Is the soul something we should be agnostic about? 27 May 201127 May 2011 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. Epistemology Metaphysics Philosophy Religion Science Philosophy
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“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.” I would say by that argument, you *do* know the soul doesn’t exist. If something is immaterial, it isn’t real, by any definition of “real” I can think of.
“So you basically ignored the entire argument?” Misunderstood, perhaps, but not ignored. Your argument seems to revolve around whether belief in something not scientifically verifiable is valid. That’s all fine and good, and it’s possible that there are things which defy investigation via the scientific method yet somehow interact with the physical world. But if something isn’t physical in any way, and doesn’t have any physical effect on the universe, what other category can we put it into but “imaginary”? What are we left with besides mental abstracts? If souls aren’t natural things, what is there left for them to be?
Apparently. This is really good stuff. As you know, I am not an agnostic, but your arguments for that vs. atheism are compelling. I have to fall back on, “I just know, ’cause there is no evidence to show elsewise.” And there is no poetry in that.
I think you might be right. Which, as someone who agrees with PZ more, is really kind of frustrating 😛
I can be agnostic about the God question, while denying the existence of a particular god. But for the soul, I think we only have particular conceptions. If there is a generic concept of the soul that is not tied to a particular religion, then I have not come across that. The issue is further complicated when “soul” is used metaphorically to refer to something like personality. As for the question of whether all knowledge is scientific – as a mathematician, I do not buy into that idea. There is a lot of important social/cultural knowledge which would not normally be counted as scientific.
Except the problem isn’t that we absolutely and utterly exclude the possibility of the existence of another ‘plane of existence’ or whatever gobbledygook the theologically inclined want to call it. It’s that the claim is that this alternate reality interacts with this familiar and quantitatively well-described reality. So if you want to be strict about it, we cannot entirely throw out the idea of a non-corporeal, non-brain-based intelligence. But we can discard the notion of soul or spirit interfacing somehow with material minds. And once you’ve done that, the concept of a soul becomes something neither measurable nor observable, an entity disconnected from living beings, and therefore entirely irrelevant. I’ll also add that bitterly sticking labels like “logical positivist” on your critics really doesn’t advance your explanation. If you have one. Which doesn’t seem to have merited a mention in your philosophical nitpickery. Postulating something that you define as immeasurable and unobservable as a way to declare victory in an argument is kind of a cheap out.
I agree with this logic… 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 BUT, I think there is a better (more fair?) characterization of the atheistic position on the existence of “the soul.” Instead of focusing on the single assertion “that science gives us no reason to think there is a soul that persists after physical death” I think you gain more by broadening the focus to the question(s) “Why do people believe that there is a soul that persists after physical death, and does such thing actually exist?” I think we learn a great deal about “the soul” by also focusing on understanding why so many people hold this belief, and not just focusing on whether or not the soul exists and leaving it at that. To clarify, rephrase that original assertion to say “that science gives us no reason to think there are Klingons.” While this claim rings true, it’s a weak statement that ignores the fact that we know a great deal about the origins of the idea of Klingons! If we were truly as agnostic about Klingons as expressed by the modified claim above, we’d waste a heck of a lot of time entertaining the rather silly notion that Klingons actually exist. While science can’t rule out existence of souls, science can be used to consider other (more likely?) explanations for all this talk of souls beyond the single hypothesis that they exist. PS: I’ll gladly concede that the origins of the idea of the soul are far less clear than the obvious fact that the idea of Klingons is clearly a product of human imagination.
All that is right, but I have a much more limited target here: should we presume our beliefs should only be arrived at through scientific reasoning? As it happens I do not disagree with Carroll or even Pigliucci on substantive matters. Nor with you. I think we can explain why people think there are souls in terms of psychological essentialism and agency detection (theory of mind) projection. But if you are to say one should reject agnosticism (not: reject dualism), you are making the following claim, logically: there is no uncertainty about whether or not souls exist. This strong claim is unsupportable.
If the soul exists, it is phenomenal from a scientific perspective, and the phenomenal is not reducible from a scientific perspective (explainable in scientific terms). The same can be said of anything deemed to be “fundamental” such as QM. I do not observe that klingons exist in my world. But I do observe that I exist, and that is a preferred observation that all other observations seem dependent on. Call it phenomenal if you will. As for the idea that there is no interaction between the subjective and the objective, well… that’s a subjective interpretation, isn’t it?
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. So even though I think you’re right about being agnostic about things that cannot be scientifically studied (sorry if I’ve misunderstood your point), I think that the soul, as frequently understood, *can* be scientifically studied either directly or indirectly because it is supposed to have an effect on the physical world. Therefore the soul is something that we can be non-agnostic about.
Yes, the interaction point is what Carroll is making. I am merely saying that we need not think the soul has physical/causal power (not all think it does; these views are perhaps more common in philosophy of mind than they are in ordinary culture). And given that we need not eliminate belief in a soul simply because we do not find physical/causal evidence of the soul.
An analogy might be helpful here. Let’s say you’re a complex software program running on a computer. You notice that some other programs have this strange belief that something non-software exists which they call hardware. You tell them that hardware can’t exist, because it would have to interact with the software world, and it would be noticed.
John, the problem is that you want to have your cake and eat it, too. You are right that there could exist phenomena that are neither observable nor measurable. 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. What we can safely say is that an interacting soul, one that actually has an effect in this material universe, is not a defensible proposition. So yes, sit back and get all philosophical and postulate invisible intangible entities that science and eyeballs and gadgets will never be able to sense. It’s a pointless game, though, because they don’t matter to our material world.
John S. Wilkins: All that is right, but I have a much more limited target here: should we presume our beliefs should only be arrived at through scientific reasoning? As it happens I do not disagree with Carroll or even Pigliucci on substantive matters. Nor with you. I think we can explain why people think there are souls in terms of psychological essentialism and agency detection (theory of mind) projection. But if you are to say one should reject agnosticism (not: reject dualism), you are making the following claim, logically: there is no uncertainty about whether or not souls exist. This strong claim is unsupportable. That strikes me as a strawman argument. I think given the success of material explanations and the seeming inexplicability of how something non-material interacts with material (something everybody from Descartes down has acknowledged) then the believer in immaterial interaction with matter has some ‘splaining to do. Until the explaining is done and is coherent with our knowledge of science (ie. the Jesus particle tickles the neurons via magic force) then there is nothing wrong with taking the position that there is no soul provisionally. That isn’t an agnostic position regarding the soul.
A lot of this seems to rest on vagueness about what a scientific explanation does and what it implies. If we can explain the orbits of planets via Newtonian or Relativistic mechanics then we haven’t logically ruled out some theory of celestial spheres with planets embedded rotating in some platonic ideal manner. But given that uncertainty we’re within bounds of good epistemology to deny assent to anybody who offers the celestial spheres as explanation or posits their reality. I think similarly if our physics and associated metaphysics explains things better than Aristotelian inspired immaterial substances then we can deny assent to such a metaphysics and associated claims to reality and say we know they don’t exist. It’s not a claim of certainty for sure. But I think you’ll get nowhere if you start by claiming knowledge must be certain. After cogito you’re stuck on an island of certainty with no way off because the rest isn’t certain. Of course, I am not a philosopher so scoff at my remarks. 🙂 Even better explain where I’m wrong so I might learn.
I agree that we should abandon Aristotelian hylomorphism on the basis of post-Daltonian science. But I do not think that we have shown it is false, and hylomorphists manage to do a considerable amount of reinterpretation in order to accommodate modern science. So what? I can argue that they are wrong without thinking that science makes their opinions irrational. As to certainty, I agree. But that isn’t quite the point. One can eliminate ideas in a good-enough-for-government-work sense; I just think we haven’t done that the way Sean eliminates (quite correctly!) interactionism.
Brian: … if our physics and associated metaphysics explains things better than Aristotelian inspired immaterial substances But there are no immaterial substances in Aristotle. A substance is a hylemorphic union of matter and form, so all substances are material. The idea of the soul (anima) being an immaterial substance is post-Cartesian mush from the Scientific Revolution. + + + Brian the seeming inexplicability of how something non-material interacts with material (something everybody from Descartes down has acknowledged) You have to go from Descartes back up to locate coherent explanations of this. How does an immaterial sphere interact with material rubber to form a basketball? Anima simply means “alive”, so the “soul” (as we translate anima) is whatever it is that a living body has that a dead body does not. When the scholastics asked “Has a body a soul?” they were asking “Is the body alive?” This is empirically verifiable. So far as matter goes, a dead petunia has all the same parts and arrangements as a live one, so the difference cannot be material. The difference is that the material is in “motion” (kinesis). Traditionally, the soul was held to be the substantiating form of the body, analogous to the way that “sphere” informs rubber to make a basketball. If basketballs were alive, rubber would be their body and sphere would be their soul. Not even Aquinas thought the soul was persistent in toto. As he put it, any faculties dependent on bodily organs would perish with the organs. This would include all sensation, all perception (including memory and imagination), all emotion and all power of motion. What might survive are those faculties not tied to an organ: namely, intellection and volition, the argument for which is for another day. What he did believe is that a) with the absence of motion, there is no passage of time; hence, the rational portion of the soul would not experience the passage of time after death*; and b) that the soul would be reunited with a transformed body. He wrote “The soul is not ‘I’,” meaning ‘he’ was not some homunculus sitting in a Cartesian theater, but a union of body and soul. (*)which is why ‘eternity’ is not a really, really long ‘time.’ + + + This is partly why Sean Carroll’s mooting of the Dirac Equation is really beside the point. There are a number of assumptions behind it and, supposing the rational portion of the soul to be persistent, it need not be the Dirac Equation that is falsified. It might be the assumption that “everything is physical” or the assumption that “mind is brain” or some other assumption.
This is correct, so far as I know. For Aristotle, there is form, which is immaterial, but always instantiated (there is no form that is not of some substance). For example, form is like Putnam’s example of the explanation why a round object of diameter X will not fit into a square of diagonal X – it is a formal description of the thing, and the explanation is also formal. But there needs to be a pencil or something to have the form. The “dualist default” of Descartes is largely invented by him, and is not the traditional view, as I understand it. In fact the ancient Hebrews seem to have been pure physicalists before their encounter with Hellenism, although it is unrecorded if they had problems of personal identity in resurrections.
I thought the soul was more associated with the heart rather than the brain in Western culture as Sean Carrol seems to suggest. Ive always liked this remark from Shakespeare, it makes me laugh, when Richard the Second is banged up in jail contemplating his position and fall from divinely sanctioned majesty. “My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father; and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world, In humours like the people of this world, For no thought is contented.”
Two thoughts: 1. This discussion suggests that the theological notion of soul involves some sort of metaphysical dualism. Even ignoring the many non-theological approaches that have been suggested to philosophical psychology, it seems to me that there have been a host of soul concepts inside the various religious traditions. Indeed, there have been completely materialistic explanations of eternal life–I have encountered religious individuals who believe in an afterlife but complain about dogma of the immortality of the soul as an essentially pagan doctrine. After all, the New Testament speaks about the resurrection of the body: I don’t recall any talk about perfectly simple substances. 2. Most of the folks I encounter seem to have a mental picture in which the space of possible cognitive disciplines is pretty much divided between naturalist and supernaturalist regions, science and theology. I operate with a different image: in my diagram,in which both science and theology are tiny circles lost in a lot of white space. I can justly be challenged as to where I get off suggesting such a thing, but I wonder why a similar challenge isn’t in order for the alternative vision.
I left a few comment on Carroll’s post because as I stated there, a series of very strange events happened over a period of two weeks leading up to the one year anniversary of a friends passing. These events were physically real, not a coincidence, not wishful thinking, and changed my entire outlook on life. I always read articles and posts like this because I am always trying to better understand or bring some sort of logical explanation to what happened many years ago. What I don’t understand is if “invisible” data and information can be transferred through things like satellite signals, then why can’t information and data or say an “invisible conscience” exist outside of the human brain? I’ve been going on the personal theory that just as some protons, neutrons and electrons make up a car, or a human body, other protons neutrons and electron might form an individual’s consciousness, and maybe this survives the death of the human body? I know I sound like a loon, but so would someone 200 years ago talking about protons, neutrons, and electrons. I know what happened was real, and I would think a physical soul made up of surviving particles is much less far fetched then a non physical one, but apparently not from what you are saying? I dunno, I just know there is something after this because I experienced it, and yes I can vote and I believe in evolution and graduated with honors from a 4 year college. Goodnight lol
I left a few comment on Carroll’s post because as I stated there, a series of very strange events happened over a period of two weeks leading up to the one year anniversary of a friends passing Condolences. I offer that this friend mattered to you and so the coming anniversary piqued your attention. Your disposition to accept occurences, strange or no as relating to this personally momentous occassion is enough, no need to claim that it’s anything more than wishful thinking and confirmation bias. I dream of my dead father, with whom I had an, erm, interesting relationship from time to time, and sometimes things just happen or my son does something that reminds me of him. I don’t think it means anything more than a monkey brain sorting its stuff out. What I don’t understand is if “invisible” data and information can be transferred through things like satellite signals, then why can’t information and data or say an “invisible conscience” exist outside of the human brain? Because they’re not “invisible”! You’re talking about photons. Photons are light, infrared, ultraviolet, radiowaves, and so on, all light. Your metaphor of visibility I take to mean measurability. We can measure photons quite well, visible spectrum with eyes and such, invisible with devices. I’ve been going on the personal theory that just as some protons, neutrons and electrons make up a car, or a human body, other protons neutrons and electron might form an individual’s consciousness, and maybe this survives the death of the human body? Then being protons, electrons and neutrons they’d be open to the same measurement as all such elementary particles. Unless you’re positing “special” elementary particles. I know what happened was real How? I’ve done it again. I came and read John’s post. I read it, liked it, but felt like I needed to respond. But John has better things to do than respond to my posts quickly (a good thing, for surely my posts are not worth response) and I come back later and respond to the punter who just says things I find so……………I dunno, I just find them so…………..No offence to the punter. Time out. OK, back in a few weeks and we’ll see what then if John says something worth responding then. A given.
I confess that I am unimpressed by agnosticism in this case, despite the artful distractions posed. I think Laplace’s response “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la” “I have had no need of that hypothesis” is pertinent here. When your everyday beliefs do not include ‘souls’ or ‘invisible pink unicorns’ etc., then your everyday activities do not require the agnostic stance. Arguably it is perverse to treat them as hypotheses (other than a philosophical debate, where as we know concepts unconstrained by any boundaries may cheerfully be argued about). And yes, I realise I’ve trampled carelessly over several philosophical issues. But if you can’t agree on the simple stuff, sophisticated philosophy isn’t likely to resolve the debate.
Laplace’s saying has to do with the involvement of God as a scientific explanation. Once he could explain the stability of orbits using Newtonian mechanics, he no longer needed to employ God to account for it. Similarly, once we explain some cognitive or psychological capacity in terms of physical processes, we no longer need to posit that souls explain them. Great and good. But in neither case have we eliminate either God for Laplace or souls for those who believe in them. We have merely removed a scientific justification for those beliefs. And the claim that this does eliminate these beliefs involves the circularity I discuss.
Quite so. Laplace did not require the ongoing intervention of a supernatural entity to explain his observations, just as Sean Carroll can find no ‘space’ in physics for supernatural intervention. But if you have formed a justified conclusion about the non-existence of a soul (or a god etc.) then the fact that other people still believe it to exist may require explanation – but it is not sufficient reason in my view to invoke agnosticism. I assert that I have a magical fire breathing dragon in my garage. It’s invisible and intangible of course, and there are no scorch marks on the walls. Are you agnostic about its existence?
I don’t have any concerns about the agnosticism point (apart from the feeling that philosophy might force you to be agnostic about everything and that that might be absurd), but the following struck me as odd: “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.” I don’t think one need be committed to scientism to reject substance dualism. There are other kinds of arguments that can offered, e.g. substance dualism commits us to unreasonable scepticism about other minds, or the interactionist problem mentioned by PZ. I can’t see how either of those criticisms would be based on fealty to U.
John, if you find this absurd I must pay attention. But why? I can be agnostic about one thing but not about every thing, unless the same grounds for agnosticism apply to all things as they do to the one. So Being agnostic about God, for example, doesn’t force me to be agnostic about fairies, nor agnostic about Spinoza’s god forcing me to be agnostic about Thor. I don’t think there is only one argument against substance (or even aspect) dualism, but I don’t think that giving one reason not to think of interactionist dualisms implies that one must reject agnosticism about souls in general. And that was the target.
The absurdity comment was just a throwaway. But to clarify: The concern would be about developing total belief-pluralism or all-encompassing suspension of belief. I think it would difficult to live your life if for any proposition P you thought that both P and not-P were reasonable beliefs. And that pragmatic difficulty might be considered absurd. But whether agnosticism leads to that depends on what your standard for agnosticism is. That was what I was getting at in my follow-up comment (below). If any level of doubt is sufficient for agnosticism then you might be on the road to absurdity. After all, I think there are somewhat plausible arguments for many positions that I personally reject. If you have some higher threshold level of doubt then the problem may not arise at all. As for dualism, I agree that there are many arguments (I’ve actually just written a series of blog posts on them that I’ll be putting up over the coming days) my only point was that scientism (or U as you label it) is not the only reason for rejecting it. Perhaps a little pedantic of me. I apologise.
Sorry, I should have said “to reject agnosticism about substance dualism”. The point is that those arguments might make reasonable doubt about substance dualism untenable. Now that I’m writing a follow-up comment I find myself somewhat more interested in the agnosticism argument. Two questions: (a) Is it your view that a low level of doubt is sufficient to warrant agnosticism, or do you follow a standard probability metric (i.e. greater than 0.5 level of certainty leads to a rejection of agnosticism)? (b) Is the concern here with toleration of the views of others or agnosticism? Forgive me, I tried looking at some of your old posts such as “what is an agnostic” but they don’t appear to exist anymore.
Yes, I need to reimport all my older posts before I moved. It’s going to take me a week or so, so it awaits my getting some spare time.
There seems to be a problem here- you might be able to conceive of something which sort of approximates the vague notion of soul that is sufficiently removed such that you can be agnostic about it, but for the vast majority of people talking about souls, they really do mean something much more testable and much more prone to violating what we know about the laws of physics. So it is all well and good for philosophers to be agnostic about some highly abstracted version of the soul that doesn’t substantially interact with the universe, but you still agree that the vast majority of soulists (for lack a better term) are deeply and demonstrably wrong. There’s no thing that is non-physical, controls our actions, and survives after death. More sophisticated issues like whether or not logical positivism is correct are to a large extent besides the point.
One of the things philosophers tend to do very badly is deal with the actual beliefs held by people. Instead they tend to pick on out of many views and privilege that version. Consider, for example, the interminable discussions of deities that only Spinoza held, ignoring the deities that the rest of the theological traditions discussed. What I am trying here to do is a kind of reverse privileging. Sure, most folk think the soul controls our actions and would therefore fall afoul of Carroll’s Dirac argument. But what the folk think is no more constitutive of theological reasoning than Pat Robertson is of theological ethics and politics. I have read (but right now can’t be buggered finding) theological treatments in which the soul does not control our bodies but is a kind of epiphenomenon that carries moral worth and personal identity and which is not, in any sense, something that has physical interactions. This is exactly parallel to my arguments for agnosticism about God/s. If those gods are empirically inoculated – which is to say they need have no physical or causal impact that can be detected – we should be agnostic about them. The gods that are contrary to fact we should not be (but reject as false). Likewise, a soul that does what Carroll shows it can’t must be a mistaken, but a soul that does not cannot be eliminated, and in the literature I have read way back when, it is that kind of soul that guarantees survival of physical death. I can’t scientifically eliminate that without circularity. And nor can you. We agree (with Carroll) that a soul cannot physically control our actions. It is not a seat of Cartesian control. But perhaps it is a moral controller (and moral influence is not physical). Perhaps it is the record God keeps of our actions, and exists in God’s mind. Etc. There are a large number of actual beliefs and even more hypothetical ones that people have access to that do not fall afoul of the Dirac Equation. Can you rule them out by eliminating the Dirac-contrary beliefs? No. Carroll thinks there is an onus for those who believe in souls to show why they do. Most of the time there is no argument that would satisfy a science-only inferrer, because this is not a view they get to by way of observation and science. But I don’t think it is a given that the onus is on one or the other in a debate. “Onus” or burden of proof is a legal concept that really doesn’t apply all that well in intellectual debates. Equally one might say the onus is on Carroll to show that exhausting the physical options exhausts the possibility space, and that assumption would be question begging.
As you pointed out, there are all kinds of potential metaphysical scenarios that can go around the Dirac equation, so I don’t think it’s even that much of an obstacle. In my opinion, reconciling the concept of a soul with evolution is more problematic, and Carroll might have been better off going in that direction. I assume the Catholic church has come up with some answers, though.
“the vast majority of soulists (for lack a better term) are deeply and demonstrably wrong.There’s no thing that is non-physical, controls our actions, and survives after death.” The debate on Mortalisim, the belief that the soul dies with the body starts in the second century and has a long history of debate and controversy in the West. The way belief is being described in this debate reminds me of the way politicians like to conjure that mythical beast the silent majority in debate.
Brian: Condolences. I offer that this friend mattered to you and so the coming anniversary piqued your attention. Your disposition to accept occurences, strange or no as relating to this personally momentous occassion is enough, no need to claim that it’s anything more than wishful thinking and confirmation bias. I dream of my dead father, with whom I had an, erm, interesting relationship from time to time, and sometimes things just happen or my son does something that reminds me of him. I don’t think it means anything more than a monkey brain sorting its stuff out. Thanks, I know that is what people who have never had this sort of experience and are skeptical like to say, but these events were absolutely not wishful thinking, and nothing like it has happened since that time. I wasn’t looking for anything when they occurred. As for the question of how, well because I was there, that is all I can say. I have no scientific method, or proof other then my word which is the absolute truth. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t “see” Casper the friendly ghost, but on more then one occasion, when events occurred, sometimes out of the blue, that were directly related to my friend, they were accompanied by a physical something right beforehand. With the first event I had a feeling of intense pressure on my chest, much like you would feel on a roller coaster, followed by a strong glare on the side of my face, like you would get from the sun or bright light, but there was no light or glare source present. The second time the glare feeling was so strong I said out loud “what the bleep is going on here” and minutes after I said it another weird thing directly related to my friend happened. These were incredibly strange events accompanied by an actual physical something that happened several times over that two week period, and nothing like it has happened since. Anyway I hope you all at least consider the notion that you might not have all the answers and maybe look for scientific means of finding something. If a small amount of protons, neutrons, and electrons survive after death, how would anyone be able to determine if these particles had “consciousness” or simply looked like any other run of the mill protons neutrons & electrons? That’s all I am saying, like I said before to each his own.
“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.” Hi John, You say that arguments for nonscientific beliefs are self-defeating, contrary to the only rational position. I’ve 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 Kierkegaardian leap of faith for a philosophical conjecture? Also, I want to make sure that I understand your terms substrate. Is your use of the word substrate synonymous with substance? I want to make sure that I understand this term before I comment on a conjecture about hyperdimensional substance and energetic cost.
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.
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. –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, 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) … 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.
bad Jim: Beliefs held without evidence deserve a derogatory label. 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.
Paul D.: it’s possible that there are things which defy investigation via the scientific method yet somehow interact with the physical world. 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.
We observe an absolutely arbitrary form of existence and deny other forms of existence. We take for granted what we see, but we don’t believe there could be something every different out there, that we don’t see. In quantum mechanics, nothing is said nor anything can be said about the observer’s capacity to observe, to reason. Is Dirac’s equation natural? Is it just natural it to exist? Why is matter governed by such a law? Why are there laws in the first place? I agree with we, agnosticism is a very good position. I’m not an agnostic, but agnosticism is a far better position than others. But only if you keep asking, searching. If we wait for evidence (sometimes in a preconceived form), than we might also be lazy. 🙂