the continuity afforded by memory — Janus

:up: As Witty says, "The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied.

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied. — 180 Proof

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?

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied.
— 180 Proof

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". — Janus

:up: :up:

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

The point here is that I want to ask the question, "What kinds of arguments could be thought capable of adjudicating the question of the soul's perdurance?"

There seem to be two main camps, one where the soul's perdurance is obvious and perhaps properly basic, and a second where there can be no possible argument in favor of the soul's perdurance. It's hard to understand how this thesis is something that can be properly argued about. It reminds me of the arguments for or against Occasionalism in that way.

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

Suppose you had a nice cup of coffee with grandma at the nursing home yesterday. You go back today and she doesn't recognize you at all, and she is suspicious of your claims to be related to her.

Now the commonsensical interpretation is that her body is the same but her soul is different. If the difference in her soul was manifest in her body then simply upon seeing her you would have noticed the difference, but you didn't.

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."

What are you taking this to actually mean to the discussion? 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.
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).

What are you taking this to actually mean to the discussion? — AmadeusD

I don't know. That's a good question.

The first thing that comes to mind is to not appeal to reductionistic or highly theoretical answers before acknowledging the prima facie phenomenon. It seems that something about grandma's core identity has changed, in a way that goes beyond a bodily change. So the first thing we should wonder is whether it is worth making a qualitative distinction between grandma suffering a broken leg and grandma suffering dementia.

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 suppose the rub is that use of the word 'soul' requires a great deal of disambiguation. But then I would wonder how stark the practical difference actually is? An intangible explanatory entity (if this is how we wish to conceive of a soul) in fact seems to have a great deal in common with an intangible explanation. Both possess a healthy share of opacity.

Still, I'm not sure the OP is using 'soul' in the sense of an intangible explanatory entity.

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

In the first place I would want to make sure we are taking stock of whether a word is being used in its colloquial sense or in a specialized technical sense. Grandma's change may relate to her body in the technical sense, but probably not in the colloquial sense. The bugbear here is catch-all theories, such as, say, string theory. "Oh, her new condition has to do with a change in the vibrations of the strings." Perhaps, but is this really going to help us understand what is happening to grandma? It's hard to see how an explanation that does not involve colloquial meanings can function as an explanation to anyone other than the specialist, or to one committed to an elaborate unified theory.

Edit: Maybe the more straightforward answer is simply, "Does positing something like physicalism provide an answer to the OP, for or against?"

Brain would equate to body. I am sure you know of the most famous case in neuroscience: Phineas Gage.

An argument for some kind of self permanence, in the sense you are talking, would probably be better grounded in emergentism or something more applicable to entropy at large - meaning metaphysical grounding rather than in physicalism.

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That seems to do the same as Descartes, dogmatically attributing duration to the soul without deeper justification. — Lionino

So do you then see my claim about wood as 'dogmatic'?

I think we need a more precise definition of what you mean by the word 'soul'.

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

You use three different terms here, 'self', 'mind', and 'soul'. Are those three all the same thing in the context of this thread?

The difficulty I see here is that we could concede to the process thinker that the soul can only exist in a duration of time, but this doesn't solve the difficulty. Suppose, for example, that the argument is rephrased in terms of durations rather than instants, perhaps in terms of years. Then we might ask whether the soul from 2020 perdures into 2021, and whether the soul from 2021 perdures into 2022, etc.

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

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. This is part of what I was getting at with the "no adjudicable way to distinguish these two views" comment.

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

Then the other question comes in. If soul is defined by time, and time does not end at death, then does the soul end at death? If the soul is thought to cease at death then it must be defined by something more than time.

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

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.

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

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.

I think this post from another thread is relevant https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895615 — Lionino

Okay, thanks. I agree that there is something goofy about dividing up the soul's temporal experience into instants of time, but I don't think remedying that goofiness solves the question of the perdurance of the soul.

If we want to be more practical we can ask whether the soul perdures in the case of grandma's dementia, or coma, or "brain death," because this is where the ethical rubber meets the road.

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

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.

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

It is both commonsensical and commonplace to attribute memory loss to physical changes in the brain, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make. I would also point out that there would be differences in body language between the granny who recognizes me and the granny who doesn't.

I don't see the point in examining our notions of identity under the light (or more aptly in the darkness) afforded by thought experiments which utilize scenarios that are most likely impossible.

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Or fortunate... depending on perspective.

I think it's useful to consider a "soul" as a person's essence: that core of a person that actually persists over time throughout life and possibly beyond into an afterlife.

I don't actually believe in souls, an afterlife, or that there exists an ontological "essence", but focusing on essence helps to identify the problems: if there is no essence, then there is no soul.

Consider the set of memories you have. This can't be essential (part of your essence) because the set changes over time - we both add memories, and lose them. Further, there's strong evidence memories are "stored" physically in the brain, which implies they cease to exist at death. If some invisible essence (soul) of mine continues to exist after my death, it seems rather irrelevant if it lacks my memories. (When I've brought this up to Theists, they suggest God could basically copy your memories into some immaterial form that attaches to your soul. To an atheist like me, this seems an ad hoc rationalization).

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God should teach them how not to make unserious arguments. — Lionino

:rofl: :rofl:

[

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

So if someone can no longer recognize their family you would say that their "[soul] has changed accidentally to a small extent." What then would be an example of a soul that has changed non-accidentally, and to a large extent?

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

If we are aware of the annihilation-recreation then the experience is different. If not, it is not. But given that we are obviously not aware of such a thing, the thesis must be posited as something that we are not aware of. The objector is presumably saying, "What if, without your knowing it, your soul is being annihilated and recreated at each moment?"

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

So in the English-speaking tradition Descartes' dualism and philosophy is distinguished from what came before it. 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.

Whitehead in his process thinking was going behind Descartes in order to get beyond him. He was trying to go back to Plato and Aristotle. I think it is a false premise to associate Cartesian dualism with hylemorphism, or Cartesian substances with the classical notion of substance. Pre-moderns and post-moderns both tend to reject Descartes, at least in the English-speaking world. There is no need to choose between the Cartesian soul and a process view, 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."

For example:

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

Classically the soul and the body are not two substances, as Descartes makes them.

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

Well, you haven't nailed down what you mean by 'soul'. We have candidates: self, mind, consciousness, and memory. Whichever one you want to pick, I have more experience with its perdurance than with the combustibility of wood. So I don't see how a claim that the soul perdures is dogmatic but a claim that wood burns is not.

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

I don't follow the middle term of these sorts of arguments in this thread (and there are many). For example, if the self or soul is, "a chain of experienced patterns that emerge subjective experience," then how does this tell us that the experienced pattern at birth is connected to the same chain as the experienced pattern at death? Why not say that it ends at dementia, or coma, or brain-death? Why not say that it goes beyond death? 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? What is the concrete argument for the continuity?

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I can prove the existence of an immortal substance that I call the mind. The argument is very long and complicated though. We need to agree on six facts which each is subject to discussion. These facts are:
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

The subject that experiences the "eternal here". — Lionino

Hmm, okay.

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

Sure, but going back to my contention that this question is not adjudicable, if someone claims that an essential change like this has taken place, don't we just tell them, "We don't consider people to swap their consciousness, they are born with one and die with that same consciousness"? Are these theories and claims falsifiable?

Brain-washing or memory loss. — Lionino

So a larger amount of memory loss than being unable to recognize family members?

If you get cloned then die, you stop experiencing — Lionino

A number of folks seem to think that if you get cloned then die, you don't stop experiencing.

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

Let me put it this way:

1. We are not constantly being annihilated and recreated.
2. We are being constantly annihilated and recreated, but we don't know it given the efficacy of the reconstruction/recreation.
3. We are being constantly annihilated and recreated, and we do know it.

(3) is experientially/epistemically distinguishable from (1), but everyone accepts that (3) is false, so the contrast is moot. (2) is not experientially/epistemically distinguishable from (1), and therefore there is no practical difference between (1) and (2). So if we are left to choose between (2) and (3), it would seem that we get to choose between something that is otiose and something that is clearly false. This brings me back to this idea:

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

This whole thing is reminiscent of the Cartesian move that, "We of course have good reason to believe that X, but do we also have the fullness of certitude?" What standard of proof is being imposed, here? Are we trying to jump over the fence or over the moon?

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

That's a fair argument, but what about sleep? Usually when we sleep we lose consciousness, along with the experiential and psychological continuity.

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

Well as I understand it there are clearly documented cases of people coming back from brain death, which is why I distinguished it.

No evidence of consciousness after brain-death. — Lionino

How so? Is there evidence of non-consciousness after death? Is your definition of 'soul' necessarily embodied?

Your argument must be something like <The only (second-person) evidence of consciousness is bodily movement; after death there is no bodily movement; therefore after death there is no consciousness>. This sort of argument is only objectionable in the case where we have an extremely high standard of proof a la Descartes, which we perhaps do in this thread. This sort of argument is probable but not certain.

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

I don't see why you think it is arbitrary. You define the soul in terms of consciousness, and in those cases a dramatic and permanent change in consciousness occurs.

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

I suppose for me the way that Descartes was confronting forms of Pyrrhonism inflects all of these discussions surrounding his positions. Do we have the highest degree of certitude that the soul perdures, such that it could overcome the most extreme version of Pyrrhonism? No, I don't think so. But I also don't really see it as a useful exercise to engage that form of Pyrrhonism.

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1) Change exists — MoK

Actually, change occurs. What exists is the present, and its propensity to change - arguably because of laws of nature.

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?

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.

Nonsense. — Lionino

It seems you are not interested in my argument for each step!

Actually, change occurs. What exists is the present, and its propensity to change - arguably because of laws of nature. — Relativist

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.

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

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.

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

Let's see if we could agree on (2). We can move forward if we agree on (2).

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

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.

What is "substance"? If the world is a quantum field, evolving over time consistent with a Schroedinger equation, what is the "substance"?

Let's see if we could agree on (2). We can move forward if we agree on (2). — MoK

Looks like we can't move on.

If time is continuous, there's no gap. — Relativist

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.

What is "substance"? If the world is a quantum field, evolving over time consistent with a Schroedinger equation, what is the "substance"? — Relativist

The quantum field is the substance.

Looks like we can't move on. — Relativist

Let me know if we can move forward.

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

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?