Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[The Grand Nudger]

-and yet here you are telling us that it's hidden from detection. The second largest collection of neurons in your body is your gut. Must be alot of soul hidden in there.

[Belacqua]

If we're being strict about words, your use of "experiences" here is... nonstandard at best. 

"Experience" is normally used to mean that there is some inner consciousness of an event. Here is Merriam Webster: 

---

1
a
: direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge
Charlotte was naturally patient. She knew from experience that if she waited long enough, a fly would come to her web …
—E. B. White
b
: the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation
In my experience, those dedicated to practical change over the long term are often the least involved in the dramas of rage …
—Rebecca Solnit
2
a
: practical knowledge, skill, or practice gained from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity
has firsthand experience solving these kinds of problems
b
: the length of such participation
has 10 years' experience in the job
3
: something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
wrote about their experiences as a pilot
4
a
: the conscious events that make up an individual life
… the things that make twins different from each other, such as life experience.
—Emil F. Coccaro
… the historical strength of family and community, kinship and neighbors within the black experience.
—Manning Marable
b
: the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally
… a teacher resource manual pertaining to the experience of Americans of Japanese ancestry …
—The Japanese American Citizens League
5
: the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality
Experience is a matter of the interaction of organism with its environment …
—John Dewey

---

Note that all of these involve personal awareness of something. Rocks don't have that, unless you're agreeing that they do have some kind of simple inner life. 


*You're

Thanks for pointing that out. Actually that was my reading as well. I had read it as something like "a degree of consciousness" or, in my unorthodox terminology, a "negligible sentience".  Ravenshire seemed to be indicating it was dumb of me to read it that way, and I really didn't want to debate the point. But thanks for raising this possibility.

It turns out that modern theories of panpsychism tend to be a bit tricky about where mental qualities are found and where they're not. This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia:

panpsychism entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe. So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do).

(Note that these philosophers are careful to distinguish differences among "mentality," "consciousness," and "experience." Confusing the terms would cause us to mischaracterize the current theories.)

This would be easy to dismiss at first glance, and I'm sure a number of people will. The arguments for this view are serious and involved and an amateur like me isn't qualified to judge. But I think it's simple-minded just to dismiss the whole thing as "panpsychism is stupid" or whatever. 

Anyway, the modern theories certainly don't hold that a rock experiences the world in the same way that people do but just at a lower level. 

Stanford again:

The traditional view in analytic philosophy is that thoughts are mental states that can be modelled as psychological attitudes towards specific propositions: believing that Budapest is the capital of Hungary, hoping that war is over, fearing that there will be another Global Financial Crisis. Panpsychism is often caricatured as the view that electrons have hopes and dreams, or that quarks suffer from existential angst. However, whilst there have been some defenders of pancognitivism in history, it is panexperientialist forms of panpsychism that are taken seriously in contemporary analytic philosophy.[8] From now on I will equate panpsychism with panexperientialism.

So as far as I can tell, serious analytic philosophers do not hold that rocks have experience, (in the dictionary sense of the term). That is, rocks do not understand what's happening to them or feel bad about falling off the mountain. Rather, current theories hold that thought or mind is a fundamental element of the universe, and that we can't explain the emergence of human cognition without recognizing more fundamental levels. 

As you've seen, this is entirely compatible with various religious traditions, including some kinds of Christianity and some kinds of ancient Indian thought. Your own Christian theology (as I'm sure you know) is somewhat unorthodox, but that doesn't negate the serious work on panpsychism outlined in the Stanford article.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

[Jal]

-and yet here you are telling us that it's hidden from detection.

I simply meant that a surgeon, for example, will never detect the soul regardless of how advanced the equipment.

Nor will human eyes detect it, unless or until God unhides it from someone's vision. 

I wasn't saying that the soul is impotent/ useless/ ineffective.

[The Grand Nudger]

You are, you just don't realize that you are. This is apparently hidden from you. Saying a thing is undetectable is saying that it does not interact.

Personally, I feel that you're invoking a cloaking robe of elvenkind to protect your ideas about souls..not because it makes sense, or even makes sense in the context of your other beliefs.

[Jal]

You are, you just don't realize that you are.  This is apparently hidden from you.  Saying a thing is undetectable is saying that it does not interact.  

Personally, I feel that you're invoking a cloaking robe of elvenkind to protect your ideas about souls..not because it makes sense, or even makes sense in the context of your other beliefs.

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.

[Jal]

Thanks for pointing that out. Actually that was my reading as well. I had read it as something like "a degree of consciousness" or, in my unorthodox terminology, a "negligible sentience".  Ravenshire seemed to be indicating it was dumb of me to read it that way, and I really didn't want to debate the point. But thanks for raising this possibility.

It turns out that modern theories of panpsychism tend to be a bit tricky about where mental qualities are found and where they're not. This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia:

panpsychism entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe. So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do).

(Note that these philosophers are careful to distinguish differences among "mentality," "consciousness," and "experience." Confusing the terms would cause us to mischaracterize the current theories.)

This would be easy to dismiss at first glance, and I'm sure a number of people will. The arguments for this view are serious and involved and an amateur like me isn't qualified to judge. But I think it's simple-minded just to dismiss the whole thing as "panpsychism is stupid" or whatever. 

Anyway, the modern theories certainly don't hold that a rock experiences the world in the same way that people do but just at a lower level. 

Stanford again:

The traditional view in analytic philosophy is that thoughts are mental states that can be modelled as psychological attitudes towards specific propositions: believing that Budapest is the capital of Hungary, hoping that war is over, fearing that there will be another Global Financial Crisis. Panpsychism is often caricatured as the view that electrons have hopes and dreams, or that quarks suffer from existential angst. However, whilst there have been some defenders of pancognitivism in history, it is panexperientialist forms of panpsychism that are taken seriously in contemporary analytic philosophy.[8] From now on I will equate panpsychism with panexperientialism.

So as far as I can tell, serious analytic philosophers do not hold that rocks have experience, (in the dictionary sense of the term). That is, rocks do not understand what's happening to them or feel bad about falling off the mountain. Rather, current theories hold that thought or mind is a fundamental element of the universe, and that we can't explain the emergence of human cognition without recognizing more fundamental levels. 

As you've seen, this is entirely compatible with various religious traditions, including some kinds of Christianity and some kinds of ancient Indian thought. Your own Christian theology (as I'm sure you know) is somewhat unorthodox, but that doesn't negate the serious work on panpsychism outlined in the Stanford article.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

Yes I am confident that those professional philosohers handle the terminology better than I do, but thanks for confirming the legitimacy of panpsychism as a fundamental world view.

[Jal]

Your own Christian theology (as I'm sure you know) is somewhat unorthodox...

I see it as a logical necessity to escape the idiocies of traditional Christology such as "An immutable God became man."

Or, "An immaterial God influences the material world".

Or, "An immaterial God magically created space, time, and matter out of nothing."

Or, "An immaterial God has a sonic voice, in fact it spoke the world into existence." (Sound vibrations create matter ex nihilo? Funny mine don't do that).


Or, "God is separate from my mind but knows my thoughts." (I solve this by claiming He listens to our brain waves like sound waves).

Or, "An immaterial God has no extension in space, no size and shape, yet inhabits human bodies and is present throughout our universe." Huh?

[Angrboda]

I think there's a fundamental problem. Things are detectable because of the interaction of invisible forces. If the soul is hidden it is because God is deviating from his convention in a way that is fundamentally deceitful. This messes with any claimed superior morality.

[Jal]

I think there's a fundamental problem.  Things are detectable because of the interaction of invisible forces.  If the soul is hidden it is because God is deviating from his convention in a way that is fundamentally deceitful.  This messes with any claimed superior morality.

When a parent hides something from a child, it's not necessarily a nefarious act. There might be good reasons unknown to the children.

[The Grand Nudger]

You are, you just don't realize that you are.  This is apparently hidden from you.  Saying a thing is undetectable is saying that it does not interact.  

Personally, I feel that you're invoking a cloaking robe of elvenkind to protect your ideas about souls..not because it makes sense, or even makes sense in the context of your other beliefs.

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.