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You can actually hypothesize that a soul exists and that intelligence is non-material, its just that your tests would quickly disprove that hypothesis - crude p

You can actually hypothesize that a soul exists and that intelligence is non-material, its just that your tests would quickly disprove that hypothesis - crude physical, mechanical modifications to the brain cause changes to intellect and character. If your hypothesis was correct you would not expect to see changes like that at all. Some people think that neurons specifically aren't necessary for understanding intelligence but in the same way that understanding transistors isn't necessary to understand computers, that neurons comprise the units that more readily explain intelligence.

didericis 3y ago
> You can actually hypothesize that a soul exists and that intelligence is non-material, its just that your tests would quickly disprove that hypothesis - crude physical, mechanical modifications to the brain cause changes to intellect and character. If your hypothesis was correct you would not expect to see changes like that at all. That’s not necessarily a disproof. It’s also not necessarily reasonable to conflate what we call “the soul” with intelligence. This is entering the world of philosophy, metaphysics and religion and leaving the world of science. The modern instinct is to simply call bullshit on anything which cannot be materially verified, which is in many ways a very wise thing to do. But it’s worth leaving a door open for weirdness, because apart from very limited kinds of mathematical truth (maybe), I think everything we’ve ever thought to be true has had deeper layers revealed to us than we could have previously imagined. Consider the reported experience of people who’ve had strokes and lost their ability to speak, and then later regained that ability through therapy. They report experiencing their own thoughts and wanting to speak, but something goes wrong/they can’t translate that into a physical manifestation of their inner state. Emotional regulation, personality, memory, processing speed, etc… are those really that different from speech? Are they really the essence of who we are, or are they a bridge to the physical world manifest within our bodies? We can’t reverse most brain damage, so it’s usually not possible to ask a person what their experience of a damaged state is like in comparison to an improved state. We do have a rough, strange kind of comparison in thinking about our younger selves, though. We were all previously pre memory, drooling, poorly regulated babies (and before that, fetuses with no real perception at all). Is it right to say you didn’t have a soul when you were 3 weeks? A year? Two years? When exactly does “you” begin? I can’t remember who I was when I was when I was 2 months with any clarity at all, and you could certainly put different babies in doctored videos and I wouldn’t be able to tell what was me/make up stories and I’d probably just absorb them. But I’m still me and am that 2 month old, much later in time. Whatever I’m experiencing has a weird kind of continuity. Is that encoded in the brain, even though I can’t remember it? Almost definitely, yeah. Is that all of what that experience of continuity is, and where that sense is coming from? I’ve got no idea. I certainly feel deeper. Remember that we all are not living in the real world, we’re all living in our conscious perception. The notion that we can see all of it within a conscious mirror is a pretty bold claim. We can see a lot of it and damage the bridge/poke ourselves in the eyes with icepicks and whatnot, and that does stuff, but what exactly is it doing? Can we really know? Intuitively most people would say they were still themselves when they were babies despite the lack of physical development of the brain. Whatever is constructing that continuous experience of self is not memory, because that’s not always there, not intelligence, because that’s not always there, not personality, because that’s not always there… it’s weird. I think it’s important to remember that. Whenever people think they have human beings fully figured out down to the last mechanical detail and have sufficient understanding to declare who does and doesn’t have a soul and what that means in physical terms, bad things tend to happen. And that goes beyond a statement to be cautious about this kind of stuff purely out of moral hazard; the continual hazard is always as empirical as it is moral. We can never really know what we are. Our perceptual limitations may prove assumptions we make about what we are to be terribly, terribly wrong, despite what seems like certainty.
jessicas_rabbit 3y ago
I’m here playing devil’s advocate - this test doesn’t work. Here are some related thought experiments. Suppose a soul is an immaterial source of intelligence, but it controls the body via machine-like material hardware such as neurons. Or an alternative, suppose there is a soul inside your body “watching” the sensory activations within your brain like a movie. The brain and body create the movie & have some intelligence, but other important properties of the consciousness are bound to this observer entity. In both these cases, the test just shows that if you damage the hardware, you can no longer observe intelligence because you’ve broken the end-to-end flow of the machine.
- burnished 3y ago
  Its fine if you are playing or supposing in seriousness but with good humor, it doesn't really change how anyone else should interact with you :) But yes, supposing that then you would expect to only see damages that correspond such as different forms of paralysis or other purely mechanical damages, not things that change the interior perspective. Otherwise you start postulating the existence of a thing whose sole justification is your desire for the existence of that thing, which is natural when you start questioning beliefs and kick out all the supports without meaning to. I think this is what Bertrand Russel's teapot was meant to ellucidate.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

didericis 3y ago

> You can actually hypothesize that a soul exists and that intelligence is non-material, its just that your tests would quickly disprove that hypothesis - crude physical, mechanical modifications to the brain cause changes to intellect and character. If your hypothesis was correct you would not expect to see changes like that at all. That’s not necessarily a disproof. It’s also not necessarily reasonable to conflate what we call “the soul” with intelligence. This is entering the world of philosophy, metaphysics and religion and leaving the world of science. The modern instinct is to simply call bullshit on anything which cannot be materially verified, which is in many ways a very wise thing to do. But it’s worth leaving a door open for weirdness, because apart from very limited kinds of mathematical truth (maybe), I think everything we’ve ever thought to be true has had deeper layers revealed to us than we could have previously imagined. Consider the reported experience of people who’ve had strokes and lost their ability to speak, and then later regained that ability through therapy. They report experiencing their own thoughts and wanting to speak, but something goes wrong/they can’t translate that into a physical manifestation of their inner state. Emotional regulation, personality, memory, processing speed, etc… are those really that different from speech? Are they really the essence of who we are, or are they a bridge to the physical world manifest within our bodies? We can’t reverse most brain damage, so it’s usually not possible to ask a person what their experience of a damaged state is like in comparison to an improved state. We do have a rough, strange kind of comparison in thinking about our younger selves, though. We were all previously pre memory, drooling, poorly regulated babies (and before that, fetuses with no real perception at all). Is it right to say you didn’t have a soul when you were 3 weeks? A year? Two years? When exactly does “you” begin? I can’t remember who I was when I was when I was 2 months with any clarity at all, and you could certainly put different babies in doctored videos and I wouldn’t be able to tell what was me/make up stories and I’d probably just absorb them. But I’m still me and am that 2 month old, much later in time. Whatever I’m experiencing has a weird kind of continuity. Is that encoded in the brain, even though I can’t remember it? Almost definitely, yeah. Is that all of what that experience of continuity is, and where that sense is coming from? I’ve got no idea. I certainly feel deeper. Remember that we all are not living in the real world, we’re all living in our conscious perception. The notion that we can see all of it within a conscious mirror is a pretty bold claim. We can see a lot of it and damage the bridge/poke ourselves in the eyes with icepicks and whatnot, and that does stuff, but what exactly is it doing? Can we really know? Intuitively most people would say they were still themselves when they were babies despite the lack of physical development of the brain. Whatever is constructing that continuous experience of self is not memory, because that’s not always there, not intelligence, because that’s not always there, not personality, because that’s not always there… it’s weird. I think it’s important to remember that. Whenever people think they have human beings fully figured out down to the last mechanical detail and have sufficient understanding to declare who does and doesn’t have a soul and what that means in physical terms, bad things tend to happen. And that goes beyond a statement to be cautious about this kind of stuff purely out of moral hazard; the continual hazard is always as empirical as it is moral. We can never really know what we are. Our perceptual limitations may prove assumptions we make about what we are to be terribly, terribly wrong, despite what seems like certainty.

jessicas_rabbit 3y ago

I’m here playing devil’s advocate - this test doesn’t work. Here are some related thought experiments. Suppose a soul is an immaterial source of intelligence, but it controls the body via machine-like material hardware such as neurons. Or an alternative, suppose there is a soul inside your body “watching” the sensory activations within your brain like a movie. The brain and body create the movie & have some intelligence, but other important properties of the consciousness are bound to this observer entity. In both these cases, the test just shows that if you damage the hardware, you can no longer observe intelligence because you’ve broken the end-to-end flow of the machine.

burnished 3y ago
Its fine if you are playing or supposing in seriousness but with good humor, it doesn't really change how anyone else should interact with you :) But yes, supposing that then you would expect to only see damages that correspond such as different forms of paralysis or other purely mechanical damages, not things that change the interior perspective. Otherwise you start postulating the existence of a thing whose sole justification is your desire for the existence of that thing, which is natural when you start questioning beliefs and kick out all the supports without meaning to. I think this is what Bertrand Russel's teapot was meant to ellucidate.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]