Soul

[Neo-Scholastic]

…trying to 'prove' that a spiritual realm is necessary to explain our mental capacities is ludicrous. If there is any correlate to 'soul' I do not see why it needs to be enabled by something beyond the material, biological processes of our brains

And I find it equally absurd that insensate substances can support qualitative experiences regardless how complexly they interact. Physical theories of mind always ignore subjective experience as having any causal relationship with objectively observable facts about matter. Physical theories dismiss first-person reality as illusory or as impotent epiphenomena.

That is because mental and material properties are of two distinct types each of which has recognizable effects on reality. By analogy, balls roll regardless of what they are made of. Unfired clay can be molded regardless of the shape it currently has. But, in any particular instance, form and substance do not occur one apart from the other. So while first-person experiences do not occur apart from the body that has them, we must recognize that individual brains vary. Each person’s neural pathways have been formed independent of each other and has a unique “finger print”.

Most healthy brains can perform certain mathematical and logical operations with invariant forms, despite the fact that each brain takes a unique route to the result. The truth or validity of certain thoughts does not depend on the structure of the brain that has the thought. It must depend on some common referant that does not vary, otherwise there is no true correlation between the thoughts in one brain and the thought in another. Formal descriptions of thought processes, like addition, result in outcomes that are consistently and actually true for every case, regardless of whose brain does the thinking. The same cannot be said of physical processes described my models that approximate reality.

Now what you must do Tex is prove that the common reference for invariant thought operation consists of form only apart from substance.