Posted by RomanJoe  4/13/2018 7:09 pm | #1 |
While we're currently riding on the philosophy of mind wave in this forum, I'm wondering who here believes human beings are immortal. If so, why?
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Posted by Miguel 4/13/2018 8:56 pm | #2 |
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies, so it subsists after death. So the most fundamental form of our humanity - our intellect - is immortal.
I also believe the existence of God pretty much entails personal immortality. I'd find it wildly implausible that God wouldn't create intellectual creatures for eternity -- to eternally worship and enjoy him, say -- and that He wouldn't reward the good and those who suffered and punish the wicked.
It could be that our disembodied intellect wouldn't naturally be able to do much in the separated state, but God could give us enough information in a special/direct way. Or it could also be that the now separated soul is not as dependent on the brain as it was before. Or something else.
I also think veridical NDEs give some evidence which supports life after death. Those in which people can give accurate descriptions of stuff they weren't supposed to have experienced; or cases in which blind people can suddenly see; etc. There's a large body of well supported cases and it's not easy to explain them away. While I don't find NDEs as fundamental or conclusive as the philosophical arguments, I still think they provide some evidence.
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Posted by SapereAude 4/14/2018 8:23 am | #3 |
Miguel wrote:
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies...
Were it the case, it would have been the strongest argument for the immateriality of mind (but NOT for the immortality of one since immateriality and immortality are not logically connected—it may turn out that our minds are material and immortal after all. It heavily depends on the definitions of material/immaterial one assumes). What we do see is quite the opposite—not only brain traumas result in severe damage for mental abilities, but what is more important, specific traumas result in specific damage implying the existence of a material structure that is the basis for our mental abilities. When this structure gets broken or changed, so does one's mind. What is the CT response to this undeniable fact?
Every proposition of geometry is absolutely necessary, and in this way one talked about an object lying entirely outside the sphere of our understanding as if one understood quite well what one meant by this concept. The unconditioned necessity of judgments, however, is not an absolute necessity of things.
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Posted by Callum 4/14/2018 8:45 am | #4 |
I may be a Christian leaning towards annihilationism, so I would say we are 'immortable'. The intellect surviving by itself entails personal identity but by itself I wouldn't call it an 'after life'. Whether input from God helps the concept, I don't know. I think Aquinas was spot on that WE are a body soul composite, and without one or the other we aren't a human being.
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Posted by Jeremy Taylor 4/14/2018 9:32 am | #5 |
What we do see is quite the opposite—not only brain traumas result in severe damage for mental abilities, but what is more important, specific traumas result in specific damage implying the existence of a material structure that is the basis for our mental abilities. When this structure gets broken or changed, so does one's mind. What is the CT response to this undeniable fact?u
That correlation does not mean causation.
Besides, we also see people, especially children, with huge damage to or removal of brain matter who seem to live psychologically normal lives. Indeed, the mapping of brain functions is far from complete. We have some understanding of the correlates of memory, for example, but far from a complete idea, to the point that each confident prediction that such and such a brain area is responsible for memory has been overthrown.
Also, there are well-documented phenomena that defy any current naturalistic understanding of the mind and, in many instances, seem likely to always do so. One such area is the controversial, but, I would say (along with just about any unbiased individual who looks deeply at the material - as philosophers like William James, C. D. Broad, and Stephen Braude have pointed out), well-documented area of psychical or psi phenomena. There are also extraordinary, but not expressly paranormal, phenomena that seem to challenge and even defy naturalistic explanations, such as psychophysical influence, ranging from the relatively benign (but challenging) instances of ordinary volition and placebo to extreme cases like Olga Kahl's (where it seems it has already been shown physiological correlates don't exist to account for the specificity and localisation of influence).
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Posted by Jeremy Taylor 4/14/2018 9:45 am | #6 |
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies, so it subsists after death. So the most fundamental form of our humanity - our intellect - is immortal.
This proves immateriality, but does it prove immortality. That seems open to question. It seems to me that, on such premises, we could say that the mind is immaterial but is linked to the body and dies with it.
I also think veridical NDEs give some evidence which supports life after death. Those in which people can give accurate descriptions of stuff they weren't supposed to have experienced; or cases in which blind people can suddenly see; etc. There's a large body of well supported cases and it's not easy to explain them away. While I don't find NDEs as fundamental or conclusive as the philosophical arguments, I still think they provide some evidence.
I agree that there is such evidence, as well as other psychical or paranormal phenomena, that seems impossible to give a naturalistic explanation for. Most unbiased informed commentators on psychical research admit this, but there has been a raging controversy amongst them for more than a century about whether the evidence points to survival or some other hypothesis, such as super-psi. The problem is that just about all the survival evidence can be accounted for by telepathy and psychokinesis amongst the living. At best one can suggest survival is a simpler explanation, or something like that. I recommend Stephen Braude's work on this issue. Michael Sudduth has also written on these empirical arguments for survival, and, whilst accepting the existence of such paranormal phenomena (as any informed commentator must), is scathing about them as proofs of survival. I think he goes a little too far, but he does ably the strength of the issues for the empirical arguments for survival.
Incidentally, the paranormal evidence for survival is perhaps problematic for the usual Christian view. There are hellish NDEs, for example, but they amount to a very small percentage. I can't remember the exact percentages, but at least 95% of NDEs that progress to leaving the material world are positive, perhaps up to 99% or more. And this seems to not be strongly tied to Christian faith. Indeed, NDEs, whilst displaying remarkable cross-cultural similarities, also tend to take on a distinct hue according to the culture of the one experiencing them.
Also, alongside NDEs, there are cases that seem to point to reincarnation, like those famously investigated by Stevenson. These are as well documented as NDEs, and veridical elements in them somewhat more so than veridical NDEs. Although the pseudo-sceptics have tried to kick up dust as usual, many include not just evidence of past-life memory that can't be explained normally, but even such evidence as remarkable birth marks that mimic wounds or other marks on the previous personality's body. That said, though many of these cases are undoubtedly paranormal, they can't give definitive evidence of reincarnation or survival, because in these cases too other paranormal explanations can't be excluded.
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Posted by DanielCC 4/14/2018 10:29 am | #7 |
I think it more difficult to prove than theism straight. The best arguments I can think of would be moral.
On a sharper note: although I am open to some form of hylemorphic dualism there is a fundamental two-facedness in some Christians' endorsement of it - for sure these people will attack materialism but the moment one speaks of the disincarnate soul they will spout gobbets of Ryle and Wittgenstein and of Humean empiricism in an attempt to sabotage anything *too* spiritual in case it in jeopardizes dogma regarding the Resurrection of the Body. Hence all the rhetoric about 'impoverished states', 'the soul limping along' and Haldane's flirtation with soul sleep.
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies, so it subsists after death. So the most fundamental form of our humanity - our intellect - is immortal.
This proves immateriality, but does it prove immortality. That seems open to question. It seems to me that, on such premises, we could say that the mind is immaterial but is linked to the body and dies with it.
What reason would we have to think this though? Surely the point of immateriality arguments is to show that its possible for the mind to exist without the body.
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Posted by Ouros 4/14/2018 10:49 am | #8 |
On a sharper note: although I am open to some form of hylemorphic dualism there is a fundamental two-facedness in some Christians' endorsement of it - for sure these people will attack materialism but the moment one speaks of the disincarnate soul they will spout gobbets of Ryle and Wittgenstein and of Humean empiricism in an attempt to sabotage anything *too* spiritual in case it in jeopardizes dogma regarding the Resurrection of the Body. Hence all the rhetoric about 'impoverished states', 'the soul limping along' and Haldane's flirtation with soul sleep.
What would you say that hylemorphic dualism more likely involves?
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Posted by Miguel 4/14/2018 11:04 am | #9 |
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies...
Were it the case, it would have been the strongest argument for the immateriality of mind (but NOT for the immortality of one since immateriality and immortality are not logically connected—it may turn out that our minds are material and immortal after all. It heavily depends on the definitions of material/immaterial one assumes). What we do see is quite the opposite—not only brain traumas result in severe damage for mental abilities, but what is more important, specific traumas result in specific damage implying the existence of a material structure that is the basis for our mental abilities. When this structure gets broken or changed, so does one's mind. What is the CT response to this undeniable fact?
Our souls (at least in this life) may be extrinsically dependent on the body (especially the brain) to have appropriate data to think about. We need memory, perception, and other bodily functions in order to think. But that is an extrinsic dependence, as thinking itself is an immaterial process which is not carried out by any material organ. Thinking is therefore intrinsically independent from matter, and so is the intellect, even though it may be extrinsically dependent on the body to at least have intelligible data to work with, at least in this life.
Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies, so it subsists after death. So the most fundamental form of our humanity - our intellect - is immortal.
This proves immateriality, but does it prove immortality. That seems open to question. It seems to me that, on such premises, we could say that the mind is immaterial but is linked to the body and dies with it.
My argument is not just that the soul is immaterial therefore immortal; but that the soul is immaterial and carries out operations that are intrinsically independent from matter. It doesn't need the body for thinking. It needs it in order to have sufficient material to think about/with (an extrinsic relation), but the actual thinking is done all by itself independently from the body. As act follows being, that which can operate independently can also exist independently. So the soul is subsistent and immortal.
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Posted by Miguel 4/14/2018 11:14 am | #10 |
On a sharper note: although I am open to some form of hylemorphic dualism there is a fundamental two-facedness in some Christians' endorsement of it - for sure these people will attack materialism but the moment one speaks of the disincarnate soul they will spout gobbets of Ryle and Wittgenstein and of Humean empiricism in an attempt to sabotage anything *too* spiritual in case it in jeopardizes dogma regarding the Resurrection of the Body. Hence all the rhetoric about 'impoverished states', 'the soul limping along' and Haldane's flirtation with soul sleep.
Agreed. I always found Ryle's critique to be somewhat exaggerated and motivated by the same materialistic prejudice one finds rampant in contemporary philosophy of mind. It's a mentality that has led philosophers to posit one failed model after another. And I find it a little weird how some Christians would go along with it, albeit in a more reserved manner (Anscombe, Geach and Braine all come to mind. And I admire them nonetheless, just disagree on that). Haldane has written in defense of the soul many times, however, contra the mere "non-materialism" Geach/Anscombe seemed to prefer, for instance.
I am a convinced hylemorphist, but I think people are sometimes too harsh with substance dualism. It is posited for reasons, and though hylemorphism may be better (in my view at least), saying "ghost in the machine" doesn't take those reasons away.
Wittgenstein had some important insights and contributions, but the anti-metaphysics sentiment he brought along was poisonous and sorely mistaken; thankfully most philosophers have once again realized there's no escaping metaphysics.
Last edited by Miguel (4/14/2018 11:18 am)
