Disproving The Soul

[Mudhammam]

Perhaps you could first tell me what 'matter' is . That would help me understand how matter alone can give rise to non-physical mental properties, i.e. things like semiotic meaning.

Without reverting to Google to offer an exact definition, I'd say matter is that substance that comprises all of nature, including our cognitive experiences of it. While it's true that the materialist hasn't definitively explained at what level of physical phenomena mental abstractions have their origin, I find this lack of knowledge insufficient for separating physical and mental into two distinct substances; rather, I see them as two different sides of the same substance (matter). And so long as the brain sciences continue to establish the explicit correlation between the tangible and the abstract, including causal mechanisms from former to latter, the Cartesian theatre will continue to shrink.