(Yesterday at 8:47 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(September 2, 2026 at 10:21 pm)Jal Wrote: Bullshit. That's a non-sequitur.  Or false dichotomy. Or some other fallacy.  "Humanly undetectable" doesn't translate to impotent. Many things were humanly indetectable until modern science.

You're underestimating God's ability to play hide and seek.

Don't overcomplicate this. God simply loves His clay dolls.

LOL, "humanly detectable".  Nothing that we've now detected was ever impossible for us to detect, as you suggest these souls are, just undetected.  You could only be talking about a thing that doesn't interact.  Consider this, even if your god made a soul shaped hole...by magic....we could detect the hole.

That's a reasonable argument, but isn't necessarily how things work. The soul's principal influence on the body is to animate (i.e. push/ pull it).

For example suppose I hunger to throw a punch. My body, left to itself - limited to the Universe's blind causality/ domino effects - wouldn't likely move my fist in that direction.

At this point free will  - a self-propelling soul - drags my fist toward the target. By default, a scientist would be inclined to attribute the motion to muscular activity such as ATP. How would he identify an invisible soul at work here? And even if he found an instrument to do it, how can you be sure that God won't hide it from the instrument by skewing the results?

I'll say it again: You're underestimating God's ability to play hide and seek.

Well, this is an interesting fairy tale, but it doesn't explain things any better than invisible forces and since it's a lot more complex, parsimony favors the simpler explanation.

(Yesterday at 9:07 am)Angrboda Wrote: Well, this is an interesting fairy tale, but it doesn't explain things any better than invisible forces and since it's a lot more complex, parsimony favors the simpler explanation.

Immaterial forces seem to be a logical contradiction. The intangible cannot realistically impact the tangible.

(Yesterday at 9:02 am)Jal Wrote:

(Yesterday at 8:47 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: LOL, "humanly detectable".  Nothing that we've now detected was ever impossible for us to detect, as you suggest these souls are, just undetected.  You could only be talking about a thing that doesn't interact.  Consider this, even if your god made a soul shaped hole...by magic....we could detect the hole.

That's a reasonable argument, but isn't necessarily how things work. The soul's principal influence on the body is to animate (i.e. push/ pull it).

For example suppose I hunger to throw a punch. My body, left to itself - limited to the Universe's blind causality/ domino effects - wouldn't likely move my fist in that direction.

At this point free will  - a self-propelling soul - drags my fist toward the target. By default, a scientist would be inclined to attribute the motion to muscular activity such as ATP. How would he identify an invisible soul at work here? And even if he found an instrument to do it, how can you be sure that God won't hide it from the instrument by skewing the results?

I'll say it again: You're underestimating God's ability to play hide and seek.

It's how detection works.  We detect things by their interactions.  Anyway, I don't assume any such thing...as I said, trickster gods are fun.  However, active interference is a detectable thing.   You have a serious problem if you want your soul to be interactive or potent but impossible to detect.  If it were me, I'd leave some space open there just so you don't create problems for yourself.  Souls and godmagic aren't actually undetectable.  Just really hard to detect. This way we can hold out hope for the possibility of interaction..even though we can't show a shred of evidence for it, and have to come up with stories like this to explain the mountain of evidence against it.

(Yesterday at 9:24 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(Yesterday at 9:02 am)Jal Wrote: That's a reasonable argument, but isn't necessarily how things work. The soul's principal influence on the body is to animate (i.e. push/ pull it).

For example suppose I hunger to throw a punch. My body, left to itself - limited to the Universe's blind causality/ domino effects - wouldn't likely move my fist in that direction.

At this point free will  - a self-propelling soul - drags my fist toward the target. By default, a scientist would be inclined to attribute the motion to muscular activity such as ATP. How would he identify an invisible soul at work here? And even if he found an instrument to do it, how can you be sure that God won't hide it from the instrument by skewing the results?

I'll say it again: You're underestimating God's ability to play hide and seek.

It's how detection works.  We detect things by their interactions.  Anyway, I don't assume any such thing...as I said, trickster gods are fun.  However, active interference is a detectable thing.   You have a serious problem if you want your soul to be interactive or potent but impossible to detect.  If it were me, I'd leave some space open there just so you don't create problems for yourself.  Souls and godmagic aren't actually undetectable.  Just really hard to detect.  This way we can hold out hope for the possibility of interaction..even though we can't show a shred of evidence for it, and have to come up with stories like this to explain the mountain of evidence against it.

That's good advice. Who knows? Maybe the soul is detectable after all. Maybe I've been wrong to assume otherwise.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that these interactions would reveal the soul. You say we detect things by interactions, but doesn't that mean a deviation from the expected norm? Since the soul has been animating the body since the womb, there would be no deviation from the expected norm.  Therefore scientists would chalk it all up to normal physiological activity, I think.

According to you, we detect it all the time. Goes back to that question I had for you why you would select or create one set of problems over another. This undetectability business is a burden pan psychism can’t bear. It is supposed to be in the seeming evidence and potency of souls interactions in the world that you believe it to be a credible worldview in the first place. All of those eggheads with their lab coats studying things like sekection and neural networks are discovering -how- soul interacts in the world as a heritable trait with material force.

(Yesterday at 9:09 am)Jal Wrote:

(Yesterday at 9:07 am)Angrboda Wrote: Well, this is an interesting fairy tale, but it doesn't explain things any better than invisible forces and since it's a lot more complex, parsimony favors the simpler explanation.

Immaterial forces seem to be a logical contradiction. The intangible cannot realistically impact the tangible.

Principles you pulled from your ass have no force.

I like to contextualize that type of thinking by saying that things which interact are meaningfully alike. If we’re going to have two buckets of stuff. Why not one why not three why not eleventy two….but if we have two buckets things that interact with material things are meaningfully material themselves…even if there is some or many categories of things that are meaningfully different in that respect…such that they do not or cannot react across that interaction boundary, whatever it is.

If souls are immaterial in the sense that they are different from material things in a way that prevents them from interacting with material things…then souls can’t throw punches. If souls can throw punches, then they are material things interacting with other material things and so…detectable. Open to evidentiary scrutiny.

I think it’s incredibly likely that a person waffles over that line because their religiosity is interfering with their critical thinking. They’re hedging their bets with a reasoning so motivated that it becomes self defeating.

(Yesterday at 10:29 am)Angrboda Wrote:

(Yesterday at 9:09 am)Jal Wrote: Immaterial forces seem to be a logical contradiction. The intangible cannot realistically impact the tangible.

Principles you pulled from your ass have no force.

Philosophy involves reasoning. I reasoned on this on post 296.
Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

There I justified the conclusion but I don't see why I need to. It seems common sense.  

If an atheist  wants theists to be more reasonable, he should practice what he preaches.

(Yesterday at 10:46 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I like to contextualize that type of thinking by saying that things which interact are meaningfully alike.  If we’re going to have two buckets of stuff.  Why not one why not three why not eleventy two….but if we have two buckets things that interact with material things are meaningfully material themselves…even if there is some or many categories of things that are meaningfully different in that respect…such that they do not or cannot react across that interaction boundary, whatever it is.

If souls are immaterial in the sense that they are different from material things in a way that prevents them from interacting with material things…then souls can’t throw punches.  If souls can throw punches, then they are material things interacting with other material things and so…detectable.  Open to evidentiary scrutiny.  

I think it’s incredibly likely that a person waffles over that line because their religiosity is interfering with their critical thinking.  They’re hedging their bets with a reasoning so motivated that it becomes self defeating.

In panpsychism all matter is at core the same.  To use a medieval term, souls only bear "accidental" differences to the body, not "essential" differences.