Cris,
Apologies for my extended absence! I'll quickly try to address some of the more relevant questions that were raised.
Cris said:
That’s fine, I guess, to give those groupings of properties a name but the issue is the source of those properties. Without any clue of how a brain operates their ignorance (absence of knowledge) lead them incorrectly to conclude that “soul” properties were of a mystical origin. And from those early errors we now have the mess of today where you still think those ignorant ideas represent a truth.
The problem is that you
equate what we've learned since with what you assume they were trying to express, without first finding out if that was what they were indeed attempting to express. On a very simplistic level, the soul is more about a "personhood" than a conglomerate of natural processes -or as Plato and Socrates put it, the
essence of a person (as opposed to what every man and living creature shares by way of biology or neurology). It's a specific
way of seeing a person - a way that does not clash with anything we might ever
learn about that person. Francis Crick takes this position in his book
The Astonishing Hypothesis, although he sees neuroscience completely overlapping the concept of soul, while I think they only partially overlap.
Maybe using a more neutral language will help. As we might glean from Wikipedia, "
The word 'soul' did not exist in the times of Jesus, Socrates or Aristotle, and so the quotations, interpretations and translations of the word "soul" from these sources, means that the word should be handled very carefully". The Greek word used for soul is
psyche, as found in psychology. I think that the distinction between the fields of psychology and neurology is as significant as where they overlap (in the
soma, or natural body). The Greeks and Hebrews made that distinction, and I think we should at least be consistent when we use those terms today. A modern reinterpretation is just that: a reinterpretation.
Neuroscience helps us understand how a brain operates. Your question has different implications outside of neuroscience. What do you mean by animation, and life? A motor vehicle, a mechanical watch, and bacteria, are all animated; do all these things then need a soul to function.
What do you mean by life? What is the difference between a rock, a flame, a flower petal, a bacterium, and an animal? You might say that some represent life and others do not, but what is the distinction and is there one? Underneath at the subatomic level a rock is just as active as the components inside an animal. Most is empty space with electrons whizzing around etc. The only differences between all these objects are degrees of animation, just shades of grey. Otherwise they are all matter just like us.
I can also only speculate about the differences, but despite the fact that everything comes down to matter, the fact is that what we call living beings act and appear different from rock or flame. The difference is in what animates them, and it's a real difference. Otherwise there would be no "search for life" on other planets; the word "life" would lose all meaning. To bring it back to neurology - neurology comes no closer at saying
what animates us, it only describes what
is animated, and even
how it is animated. The questions are fascinating, and we've explored it hypothetically in questions about AI and cyborgs, from Lieut. Data to the Cylons. But so much of the concept has become dependent on the religious side of it, and therefore on whether God exists or not, that all we can really do is examine what it means in the context that it was used.
If we
presuppose that life arising from inanimate matter can be explained without a Creator as catalyst, then the supernatural element obviously falls away and what we're left with
would be just our observation of life's mechanics - the biology. And then the only reasonable "psychology" would be the bottoms-up approach, from chemistry to action. But as it is, we still allow for the existence of a "psyche" - something that is not just influenced by the soma, but can also influence
it.
You seem to be significantly confusing terms here or simply lack understanding. Most of science uses inductive reasoning as do most things we do in life. Think of induction as a statistical process, e.g. given that an event has occurred a large proportion of the time there is a STRONG reason to expect it will occur again. E.g. driving to work every morning I usually succeed in arriving intact. But with induction there is always a finite possibility that one day I might not arrive. One could say I expect to arrive OK but I cannot assert with certainty (on faith) that I will arrive. Most of the things we do in life are like this and many refer to this process as faith. But that is only one of the definitions of “faith”.
But I did not say faith relies purely on inductive reasoning. I only proposed to show how something that is not of any "substance" may nevertheless be reasonable to expect, to believe in. Induction
is only one of the facets of faith. Trust is another. Someone might say that nothing can be trusted enough to expect some things with certainty; someone with faith in God might say God
can be trusted that much.
And your quote nicely illustrates the classic error in confusing inductive reasoning, and calling it faith, and then making the giant leap to say faith shows it is OK to believe something where there is no evidence. These are two very distinct and massive differences to the meaning of the word faith. It is a very common tactic and major error proffered by the religionist, that they often do not even understand themselves (absence of critical thinking ability).
I understand your complaint, but I think you presume too much in the end. It's not absence of critical thinking that's the problem, but the presence of it - that we can rely on critical thinking
at all, because without a solid frame of reference there can be no measurement of thought. Such a
solid (and I hope you appreciate the necessity for it to be infallibly solid) ground can never be proven with certainty. And because the uniformity of nature never
has been established with certainty, it is itself an induction.
"It is no good saying, 'Each fresh experience confirms our belief in uniformity and therefore we reasonably expect that it will always be confirmed'; for that argument works only on the assumption that the future will resemble the past -- which is simply the assumption of Uniformity under a new name. Can we say that Uniformity is at any rate very probable? Unfortunately not. We have just seen that all probabilities depend on it. Unless Nature is uniform, nothing is either probable or improbable. And clearly the assumption which you have to make before there is any such thing as probability cannot itself be probable. (C.S. Lewis - Miracles, p.163 - my emphasis.)
Misuse of the word faith again. I’ll comment no further until you correct your mistake.
Now that I have explained that I see faith as something the precedes even the process of induction, maybe you will understand what I said a little better. People in the past were at least as adept at induction as we are today, but they had less preconceived ideas. While I can agree it probably made them more prone to error, it also made them less prone to tunnel vision. In their time, just as ours, there was reasonable faith and unreasonable faith.
Total nonsense. The human imagination knows no bounds. In the absence of knowledge we tend to create our own explanations – hence the creation of religions and all the superstitious and baseless mumbo-jumbo that is associated with them. It is only with knowledge that we are gradually dismissing the religious gibberish and replacing it with facts.
That's a stereotypical idea, and patently false. The belief that creation is the product of a rational being preceded the belief that the universe is ordered in a way that can be examined and understood. It lay the groundwork for what we delineate today as "science". It is because the human imagination knows no bounds that science itself has flourished along with every other human enterprise, rational or not. We also create explanations in the
presence of knowledge. Whether something has been fabricated or not doesn't depend on
relative knowledge or ignorance (eg. modern vs. ancient), but in reality vs. superstition.
There are facts in religion just like there is in science, and it likewise distinguishes rational belief from superstition. Past and present superstition in science hasn't invalidated it - the exposing of superstitious elements has only sharpened it. If religion isn't sharpened by the same process, of course it will lead to superstition. We must also distinguish between belief that sprung from a genuine encounter with God and belief that sprung from ignorance or wishful thinking. Sometimes it's problematic, but it's not impossible, and someone who truly allows for the possibility of the former (if only because of the limits of induction) can't just summarily dismiss everything because of errors that even believers themselves would point out.
I have a far greater knowledge base to draw from, including the knowledge that I need critical thinking to form valid conclusions.
But has significantly more knowledge than the old world. And with knowledge comes a greater chance of discovering truth.
Again, knowledge in some areas is not knowledge in all areas - and science covers only what can be reproduced and tested. The whole of history falls outside this scope - for that we rely on the same processes of thought that any rational person would have had at his disposal throughout history. Internal and external consistency, for example. That's one way to distinguish delusion from reality.
Your unspoken claim is that with
empirically discovered knowledge comes a greater chance of discovering truth (and in the field of history this "objective method" has only been employed since Leopold Von Ranke, in the 1800s), but that's a claim that cannot be empirically proven. How do you hold it?
But again I am not making claims. Stop trying to deflect your problem onto me. How do YOU show your assertions are not delusional?
By invoking memetic theory you imply that's it's reasonable to do so. How else would you justify it? But anyway, I rely on the same criteria for delusion as you, with the notable exception that I don't claim all believers are deluded. My assertions (at least, the ones that you question most strongly) depend largely on their testimony, so they must stand or fall on their trustworthiness. I have my reasons why I believe that these witnesses weren't lying or deluded, and that their accounts are accurate within reason, but these are only as "concrete" as forms and circumstance allows - which means they must be judged by more than just science and reason, but with at least the same amount of faith by which nature is presumed to be structured in a way our minds can come to terms with.
If the universe is even a small part as irrational and imaginative as the minds it has produced, then perhaps we should pay a little more heed to the things we have great difficulty coming to terms with. If it is not, then something allows us to be
aware of the discrepancy - and people have been aware of it long before modern science came on the scene.
Or it is that we know better because we know more. I don’t see that your assertion of intimidation helps your argument; in fact you should be rightly intimidated by the existence of knowledge since you have none of your own.
That's a strangely emotional argument coming from you.
What I am talking about is what the historian Mortimer Adler calls the
Twentieth-Century Delusion. Now, I'm in no better position than such an eminent historian to explain it to you, and certain in no better position to defend it. He has made a survey of the history of ideas, ancient to modern, and I'm inclined to agree with his conclusion. Of course it's your prerogative to disagree, but it's not a decision I can influence. It was Adler who said "The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind."
I have said many times on this forum and in this thread that science knows no boundaries. I have certainly not “limited” science to any field. Science is about the discovery of knowledge and if you have a better method for discovering knowledge then please demonstrate it.
Science has to be limited to something if it is to be called "science" at all. I'm of course talking about the
Demarcation problem. Needless to say, this has changed throughout history, along with what counted as proper "knowledge", and to claim our current demarcation is superior in the quest for
all knowledge leads us back to ideological assumptions, and probably the "twentieth-century delusion". Science is limited to its own method of questioning - that's why it's so good at it - and before you can learn anything that this method of questioning cannot discover, you will have to acknowledge its limitations to yourself.
I think I've provided these links under this topic before, but here they are again for good measure:
The Nature and Philosophy of Science;
Two Dogmas of Empiricism (It's interesting to compare Quine's "ideas" with Adler's, and even Aristotelian "essence" - the "soul" of meaning can be arrived at only by an empiricism without dogmas. Truth not limited to the 20th century).
Remember that Einstein was a pantheist not a believer in a personal god such your beliefs. If you now replace the word “God” with “the Universe” then you will understand what Einstein meant in the correct context of his perspective.
I know that, and I wasn't relying on his beliefs for support (why would it matter what his beliefs were?) - the object of your attention should be his utter inability to accept the idea, precisely because his
scientific beliefs effectively equated "the Universe" with "God". It illustrates my point beautifully. As a scientist, Einstein held more credibility than he ever did as a deist or an agnostic.
Agreed, but then on that basis you cannot claim that unknown things are true, the best you can say is “we don’t know”, i.e. the atheist position. Your position is that you claim you do KNOW for certain but can’t show any method where you obtain that claimed knowledge.
I claim to know by extension; what I know directly is a matter of believing my senses and observations, all of which I interpret according to as much knowledge as is available to me. But what distinguishes me from the atheist position is that I believe in God, and in the faith He has inspired along a particular thread of history. These are not "unknown things". Everything that I don't know lies between these parameters - and there as at least as much about God that I don't know as there is about the world and my place in it. My certainty is not about what I know about life, the universe and everything, but in who I believe God to be
despite everything I don't know.
But the article does show that among the EDUCATED knowledge displaces myth and superstition, and we know from today that the better educated tend to be the least religious and gullible.
This is a discussion on its own. A
Gallup poll showed that "Education is negatively correlated with expressions of religious belief, but maybe positively correlated with religious activity." I.e. educated people make more sincere believers, and given the rigors of faith, it's understandable that not many would choose it. Educated people are arguably also less prone to being manipulated into a belief. Faith in God is the one place where the decision is so voluntary that it's equally possible to choose either path based solely on personal preference. This is easily seen in the number of highly educated people who are (and were throughout history) faithful believers without any feelings that they were compromising their integrity in any way. I would even argue that their integrity was measured by how faithful they were to their beliefs, rather than how successful they were academically. I think people who have stripped themselves of myth and superstition while holding on to an often inconvenient and unpopular truth can be expected to be in the minority.
