enough for me.

Look, you're not arguing anything. There's no question my OP contains an argument. One might disagree with it, but it's there. Now, this is for philosophy grown ups. So take your pronouncements and go play with the traffic like a good boy.

One can know what something isn't, without having to specify what it is. Detectives would be in trouble if they had to know who did the crime 'before' they start their investigation. For instance, if John has a cast iron alibi, then I can rule him out even if I don't yet know who, specifically, murdered Mary.

I am doing what a detective does: I am discounting candidates. I am morally valuable. Why? Well, not because of any of my sensible features, for they seem clearly irrelevant (I am not morally valuable 'because' of my size, but regardless of it, and so on for any sensible feature whatsoever).

And not because of my mental states either, for they can all be morally bad without it following that I am morally disvaluable.

So that leaves my mind - the object, not its states - that bears moral value. That still leaves open the possibility that the mind could be a material object. But we can test that. For if it was the material object itself, rather than something distinct from it that was or is inhabiting it, then it would be obviously bad to destroy that object. Yet a corpse or corpse brain is something that it is not obviously bad to destroy. I mean, there seems a world of difference morally between cremating uncle John's body before it becomes a corpse and cremating it afterwards. Materially speaking it is the same body either way. (And if one objects that the significant change that has occurred is that it has gone from having mental states to not having them, then one is assuming that moral value is grounded in mental states rather than the object that is having them - a view already discounted).

Thus, it seems that it is not the physical object - be it the brain or whatever - that has moral value, but something else. 'I' then, am not a physical object with sensible features, but an immaterial thing that lacks any and all of them.

There's no argument to which you wouldn't have said those silly things.
... your fallacious and ignorant view...
... your subjectivism is both silly and doesn't challenge my argument. — Bartricks

Considering that your argument consists in insulting people, I have no reason to continue.

No it doesn't. There are no insults in the OP. You did not address the OP.

I am a twin and they have separate bodies. Duh. You dont understand natural law which is why you make unfounded statements over and over again

If dualism is true, what is wrong with killing someone? The body alone dies, the outer shell, so you say, but the identity survives?