A human Soul exists

Yes, onto the rebuttals of the rebuttals. Argument from Fungibility Pro straw mans my first argument here. He argues quite well the the set of atoms is fungible. This isn’t what I argued. I argued identity is preserved by the continuation of the atoms. This is very different from claiming the whole of the atoms is what preserves identity. Let’s what I proposed Person Y has to have mental capacities Nothing about the person being the whole set of his atoms ..the brain that realizes person Y’s mental capacities has to be physically continuous with the brain that realized person X’s mental capacities Again, nothing about the person being the whole set of atoms. Continuation doesn’t mean the whole set of atoms. 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. Nothing about the person being the whole set of atoms here either. You cannot switch out the continuation otherwise, it wouldn’t be a continuation in the first place. He also says I’m talking about two people being identical. This is a misunderstanding. Talking about two people being identical is to help us see what preserves identity. In regards to Perdurantism, I’m not entirely sure what Pro means by “That's going on my profile.” as this could have many interpretations. Does he think I’m being stupid? Does he legitimately believe it’s an interesting view? Perhaps Pro will comment briefly about it in the next round, as a voter could potentially take this as poor conduct depending on if they feel Pro was being contempt. If Perdurantism does imply derived change, then Pro needs show how the theory fails to account for identity, otherwise it would be a refutation of premise two. Furthermore it’s false to state it’s derived from dynamic processes, as Lewis takes a person to be the complete set of temporal slices. The passage of time itself doesn’t preserve identity. On a technical note, this does necessarily need the tenseless theory of time. It just needs the past and future to exist. This doesn’t need a temporal ontology to be tenseless (Moving spotlight theory). Although it is controversial, so is every other theory of time [1]. However these temporal ontologies have the most support from relativity [2] and quantum mechanics [3]. In regards to the non-sequitur claim. I wasn’t thinking of continuation as an actual object, but I guess you could argue against that on a technicality. It is trivial anyway as Pro said. . Argument from Conceivability Pro attempts to rebut my first objection by bringing up Swinburne’s objection. We have direct knowledge of our minds, so we cannot be wrong in deducing a priori conceivability conclusions. The problem with this is that we indeed have direct and absolute knowledge of the contents of our minds. Our feelings, thoughts, ect, but this is conflating having absolute knowledge about the fundamental substance of the mind. The fundamental substance and what’s inside the substance are two different things. We know what’s inside the substance quite well, but this doesn’t equate into having the knowledge of the substance itself. On a technical syllogism note. Premise three should be “Whatever is epistemically possible for the mind is also logically possible”. As Pro did just concede premise three in general is false, which negates his argument. Note however, I didn’t bring this up as an objection, because that’s just quibbling. With Bailey’s objection, Pro says we don’t need to justify another modal claim, because we can just point to the actual world. While I think this is correct, this is going from the frying pan into the fire. Now Pro needs to show we are “in possession of all the relevant factual and linguistic background information” and have “no additional distorting beliefs”. This would require a complete knowledge of the physical brain and body. As Bailey writes [4] ….we are not currently in a relevantly ideal epistemic situation with respect to the claims made by a completed, true physical theory. There is a vast amount of new information such a theory would provide that we presently lack, and this new information might well be relevant to the physical status of consciousness. Our present physical theories are almost certainly mistaken in some crucial respects, and are certainly incomplete, and thus we may currently be committed to distorting beliefs about physics…. Now that Pro has defined a body as the “entire physical reality of a person”. It would be hard to defend the idea that non-reductive physicalism is compatible with the entire argument. However, if non-reductive physicalism is true, conceiving of the mind without the body is just conceiving of another part of the physical reality without another part. In a world where non-reductive physicalism is true, we should expect to see arguments like these as sound, otherwise the mind would be reducible to the brain. Why the Soul Hypothesis Fails Pro presents what he thinks the soul does. Pro doesn’t escape the dilemma. I responded to Locke’s conception in the previous round and Pro’s neo-Lockeian conception of the soul still falls into the grips of the first horn of the dilemma. The very first horn was attacking the Lockeian conception of person identity, which Pro ignored entirely. Pro then goes onto attack physicalism via the problem of qualia. However, one can reject that qualia is non-physical in the first place. If someone like Mary sees red for the first time, her brain is processing new physical information. Also, there is a distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how. A man may know that a guitar needs strings to be properly used, but that man may not know how to play that guitar. Mary may know that light waves enter the retina and that the brain processes them. Mary may have all that-knowledge, but this doesn’t entail she has all how-knowledge. So when someone experiences qualia, she doesn’t gain any new physical that-knowledge, but can indeed gain new how-knowledge. Pro then talks about the problem of interaction. However, it seems he is very hung up on me stating there must be a shared property that he has ignored the main idea of the argument. Which is how do these two substances interact. Anyway, it’s obvious why there must be a shared property. In order for there to be interaction there must be some type of connection. In order for a neuron to be caused to fire by the mind, there must be a connection from the mind to the brain, otherwise there is no interaction. This connection cannot be purely physical, because you’re trying to answer how the physical connects with the mental. This connection cannot be purely mental, for the same exact reason. Physicist Johanan Raatz made a simple equation to show this. "Let's suppose your arm wiggles due to a neural impulse of half a volt, that was triggered by one bit of mental stuff M. So we set up an equation. M + whatever voltage was there before (B) = half a volt. Now just subtract B from both sides, and you have just established that because M caused the voltage, that therefore M must have a voltage too. It's very elementary." To further push this point, let’s forget about the mind, body, souls, identity, and Descartes all together. Let’s examine a simple diagram with colours. Red cannot interact with blue. Pro suggests the shared property can exist within space-time. Sure, but this still doesn’t escape the argument. The same goes for his idea that the immaterial substance can emit some other substance in which an interaction can happen. This still fails to explain how the interaction happens or how this new substance takes part. It seems to be going with the red/blue connection route. He also says some type of occasionalism cannot be ruled out. However, this is bloating his ontology. Even if you accept the existence of God , you have to agree this is a huge position to take. As it seems the mind-body relationship isn’t because of occasional causes, but because there really is a casual relationship. Pro presents these two solutions for “sake of subjunctive conditional”. However, if you’re not going to actively propose one, why bring it up at all, other than to try to get around the ad hoc nature? Conclusion I feel Pro has strawmanned my objection in his first argument, conflates between the contents of a substance and the substance itself, given himself an impossible to meet BOP with Bailey’s objection, and never solved the problems with the soul hypothesis. My arguments and rebuttals remain standing, whereas Pro’s fall. I now pass the internet text microphone to Pro. Sources [1] http://philpapers.org... [2] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu... [3] http://www.livescience.com... [4] https://www.uoguelph.ca...