On Theism & Immaterial Minds

[Faith No More]

I'm not so quick to dismiss dualism because I think the debate between materialism and immaterialism about the mind is fairly even.

Really? I have yet to see a concrete definition for the soul, and the only defense for its existence seems to be "Well, we don't know how the brain does this..." Due to neurological studies and brain injuries, we know that many facets of what we consider the mind are dependent upon the physical structure of the brain, and even such key elements that we use to identify what makes us who we are, such as personality, can be altered with a physical change to the brain.

It's not definitive proof by a long-shot, however, I am wondering why you consider the debate to be fairly even.

[fr0d0]

Time and time again I find myself running into new theology on this forum that I've never heard with my own ears in the time I spent as a Christian. All these mutually exclusive ideas can't all be right though...

Theism moves on. Gotta keep alert dude!

I like to keep an open mind, I would make a point to listen to an opposing opinion. I also keep in mind my own opinions on some things to make sense rather than a majority view which makes no sense to me.
This has biblical justification. The literal interpretation of Genesis that accommodates fully evolution is pretty much undeniable now, but still lots of Christians disagree.

[FallentoReason]

I'm not so quick to dismiss dualism because I think the debate between materialism and immaterialism about the mind is fairly even.

Really? I have yet to see a concrete definition for the soul, and the only defense for its existence seems to be "Well, we don't know how the brain does this..." Due to neurological studies and brain injuries, we know that many facets of what we consider the mind are dependent upon the physical structure of the brain, and even such key elements that we use to identify what makes us who we are, such as personality, can be altered with a physical change to the brain.

It's not definitive proof by a long-shot, however, I am wondering why you consider the debate to be fairly even.

Dualism incorporates all that. If one is a substance dualist, then the belief is that the mind is a combination of causal relations (i.e. complex neuronal structures and other physical aspects of the brain) and qualia (i.e. how we experience qualities and properties of things, such as an apple's "redness").

[TheBigOhMan]

I'm a substance ( well, actually a proto-substance) dualist due to the Knowledge Argument. ¿What do you guys think of that one?

[Faith No More]

Dualism incorporates all that. If one is a substance dualist, then the belief is that the mind is a combination of causal relations (i.e. complex neuronal structures and other physical aspects of the brain) and qualia (i.e. how we experience qualities and properties of things, such as an apple's "redness").

I understand what dualism tries to incorporate. That wasn't really what I was asking, but you have just demonstrated my problem with dualism claims. Saying the soul is responsible for qualia is tantamount to a "soul of the gaps" argument.

What I was really looking for, however, was the reason that you feel that both sides of the debate are on equal footing.

[FallentoReason]

Dualism incorporates all that. If one is a substance dualist, then the belief is that the mind is a combination of causal relations (i.e. complex neuronal structures and other physical aspects of the brain) and qualia (i.e. how we experience qualities and properties of things, such as an apple's "redness").

I understand what dualism tries to incorporate. That wasn't really what I was asking, but you have just demonstrated my problem with dualism claims. Saying the soul is responsible for qualia is tantamount to a "soul of the gaps" argument.

What I was really looking for, however, was the reason that you feel that both sides of the debate are on equal footing.

Oh my bad! I was still half-asleep when I responded.

Well, it seems to me that naturalism can't account for some things such as belief and knowledge -- let alone consciousness -- while a purely immaterial outlook is on par with pink unicorns. So perhaps, what I really meant to say was that both sides are equally extreme in their claims, therefore I think a more reasonable answer is somewhere in between e.g. dualism.

[Ben Davis]

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Hi Fallen, why the complication? It's much more simple than this: all the evidence that we have indicates that the mind is an emergent property of brain function. Further, there is no evidence in support of dualism. So I simply can't accept your first premise because if we were to assume dualism, we can speculate pretty much anything we like because there's no evidence for any dualist position.

Sorry if I'm missing the point!

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Even if mind is an emergent "property," that doesn't refute dualism-- it just teaches something about its nature, or about its relationship to physical structures.

As I understand, it does refute dualism. To go back to definitions, dualism is the idea that 'mind' (or 'soul'/'consciousness'/'spirit', depending on your beliefs) is separate from our physical bodies. Therefore, as 'mind' is demonstrably a property of 'brains', there is no separation consequently dualism must be false. Arguments that 'minds' use 'brains' as a conduit are based on the assumption that a mind is separate and further, those arguments even attempt to describe the behaviour of the 'mind' when there is no evidence to support such claims.

Even if you can find a 1:1 relationship between brain function and experience (which is so confidently assumed now and so poorly proven), there's still a problem: mind is a brute fact, and it is not objective; you cannot touch someone's mind, or even know if they are actually sentient (as opposed to being a machine which can fake sentience). Brain function, on the other hand, IS objective; you can play with it, monitor it, and do whatever science you want on it.

As I said a moment ago, the only evidence supports the position that there's a 1:1 relationship between brain function and 'mind'. There are no facts, brute or otherwise, to demonstrate the existence of 'mind', as defined in dualism.

One approach to this is simply to say that mind is brain function. However, saying repeatedly and confidently that things are equivalent doesn't make them so...

That's right, it's the factual evidence that allows us to state that it's most likely so.

...and science has a lot more assumptions than proof right now.

Nearly right, science still has many unanswered questions in regard to the nature of consciousness, interactions of matter & experience and the like; I'm not going to pretend that neurology is a field in which humanity has made substantial progress. However the progress we've made is significant. It puts the 'dualism' argument to bed for most people.

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Hi Fallen, why the complication? It's much more simple than this: all the evidence that we have indicates that the mind is an emergent property of brain function. Further, there is no evidence in support of dualism. So I simply can't accept your first premise because if we were to assume dualism, we can speculate pretty much anything we like because there's no evidence for any dualist position.

Sorry if I'm missing the point!

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I partly agree with you. I'm not so quick to dismiss dualism because I think the debate between materialism and immaterialism about the mind is fairly even. But what I was aiming to do was that if we accept immaterialism about the mind and we believe in a just, personal God, then we have a defeater for our combination of beliefs.

Cool. I understand. As you've probably gathered from my above responses, I side firmly against dualism based on the available evidence. IMO, until some factual evidence is presented in favour of dualism, there's not even any need to consider it as a viable argument.

[Faith No More]

Oh my bad! I was still half-asleep when I responded.

Haha...no problem.

Well, it seems to me that naturalism can't account for some things such as belief and knowledge -- let alone consciousness -- while a purely immaterial outlook is on par with pink unicorns. So perhaps, what I really meant to say was that both sides are equally extreme in their claims, therefore I think a more reasonable answer is somewhere in between e.g. dualism.

But physical processes have been demonstrated to have great effects on the mind and its facets, such as personality. Sure, there are things it hasn't accounted for, but all dualism has is the claim that the soul fills these gaps. No one can even say what the soul is exactly or what its effects are. I do not see how the claims of each side are equally extreme.

[FallentoReason]

But physical processes have been demonstrated to have great effects on the mind and its facets, such as personality.

Agreed. The OP heavily relies on this known fact.

Sure, there are things it hasn't accounted for, but all dualism has is the claim that the soul fills these gaps.

It's more than that. It's a response to the apparent problem that material substance can't ever be about something else. I can believe proposition p and such a thing can't be represented in a material way such that we can point to it and say "look, there's FtR's belief about p". In fact, such an occurence of this would first require a concious being to assign meaning, a belief, that somehow that collection of atoms/molecules represents my belief in p.

Secondly, I don't see why the concept of a soul has to come into this. Like I said, one could believe that the only thing required for consciousness is causal relations and qualia.

No one can even say what the soul is exactly or what its effects are.

I've never jumped on that band wagon, so I can't really speak for them.

I do not see how the claims of each side are equally extreme.

Well, like I said, naturalism is too extreme in the sense that no naturalistic account can explain how simply atoms/molecules could be about something, which means the naturalist doesn't believe anything, let alone be conscious about any beliefs. Immaterialism is just classic theist101 baseless assumptions with absolutely nothing to back it up. Neither side is credible.

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Cool. I understand. As you've probably gathered from my above responses, I side firmly against dualism based on the available evidence. IMO, until some factual evidence is presented in favour of dualism, there's not even any need to consider it as a viable argument.

I don't think evidence will ever be found. The reason being that if dualism is correct, then that explains why complex robots can/could never reach our level; they have causal relations i.e. complex circuitry that interacts with the environment much like our neurons/senses interact with our environment, but they're missing instances of qualia i.e. they can't have experiences like we do. There's something still missing in robots that we have. But how does one find evidence of something that doesn't appear to be a purely material substance?