In a piece on the Scientific American guest blog, the day before mine, Sean Carroll made an interesting argument:
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.
He appeals to the Dirac equation:
How is the spirit energy supposed to interact with us? Here is the equation that tells us how electrons behave in the everyday world:
Don’t worry about the details; it’s the fact that the equation exists that matters, not its particular form. It’s the Dirac equation — the two terms on the left are roughly the velocity of the electron and its inertia — coupled to electromagnetism and gravity, the two terms on the right.
As far as every experiment ever done is concerned, this equation is the correct description of how electrons behave at everyday energies. It’s not a complete description; we haven’t included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. But that’s okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain.
If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that this equation is not right, even at everyday energies.
This is quite right, of course. A similar point can be made against telepathy, clairvoyance, and other “paraphysical” phenomena. If these are supposed to work like physical energies, they cannot exist, because we know enough about the physical world now to rule them out. New Ageism is baloney, if you hadn’t figured it out, and chi is the invention of modern exponents of a “medicine” that is leading to the extinction of many fine animals. Also, dualism is in trouble in philosophy of mind for these very reasons.
However, my friend Massimo Pigliucci picked up on this and tweeted it with the slug “Why there is no need to be agnostic about life after death.” This got me thinking: this argument is fine so long as it stops with the conclusion that science gives us no reason to think there is a soul that persists after physical death. But if you go further, and insist that this means we should rule out that possibility because it doesn’t cohere with the Dirac Equation (or the rest of known physics), well then that is question begging, and it goes to the heart of the New Atheist movement, I think. Let me explain.
Often, those in that movement, many of whom are friends of mine even though we dispute vociferously about meta-questions like this one, insist that all knowledge is scientific (Larry Moran is one of those), or at least, knowledge based on techniques that are refined and extended in science (which is of course my argument in the piece that followed Carroll’s). But those who think there is a soul, or the mind exists independently of the physical world, do not make this presumption. They hold that one can believe in the physical sciences but also believe in the nonphysical. This is what accommodationists like me do not rule out (but do not necessarily believe, either – I’m as physicalist as they come; it’s just that I don’t automatically think those who aren’t are fools or incompetent reasoners).
In order to eliminate souls because they are not physical things, which is what rejecting agnosticism about souls would involve, one needs to have a further claim: any belief that is not acquired through scientific means is untenable. Let us call this claim U. Now, let us ask this question: how do we acquire the belief that U? Is it based on scientific reasoning? How could it be? It is instead the precondition for doing science. This is exactly the point made about the logical positivists by Popper among others: If it is a true view then it is self-defeating.
Logical positivism held that any thesis that was not based on observation sentences and their formal consequences was metaphysics, and metaphysics was inherently nonsensical. Consider the claim metaphysics is inherently nonsensical. On what observation sentences is that based? None, therefore (by their own definition) it is nonsensical. But it is the foundational claim of logical positivism, ergo logical positivism is self-defeating.
The claim made here is that U is implied by science, and yet, it cannot be, for no amount of scientific reasoning will establish U over not-U. It is itself a belief that is not scientific. If you say that we should prefer U because past observation has shown it to be fruitful or successful, then in order to make the claim scientific you need a missing premise – that what we have observed to be successful is what should be preferred. Call this U‘. Is U‘ itself a scientific claim? Where in the Dirac Equation is that shown? And so on.
At the very least you need to adopt a philosophical (or, if you prefer the older terminology, “metaphysical”) position in order to assert that only beliefs that have been established by scientific means should be adopted. It happens I agree with that belief, but I recognise it is not itself a scientific belief, so I have an inconsistency in my belief set (I get around that by taking some beliefs to be higher order meta-beliefs; it gets messy). Someone who comes along and says that not-U‘ is to be preferred, that beliefs need not all be scientific, is not being irrational, although that raises problems for them they must subsequently deal with (like, “how do you know these beliefs then?”).
So what does all this have to do with agnosticism about souls? If one accepts that some rational thinkers might hold beliefs that are not defeasible by the Dirac Equation, et al., so long as they do not flatly contradict the best physics we have, what doxastic attitude should one have towards those beliefs? Should one just assert as a truth that is ungrounded and unsupportable except circularly, that one should reject nonscience? Should one say that this belief is acceptable? That any belief that doesn’t contradict science outright is possibly true?
I have beliefs about the soul that treat it as unlikely and probably false. I most certainly do not think the soul is something that can be physical and survive death (information always has a substrate and an energetic cost, and so it cannot exist without both). But do I therefore think the concept of soul is incoherent? I can’t see how I might establish that. As a question of knowledge, I know the soul is not a natural (that is, physical) thing, but I do not know, and neither does anyone else, that the soul does not exist. The only rational solution is to be agnostic about it until some evidence comes in that resolves the question, and since evidence is something that happens in a scientific manner, through observation and measurement, any existing thing that is neither is beyond the competence of science to determine.
So there remains reason to be agnostic about the soul (mutatis mutandis, God). Sure, some kinds of souls (Aristotle’s motivating forces, for example) are ruled out of contention by the Dirac Equation. But not all are. So agnosticism is the only rational position to hold here, unless you can accept there are nonscientific (philosophical) beliefs that are justified, in which case the argument is self-defeating.
Late note: And as if to obligingly demonstrate the logical positivist view, PZ Myers posts this. Thanks, Paul.
I need to revise my question. For example, I borrow Kierkegaard’s concept of leap of faith between competing conjectures, but I hold to an overall coherency of the universe despite the possibility of humans never completely seeing that coherency while Kierkegaard debated between pseudonyms and perhaps nobody knows his views .
Anyway, take two:
You say that arguments for nonscientific beliefs are self-defeating, contrary to the only rational position. I have a clarify question. I agree that any argument claiming proof of nonscientific beliefs is self defeating, but according to your view, could a rational person make a decision of faith for a philosophical conjecture?
Also, I want to make sure that I understand your use of the term substrate. Is your use of the term substrate synonymous with the term substance? I want to make sure that I understand your term before I comment on a conjecture about hyperdimensional substance and energetic cost.
My entire argument is based on rational people having beliefs they do not arrive at rationally. If you believe in souls, and have refined your belief such that no contrary-to-fact implications flow from it (like belief in a physical energy we know is nonexistent), then I consider that belief is not a bar to rationality.
I don’t believe in substances. Any physical object has a physical substrate (some arrangement of physical things in spacetime). So a mind must have a physical substrate.
Hmm, how does your view of physical substrates work with the physics of gravitational force that evidently has a root source in a hyperdimension outside of spacetime? Do you imply that a force outside of spacetime is a nonphysical force?
I have no idea what that refers to or means. If gravity is outside of spacetime (however that might apply) then that merely extends the denotation of “physical”.
My bad. The source of gravity is supposedly outside of space but inside of time. Anyway, if I correctly understand you, then possible hyperdimensions are physical dimensions and possible force in a hyperdimension is a physical force. If that is the case, then we agree on these details.
In that context, I conjecture that each biologically thinking human has a hyperdimensional component of consciousness that survives death. I suppose the component is made of physical stuff that uses some type of force, while I don’t know any more details of the physics of this component.
I’m guessing this is an appeal to the holographic theory of t’Hooft? I dislike such theories because the role “information” plays here is too much like Aristotelian “form”. If the theory is that the universe has structure of a higher order than four dimensions, fine, but the notion that information plays a causal role is just a mistake IMO.
I’m unaware of any similarities that my view has with t’Hooft’s view. But I detailed what I suppose is consistent with physics and my theology.
I did a little reading on the proposed holographic universe, which is interesting stuff. If I understand it correctly, then information plays the source of causal determinism while I see the universe as genuinely probabilistic. So I don’t see myself buying into that. But then again, if holographic causal determinism is true, then I’ll buy into whatever Holograph has always determined.
Well, I did more research and see that Jacob Bekenstein says that the holographic principal has nothing to do with causality. You were talking about the holographic principal, weren’t you?
Perhaps the holographic principal has something do with alleged conscious memories without corresponding brainwaves, but I’ve no philosophical conjecture about it at this point in time.
Instead of clinging to outmoded metaphysics, it would be well to at least read Kant, and answer the question, not on the basis of the immortality of the soul, but on the inability of our catholic knowledge, which modern science has become, to answer to the subjective nature of human experience. It is from this experience that we know the world to be objective. Science remains just a branch of philosophy until it can apply its knowledge to the humanities with more accuracy than it does today.
In the mean time, we should not plumb outmoded metaphysics and consider that a victory.
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 15 Aug 1820
Some of the scientists seem to be missing the point consistently. Here’s my attempt at a simpler version. The following argument is logically invalid:
(1) If souls exist then they are non-physical.
( C) Hence, souls do not exist.
For the instance of modus tollens, it needs the following premise:
(2) Souls are not non-physical.
You can get this premise from a more general claim — and, indeed, it seems to be exactly what many of the other commentators are asserting:
(2′) Nothing is non-physical. (Everything is physical.)
With (1) and (2′), you have a deductively valid argument for the conclusion that souls don’t exist. The problem is that (2′) begs the question in a loose sense: The disagreement between New Atheists and substance dualists is precisely over the existence of non-physical things. Since the Dirac equation only applies to physical things, its success provides absolutely no reason to believe that (2′).
John said,
That is not a correct interpretation of my position.
I do not insist that all knowledge can only be acquired by the scientific way of knowing. What I claim is that all other contenders for ways of knowing conflict with the scientific way of knowing (i.e. science and religion are incompatible) and, furthermore, nobody has convinced me that any of these other ways actually produce true knowledge.
I do not claim that, “any belief that is not acquired through scientific means is untenable.” What I claim is that the veracity of that belief has to be accessed in some way and I’ve yet to see anybody come up with an objective, unbiased, way of doing that.
Let’s take belief in fairies as an example. The existence of fairies can not be proven by the scientific way of knowing. Those who believe in fairies claim to have acquired that belief though other ways of knowing that, according to them, are valid ways of knowing. But in the real world we have to constantly make judgments about such claims because it’s important to know who might be hanging out in the bottom of your garden.
Science has proven to be very effective at identifying true knowledge and at exposing false claims. It can’t prove all negatives but there are many we feel quite comfortable with. (Does anyone out there believe in fairies? Is anyone truly agnostic about the existence of fairies?)
Until such time as we discover some true knowledge that conflicts with science, it’s wise to continue to use evidence as an important criterion. I think most philosophers would agree with this pragmatic approach—they’re not prepared to abandon double blind studies in favor of anecdotes.
On the other hand, I do understand the point you’re making. The acceptance of science as the only possible way of knowing cannot be logically defended in a philosophy classroom. Does this mean that philosophers are still struggling to find a valid connection to the real world?
Your argument above relies heavily on forms of basic logic and rationality. That’s one of the requirements of the scientific way of knowing, as well. But you can’t really justify your belief that logic is the only way to approach these problems, can you? That’s another example of circularity. You would have to be agnostic about everything if you slide down that slippery slope but even that conclusion is invalid because you reject logic! If logic is indefensible then souls could exist. And if they could exist then you can use illogical reasoning to believe in them, right?
PZ is correct for the wrong reasons when he says that you want to have your cake and eat it too.
John, there’s actually a serious point here and I need help in understanding how philosophers approach it. What I’m describing is a very pragmatic approach to operating in the real word. It works but it’s not metaphysically defensible. We often make fun of philosophical arguments about whether the chair actually exists or whether it’s logical to assume that logic is better that non-logic but how do philosophers actually deal with these seemingly important problems that, if true, would make it absolutely impossible to function in the real world? You can’t really be agnostic about absolutely everything. I know you aren’t.
…some might argue that an important element of science is being a little bit agnostic about absolutely everything
What kind of soul is Dirac’s equation exactly ruling out? Is there just one soul for everything living? Aristotle has defined three type of souls – vegetative, sensual and intellectual. The first two should be mortal, dependent on the existence of the body.. Scholastics wrote pretty much about the intellectual soul – for instance Aquinas distinguished passive and active part of the soul and claimed that after death the soul is uncapable of perception, because it misses senses and body.
According to some scholastics the full capacity of the soul is regained again after the ressurection of body (and senses).
Regarding the peculiar conclusion ” and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. “ let me notice that J.S.Wilkins in one of his previous blog wrote, that strictly speaking information does not exist. So how it can be stored?
Yet Thomas again in De anima distingishes:
Ad sextum decimum dicendum quod anima separata recordatur per memoriam, non que est in parte sensitiua, set que est in parte intellectiua, prout Augustinus ponit eam partem ymaginis.
“Does anyone out there believe in fairies?”
Yes people do. But these beliefs should be researched in a scientific manner, which is not what is being done by many scientists blogging or on these issues.
19th century scientists seemed to engage with ethnology, history and anthropology rather well. 20th and 21st century N.A. scientists don’t seem to bother or feel that the standards they use in their day jobs in science apply when they go off- topic and move into subjects well outside of their particular area of expertise.
16th century protestant Scots were certainly not agnostic about fairies, they would have you strangled and then publicly burnt if you expressed belief in such things.
These are subjects with a serious and complex history that require an interdisciplinary approach to be understood fully. N.A. scientists taking interest in these areas should be engaging with these subjects fully and contributing to them and advancing understanding.
Thats not the case and it is not acceptable. The standards are journalistic not academic.
Scientists get somewhat uptight and upset when they see journalists treading with size ten boots on subjects they have spent years carefully researching.
I can identify fully with those emotions.
What kind of soul is Dirac’s equation exactly ruling out?
The article is very badly researched, with regard to the soul, I don’t think any research was actually done and the article could be used to say that science simply supports the bible in this case.
Which is frankly appalling as it leaves the door open to a range of village idiots to jump all over it.
“There is no concept of an immortal soul in the Old Testament, nor does the New Testament ever call the human soul immortal.”
Harper’s Bible Dictionary
“The notion of the soul as an independent force that animates human life but that can exist apart from the human body—either prior to conception and birth or subsequent to life and death—is the product only of later Judaism”
“Indeed, the salvation of the “immortal soul” has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical.”
The Encyclopedia of Christianity.
It takes no account of psychopannychism a long held minority view that goes mainstream in 20th century belief and is particularly alive in the U.S.A.
This belief is based on the old theological position that the soul does not survive death and the body lies in a suspended state until judgement day.
I suppose that it’s good to know that science may take a breather because “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood.”
That is a claim of Carroll’s I completely agree with. We understand the physics that is relevant to life now right down to the subatomic level. There is no gap or hiatus in our understand of the principles of the physics of life, although of course we have a lot to learn in detail and particular cases.
Those physical laws describe some relationships which have been found to be generally consistent in the objective physical world. They are less useful when explaining differences in attitude, behaviour, and circumstances between persons A and B. The laws are at one level of meaning, but there may be others. In addition, the laws may have fundamental variables or concepts (time, space, QM, charge, etc) which themselves have no explanation, although they relate to each other.
Huxley coined the term “agnostic” with the understanding that no reasonable person would believe in something without evidence. Now, however, a plurality of Americans who describe themselves as agnostic say they believe in God. Even philosophers need to pay attention to the way words are used.
Beliefs held without evidence deserve a derogatory label. The soul could be described as imaginary, or at the least practically non-existent (except that “practically” has come to mean “almost” instead of “for all practical purposes”, sort of the same general softening that has rendered “agnostic” toothless). We ought to be able to dismiss unnecessary hypotheses and folk beliefs, implying that only an idiot would think such a thing.
I disbelieve that claim. Every agnostic I have ever met who self-describes that way, apart from some agnostic theists who claim there is a God but we know nothing about him, rejects the claim that we can know or believe there is a God. It indeed pays to attend to usage. So if you are to make that claim, please back it up, so we can indeed attend to it.
Mind, I am a bit of a prescriptivist with classifications. If everyone thinks whales are fishes, they do not become fishes. And if those who think agnosticism involves belief in God are the majority, that doesn’t mean they actually are agnostics.
One thing I disagree with old Tom H about is that I do not assume, as he did, that Gods are unknowable. We may very well be able to show there are or are not deities, although right now all the obvious tests seem to have been either eliminating or ambiguous.
Sorry to reply so late. My claim is based on the 2007 Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which reported that 40% of agnostics were absolutely or fairly certain of God’s existence, as compared to 15% of self-reported atheists. 29% of agnostics and 73% of atheists chose “Don’t believe in God”. Attributing 15% to idiocy barely nudges the agnostic theists out of their plurality.
(You have to download a PDF to get this level of detail.)
I can’t speak for agnostics who believe in God, but I suppose they could be like the reputed products of seminaries who accept that one can’t know whether God exists, but choose to believe anyway.
There may be some Americans who describe themselves as agnostic whilst holding a belief in God but my experience is also that most agnostics, including me, follow Huxley’s prescription. As for being “toothless”, I would argue that it is a position that requires some determination to uphold, coming under fire, as it so often does, from both the believers and non-believers camps.
In fact, given the understandable human craving for certainty, we argue that agnosticism, with its recognition of the fallible and provisional nature of human knowledge, is a constant, salutary reminder of the dangers of absolutism to which so many religious and political movements have proven to be prone and to which Gnu Atheism is also vulnerable.
Call me a romantic, but I refuse to use “love” as a derogatory label.
“…the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood….”
These words imply that physics is ending, that there will be no more surprises, no more Einsteins. All that’s left for physicists to do is some tidying up.
But how does one know this? Is this claim a scientific theory? If it is, what is the evidence confirming it? If not, how do you know that it is true?
I don’t expect to learn, after I am dead, that I have a soul. But I can imagine that it is possible that I will. Perhaps, information in the brain is communicated to and stored in something analogous to a cloud computer as that information is generated.
“These words imply that physics is ending, that there will be no more surprises, no more Einsteins. All that’s left for physicists to do is some tidying up.”
That was not my read. I took it only as saying that biology and consciousness does not depend on any super-mysterious as yet undiscovered physics. That doesn’t rule out future discoveries in physics or in biology.
According to research findings from developmental neuroscience and psychology:
1. Whether raised in a religious or a secular household, children tend to develop natural essentialism/dualism where they attribute mental states to nonliving things, including cartoon characters, dolls, and objects; as well as to animals and people they acknowledge are dead and not returning.*
This attribution continues in other forms as we develop and mature and is not correlated to our capacity for rationality or logical reasoning.
[See studies by Bering and Bjorklund; Paul Bloom; Bruce Hood; Alison Gopnick; Scott Atran, and many others, on natural tendencies for folk psychology, dualism, vitalism, essentialism and magical thinking, and don’t forget that we are all “naïve realists” in certain arenas.]
2. Most of us find it takes great “effort” to conceive of our own non-existence. **
We can intellectually “know” that there is no scientific evidence for a “soul” or life after death, but other parts of our adaptive unconscious mind can strongly “feel” that we are a “being” that cannot “disappear forever”. Brain areas involved are also activated during “sense of presence” and other states often described by believers as “mystical” or spiritual.
[See studies by Persinger, Cytowik, Restak, Robert Burton, etc.]
People have differing levels of activity in these areas of the brain [i.e. temporal lobe, insula, etc.]. Someone who never experiences these sensations may find it difficult to empathize with those who do (and vice versa). These perceptions constitute an aspect of human biological diversity not reducible to any of the spiritual/metaphysical notions that may be fueled/hindered by their presence/absence. An awareness of this aspect of perceptual difference is an element that is often missing from discussions trying to make some sense of the incompatibilities between the systems human beings use to find meaning in life.
3. The nearly-ubiquitous human fear of death and its relation to a search for meaning in a seemingly-random universe should not be underplayed or ignored. It is not going away and has wide societal effects. Social-psychological studies in Terror Management [still being refined and debated] indicate that unconscious death fears can powerfully impact political trends and calls for war, and are also implicated in many forms of prejudice and system justification, etc. To be a healthy culture we have to find better ways to face this terror and support each other to address unhealthy denial of death. Hopefully, future generations will create more flexible, reality-based schemas of meaning that satisfy our need for the “ineffable” and help us cope with our dread of extinction.
4. As for speculative theories on non-physical “consciousness”:
There have been innumerable attempts to relate the more counter-intuitive discoveries of physics to the stubbornly mysterious aspects of consciousness. The vast majority of these fall somewhere between implausible and utterly risible. However, there is a research tradition within the bounds of respectable physics and neuroscience that attempts to map what connections there may be between quantum weirdness and the necessary conditions for human consciousness. (See [Jack A. Tuszynski (Ed.), The Emerging Physics of Consciousness, Springer, 2006] for some different approaches to this.) Even if this is all turns out to be completely wrong, the very act of abstract speculation by trained thinkers can lead to other insights that may bear fruit.
* Bering, J. M., Blasi, C. H., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). The development of afterlife beliefs in religiously and secularly schooled children. The British journal of developmental psychology, 23(4), 587-607. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21214599
** “. . . This trend, whereby certain psychological states are more resistant to cessation reasoning than others, has been replicated in a separate, age-appropriate study with adults (Bering, 2002). In this modi?ed study, Bering showed that even people who classi?ed themselves as ‘extinctivists’ (individuals who believe that personal consciousness ceases to exist, or becomes extinct, at death; Thalbourne, 1996) found it more cognitively effortful (as measured by percentage of mental cessation responses and latencies to make such responses) to state that emotion, desire, and epistemic states ended upon a protagonist’s accidental death than they did for psychobiological and perceptual states (for commentaries on this study, see Barrett, 2003; Bering, 2003; Boyer, 2003; Pyysia ¨inen, 2003). The author interprets these ?ndings from a simulationist perspective, arguing that because knowledge about the fate of mental states after death cannot be informed by ?rsthand experience, theoretical constructs dealing with the self and others’ minds after death suffer from the logical impoverishment of hypothesis discon?rmation. Consciously representing states of un-consciousness poses an impassable cognitive constraint.
However, by virtue of experiencing their absence during waking life, some psychological states (e.g. seeing, taste) are more amenable to cessation attributions to dead agents than states that the self is never consciously without (e.g. thinking, wanting). For example, perceptual states may be generally amenable to materialist reasoning when individuals contemplate the minds of dead agents, since people frequently experience the absence of such states (e.g. being in a dark, quiet environment; see also Barrett, 2004; Clark, 1994; Nichols, unpublished manuscript).”
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/07/when_you_die_do_you_know_youre_1.php
When you die, do you know you’re dead?
Posted on: July 19, 2007 9:53 AM, by Dave Munger
Kuhlmeier, V. A., Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2004). Do 5-month-old infants see humans as material objects? Cognition, 94(1), 95-103. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15302330
“don’t forget that we are all “naïve realists” in certain arenas.”
Reading H.O.S. is I suspect one of those areas and why the argument is formed in the way it is.
Its a product of an imagined past in which this form of argument obliterates myths and misconception in a direct and spectacular manner.
Cultural change is a far more messy processes than H.O.S. has traditionally presented it as.
If you are asking society to question it’s beliefs it is important to first start with the basis and root of you’re own.
“If you are asking society to question it’s beliefs it is important to first start with the basis and root of you’re own.”
We all have to question the roots of our beliefs at regular intervals if we want a useful discourse. We also have to question what defenses, biases and misperceptions may block us from an honest self-assessment of those beliefs and be ready for discomfort when they turn out to conflict with our invested assumptions. This requires emotional-cognitive skills that are developed over time.
The “bias blindspot” research [Pronin, et. al.] shows that it is much easier to perceive someone else’s biases than our own.
Yes. When academic debate is at its best you see an exagerated argument from both sides in the early stages, which then moves.
With this debate on religion it seems to go nowhere. I can be reasonable certain that my own views on religion are affected by the lack of balance.
I suspect I am far from alone.
I should add that I don’t think the fault here is with science and scientists it is within history. Whilst i am not a proffesional historian it is my chosen discipline and like many historians you develop avoidance stratagies for subjects that are overtly political and riven with identity issues like this one.
As I have avoided dealing with this issue I have to hold my hands up and accept some collective blame and as my subject does have a relationship with christian concepts of the soul and theories in natural history I should be doing more than simply avoiding the problem in a manner typical of historians when a subject suffers from severe credibility issues like this one.
Good stuff. I don’t find with the challenges to this line of thinking that compelling, either.
PZ said,
“But the soul that most people believe in has to be able to modify the activity of the brain, and is therefore in principle both measurable and observable. “
Gerald followed up with a similar statement,
“I think the “problem” with the soul (as most people would think of it) is not whether it’s physical or non-physical, but that it has to interact with the physical world. And as soon as something touches the physical world, it would have to follow the laws of nature (therefore have a natural component itself) or break these laws, which we could then detect.”
This assumes firstly that if souls/Gods/pink unicorns are fooling around on our plane that we would know their footsteps in the first place in order to have the measure of them. (How, exactly, would we propose to detect a soul by observing the brain? What would we be looking for?) This assumes secondly that even the entity that ostensibly has admin access to the universal code has no means of covering its traces after a sojourn through our reality.
My (belated) response is here.
Art, truth, beauty, justice come to mind. Mathematics doesn’t do too badly at the interaction thingie, either. That SQRT(2) is irrational cannot be established by any physical measurement.