A human Soul exists

A debate about identity and the mind! The Maker must be smiling on me today! Thanks to Pro. Now, onto the arguments. Argument from Fungibility The problem with this argument is that it’s a non-sequitur. The conclusion doesn’t follow from its premise. It also strawmans physicalist theories of identity by over simplifying them. Physicalist theories of identity don’t state that the atoms with you now or at your birth are you. Just like one who advocates in favour of a Lockean view don’t state the psychological state you’re in now or at your birth is you. Locke says the psychological continuity is what makes you, you. Similar to the physicalist theories. Individual atoms may be fungible, but what is non-fungible is the fact that there is a continuation of atoms. For example, Peter Unger proposed there are three ways for person X to be identical to person Y. ….person Y is identical to person X—in other words, X will survive into the future—if and only if three things are true: Person Y has to have mental capacities, the brain that realizes person Y’s mental capacities has to be physically continuous with the brain that realized person X’s mental capacities, and there has to have been no moment in time between the existence of person X and person Y where that physically continuous object -the brain- did not have mental capacities. [1] So of course cloning someone doesn’t make that person identical to the original person, but that’s because Pro is attacking an overly simplified strawman of physicalist theories. Another theory referred to as the “Time Worm” theory is proposed by David Kellogg Lewis. Dr. David Kyle Johnson explains with the analogy of TV shows. What makes one episode of The Walking Dead the same show as another episode? It’s not Daryl Dixon’s crossbow, but because the show is in time. Lewis suggests persons are like this, four-dimensional objects within time. So, asking whether you now and your eight-year-old self are the same person is like asking if two episodes of a show are the same show. Your eight-year-old self is not you; it’s an episode of you. You now is not you;it’s an episode of you. Lewis calls your episodes time slices. And a person just is a collection of time slices spread out over time: a time worm [2] A TV show like a person needs no soul. A person can be a non-fungible time worm. Thus the argument is a non-sequitur, as I can accept both premise one and two, but reject the conclusion. Argument from Conceivability Pro presents a version of Descartes argument from conceivability. It is possible for a mind to exist without a body, but a body cannot exist without a body, thus the mind is different from ones body. The premise that is the legs of the argument is premise three “Whatever is epistemically possible in is also logically possible.” or simply, what is conceivable is possible. First, the a priori possibility of something doesn’t entail the metaphysical or a posteriori possibility of something. Saul Kripke talks about this in his book “Naming and Necessity.” Kripke notes it is entirely a priori conceivable for water to be something else other than H2O. In that we cannot rule out a priori that water is some other chemical. However Kripke states water being H20 is an a posteriori necessity. In no metaphysical world is water not H20 [3]. Another example is the Morning star and Evening star. It is conceivable for one to exist without the other, but since these stars are the exact same thing, in no metaphysically possible world does the Morning star exist without the Evening star. So, my point is, a priori possibility doesn’t equal metaphysical possibility. I could concede that it’s conceivable for the mind to exist without the body and this wouldn’t hurt my position. The famous critic of materialism David Chalmers agrees that Descartes argument fails for this very reason. ….The soundness of this argument [Argument from disembodied existence] is often doubted, and the standard reasons for doubt can be expressed straightforwardly in the current framework. The sense in which it is clearly conceivable that I am disembodied is primary positive conceivability, from which the 1-possibility of disembodiment follows. The sense in which physical things are essentially physical involves 2-necessity (as do all claims of de re necessity). But the 1-possibility of disembodiment is quite compatible with the 2-impossibility of disembodiment, so the claim that I am physical is not threatened by Descartes' argument. [4] My second objection to this principle comes from the philosopher Andrew Bailey. Bailey points out in order for us to conceive of something, we must first have all relevant background knowledge and adequate cognitive cabilibilties. “X is ideally conceivable (if and?) only if someone who has adequate cognitive capacities and who is in possession of all the relevant factual and linguistic background information, and who has no additional distorting beliefs, could conceive of X.” [5] However, this now presents a problem for a conceivability thesis. Now the idea of ideal conceivability rests on another modal idea. Bailey explains “But now we are in a position to note the following: to assert that something is ideally conceivable is to make what is partly a modal claim—in order for something to be ideally conceivable it must be conceivable under the right counterfactual conditions. Thus, modal judgements which are supported by arguments from conceivability inevitably tacitly rest on another modal claim: modal claim p is true if the situation described in p is ideally conceivable, but this situation is ideally conceivable only if it would still be conceivable under relevantly ideal epistemic conditions. If this latter modal claim, q, is false, then p remains unsupported…..and this in turn will require another modal claim which will require independent support, and so on.” Thus an argument from conceivability can never be sound, as it rests on an infinite regress of arguments that need to be supported. Another problem with this argument is similar to the problem with the first argument. I can accept every single premise and the conclusion, but still reject the concept of the soul. How? Because non-reductive physicalism is perfectly compatible with the argument. The mind can come from the physical, but be another type of property in the physical world. I do not find Pro’s arguments for the soul convincing. Upon further examination, we find that they fail. Why the Soul Hypothesis Fails First, proposing a soul preserves identity is an awful theory of identity. Pro could mean one of two things when claiming the mind preserves identity. One, the contents of the mind preserves identity or two, there is a type of thing within the mind that preserves identity, a serial number as Zmikecuber calls it. Both fail. The first option fails because the contents of the mind is not the thing containing these things. Let’s say you’re tied up and about the become tortured. Luckily I come to save the day. However, the problem is I spent all my time learning philosophy, so I cannot untie you as I’m too weak. I cannot fight the person that captured you and I cannot kill you myself because I’m too weak. I have a solution. I created a machine that will give you new memories, thoughts, beliefs, ect. Your mental life will be totally different. If we accept option one, you would have died and someone else would be tortured. Would you go through with this? This wouldn’t seem to make the slightest bit of difference. You would still feel pain, but you would just have a different mental life. Because the contents of the mind is not the container itself. It also seems wrong to say two people who at one moment have the exact same beliefs, thoughts, memories are the same person. As only one person can be identical to you. The second option is even more problematic. It borderlines on meaninglessness. If there is some thing within the mind which preserves identity, but not the contents, how would we tell two different persons apart? We cannot appeal to anything at all. This thing doesn’t have physical shape or spatial location. Furthermore, what happens if two of these things switch? How would we even tell? There would be no breaks in the mind or consciousness or the physical. It couldn’t preserve identity because it is unnecessary for personal survival. A soul cannot account for facts about personal identity and thus fails. A second problem is that this implies substance dualism. Princess Elizabeth was the first to point out there is a problem of interaction. How can these two substances ever interact with each other? There must be some interaction via a shared property (otherwise there would be no interaction). However, an interaction with a shared property entails monism. Because we would keep going down a slippery slope granting physical properties to the mind. This makes dualism incoherent or at least with many counter-intuitive ad hocs. The soul hypothesis fails because it cannot account for interaction. Those theories that do are bound to contain ad hocs. As they must deny interaction happens I may bring up a problem of causal overdetermination in the next round if space allows. However, I feel I have sufficiently refuted Pro’s arguments and shown how proposing a soul in our ontology fails. Thanks and now to Pro. Sources [1] Unger, Peter. “The Physical View.” In Self and Identity, edited by D. Kolak and R. Martin, 192–213. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991. [2] Johnson, David. “Exploring Metaphysics.” Lecture 9. Pg 68. [3] Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [4] Chalmers, D. J. 2002, ‘Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?’, in Gendler and Hawthorne 2002. [5] https://www.uoguelph.ca...