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The classical argument against an immaterial soul is that something material CAN NOT interact with something material. BUT, we don't know what matter is. Attrib
by cristianpascu 11y ago
The classical argument against an immaterial soul is that something material CAN NOT interact with something material. BUT, we don't know what matter is. Attributing properties of supposedly immaterial substances to material substances is just as bad. One has to account for why matter has those properties, that is, the contingency of the fact that electrons are capable of posting cat pictures on the on the internet.
I believe that the contingency of the matter itself points to intelligence, thus consciousness, metaphisically prior to matter. But this comment box is not sufficient for me to prove this novel statement of mine, made for the first time in history.
- conscioushaha 11y agodo you have a blog? are you theist?
- andreasvc 11y agoI don't quite follow where the contingency comes from. In fact, most scientists seem to subscribe to naturalism which posits that the world is fully deterministic. Also, in case you're not being facetious, these are pretty long running debates so you're probably not the first in history to claim something like that.
- jqm 11y ago"probably not the first in history to claim something like that" Certainly not. The idea that consciousness preceded matter and exists independently of matter is a central tenant of many religions. It's a view I don't agree with but that's beside the point.
- lukev 11y agoHah, hope you're being sarcastic. Consciousness/thought existing prior to matter is the foundation of most ancient philosophy. In fact, it's only become increasingly fashionable in the last couple centuries to posit matter as a "root-level" metaphysical construct (or actually, to make the claim that there is no metaphysics, just physics.)
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- lukev 11y agoOh, certainly. But western philosophy prior to the enlightenment (and for a bit after) was dominated by scholastic or otherwise theologically-based thought.
- bkst 11y agoThe interactionist problem was solved by Berkeley when he proved, without refutation, that matter is the fiction while mind is the obvious empirical fact. Quantum mechanics came along and re-confirmed what he already proved. "Matter"--something solid, mechanical, deterministic--is nothing but an ancient Greek myth. There is nothing in nature that has the properties of matter, therefore nothing is matter, therefore matter doesn't exist. Quantum randomness is not deterministic. Bosons refute materialism. The wave-function itself refutes materialism. Materialism is an ancient greek faith-based religion. Berkeley killed it a long time ago but people were so shocked they still haven't accepted that their God is Dead.
- jqm 11y agoNonsense. Anyone who believes the state of consciousness exists independent of matter should put their theory to test with a bottle of vodka.
- bkst 11y agoIt's not that consciousness exists independent of matter, it is that what materialists keep calling matter... does... not... exist... Matter just doesn't exist. In what way is the quantum wavefunction material? It's not deterministic, it's random. It's not solid, you can have two bosons in the same place at once. It doesn't have precise position or momentum but exists as a kind of smudge. It doesn't even move through time in the way that matter is defined as moving. "Matter" has mass, yet photons don't even have mass. Massless particles take up no space. Matter takes up space. Therefore massless particles are not matter. Massless particles underpin all of reality, yet people want to say reality is made up of matter. Wavefunctions are not matter. Photons are not matter. Electrons are not matter--they behave like waves and the properties of waves are incompatible with matter. So where is this matter? It's just a fiction. Berkeley already called it in 1830. There is no way you can be an empiricist materialist these days, without being ignorant.
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