Imaginary proof of the soul
The proof goes like this:
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Imagine a party with 26 people. I designate the persons from "A" to "Z".
Imagine the party in two materially identical worlds "WA" and "WZ", where one is person A in world WA and person Z in world WZ.
Both worlds are materially identical by definition. However, they differ in who one *is* in this world. If I am person A or Z, I have the body and the memories of person A or Z, respectively.
Since the worlds are both altogether different and materially identical, they can only differ in something immaterial. That would then be "being".
One could formulate that a "pointer" indicates who I am in the respective world. This pointer could be called "soul", even if it only bears a distant resemblance to the religious soul.
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This proof supports dualism and refutes monism, since in monism world A and world Z would have to be identical, since they are materially identical.
***
Imagine a party with 26 people. I designate the persons from "A" to "Z".
Imagine the party in two materially identical worlds "WA" and "WZ", where one is person A in world WA and person Z in world WZ.
Both worlds are materially identical by definition. However, they differ in who one *is* in this world. If I am person A or Z, I have the body and the memories of person A or Z, respectively.
Since the worlds are both altogether different and materially identical, they can only differ in something immaterial. That would then be "being".
One could formulate that a "pointer" indicates who I am in the respective world. This pointer could be called "soul", even if it only bears a distant resemblance to the religious soul.
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This proof supports dualism and refutes monism, since in monism world A and world Z would have to be identical, since they are materially identical.
Comments (57)
Quoting SolarWind
What about the space each world occupies? is it also identical for both worlds?
Already assumes your conclusion. You assume a "one" that can either reside in A or Z. Then you say that "one" is soul. You haven't proven anything, you begged the question.
If they are materially identical, then the being would be materially identical as well. The only difference is location.
Look at it this way. I have two salt shakers that are materially identical in different worlds. Does that mean the salt shaker has a soul? No, it just means there is a clone in a different space.
Really? Well wouldn't you need to first define what this religious soul was? What properties it has that are unique to it being a soul as opposed to anything else?
Well... lets give it the benefit of the doubt and allow you to define what this 'soul' is and what unique properties its has as opposed to say phenomenological awareness, or maybe thinking ability ... which can't obviously be unique to a sou7ld since they are the properties of just 'brain'. Its real easy for one thing to be LIKE another thing if you don't define either.
You compare two visions. They are not beside each other. They are alternatives. And they are not equal. It plays a role being one person or another. Don't you think so?
If these are parallel worlds that are identical, then they have the same "histories", and person A in one world would have the same memories and history as person A in the other world. Your statement above doesn't make sense.
Of course they are identical. This is the core of the proof, it is not a bug, it is a feature.
More formal speaking you compare world A = ({A,B,C, ... ,X,Y,Z} living as A) with world Z = ({A,B,C, ... ,X,Y,Z} living as Z).
Your original premise seems to resemble the ongoing arguments on this forum about identity and equality. Does A=B mean that A and B are the same? Is 2+2 the same as 4? That's as far as I can get in your proof. But it's original thinking.
It is incredible how such a simple proof can be so misleading. Two ideas are compared. Can two ideas be identical or only the same? It does not matter.
The central assertion of my proof is: WA = WZ (physical), but WA <> WZ (total), therefore something unphysical must exist.
As others have pointed out, you postulate a difference between materially identical worlds, then conclude that these materially identical worlds are different thus dualism. Your conclusion is in your premises: a circular argument.
There are already materially identical things in this material universe. Particles of the same kind are indistinguishable (this is empirically verified), to the extent that some people believe that every electron in the universe is the same electron bouncing forward (electron) and backward (positron) in time, the idea that spawned Richard Feynman's quantum electrodynamics: the most thoroughly tested physical theory of all time.
Materially indistinguishability is not sufficient to show dualism. All the electrons in the universe are identical, but can still be different in physical ways (state). They can also have identical state: a ground state hydrogen atom over there can have the same state as and is materially indistinguishable from a ground state hydrogen atom here.
You don't define what you mean by world, but I assume you mean "everything", i.e. a universe or reality, rather than a planet or phenomenological purview. If that is the case, it is difficult to insist on two identical but separate worlds. You would need some justification for saying WA is indeed different from WZ, which is again assuming your own conclusion.
As already mentioned, the worlds should not exist simultaneously, but alternatively. Thus the question does not arise "where" these worlds are.
A simple question: Would it make no difference to you whether you lead your current life or the life of another person, for example George Clooney, of course including his body and memories?
OR DOES IT? They way to go is to examine this "I", the who in question. The matter turns to the self (and certainly not to physics). One has to make an examination of the self, and this is done via phenomenology: One begins the inquiry with the world itself, which constituted by the self, and therefore free of the nuisance of dualism (an absurd idea supposing that existence as presence is divisible), and one then faces the most authentic terms of analysis. The self becomes an altogether different concept, for it is not viewed through the lens empirical science but as it is presented in its most immediate describable features, and here, it is not ontology that rules, but meaning and ethics, and the self is first and foremost an agency of meaning. It is though this premise, the singularity, if you will, of meaning/value.
If you want to affirm the self, you cannot do this via trying to conceive of a different form of something that has absolutely no meaning to begin with, physical existence. A nonsense concept.
Therefore there is no basis upon which to insist they are different.
Quoting SolarWind
The question is meaningless. "I" am Kenosha Kid. If you were speaking to George Clooney, "I" would be George Clooney.
No, it isn't. It is simple set theory.
You simply compare the set {A*,B,C,...,X,Y,Z} with the set {A,B,C,...,X,Y,Z*}, where the star indicates which life you would live in the corresponding world.
It is possible that the persons are materially identical in pairs, i.e. A* =(material) A, B =(material) B, ... , Y =(material) Y, Z =(material) Z*. So {A*,B,C,...,X,Y,Z} =(material) {A,B,C,...,X,Y,Z*}, but of course also {A*,B,C,...,X,Y,Z} <>(total) {A,B,C,...,X,Y,Z*}.
See it as a proof of contradiction.
That's your dualistic premise-conclusion right there. For someone who doesn't already accept dualism there is no you that is independently assignable and separable from the body that it "inhabits."
When you go to the toilet, how can you say you are the same person afterwards as before?
Afterwards you are lighter than before, so you cannot be identical with a body.
How about the brain? The parts in there do not change every 7 years like the body.
The brain changes every moment you learn or forget something => you are another person every minute.
Please explain how you can be identical with a dynamic object.
In set theory, these would be the same set. Your insistence on a difference nonetheless is precisely the circularity in your argument. This is not a subtle point.
I suppose one could say that every brainstate is me? So as you say, as I forget my name, there will be a brain state that correlates with it.
I am not opposed to dualism though, just trying to poke and understand.
Let's assume that reincarnation is true.
Would it make a difference to you which creature you were reborn as?
How is the brain state defined? Let's assume that a super technology makes it possible to replace every neuron with a functionally identical chip and turn your brain into a computer.
Would you then be that computer or would you be dead and the computer would just claim to be you?
If I'd be the function that the brain does, which if the computer takes my brain over but still performs the same functions then I'd be okay.
Usually survival here is dependent on continuity and since it's changed gradually I should be fine.
The question is not pertinent to the quote, or to me, frankly, as I don't concern myself with magic. Reincarnation is not similar to two things being identical.
Sure, reincarnation could be a nice tool to convey a point which Solar might want to make. Specifically a point about personal identity. So you're kind of just red herring it.
Wow. That took an unexpected turn.
OK, I think we are done here.
I'm not denying its relevance to a separate point. I'm saying it's irrelevant to the post he quoted. As I say, fantasy is not my bag.
I think the original argument can be put easier with clones.
The good old teletransporter problem would have sufficed to make the point that Solar is trying to make.
If you step into a teletransporter which scans your entire being down to the lowest level possible and recreates it at a distant place. Would that being recreated there be you? Would it seem as if you step in and step out on the moon?
Now imagine that it breaks and that you are not broken down in the beginning but still creates you on the moon. Now there is 2 of you. Which one of you 2 is the original you and why? Surely if this is possible then a person cannot merely be its biology. Because then you and you 2 on the moon would share a mind but different bodies. There has to be a pointer, as Solar calls it. That indicates which one of them is you. He calls this the soul.
Thats veeery roughly how the problem goes. Sorry if it's written quite haphazardly (it is) I'm allowing my hobby to interfere with my online lessons ;p
That makes more sense, but as I said earlier:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The broken teleporter is a nice redux of the ship Theseus paradox which concerns continuity of identity. It is essentially a language problem as far as I can see. In everyday scenarios, we don't need to worry about discontinuities of form alongside continuities of physical constitution or vice versa: my physical constitution gradually changes but I remain me albeit with a time-dependent physical constitution.
The ship Theseus challenges the importance of continuity: if a ship identical to Theseus is built out of all the original parts of Theseus, is it the Theseus? Have we not rebuilt the original Theseus? Here we're talking about instantaneous form and constitution. But if the original Theseus has had all of its parts gradually replaced and us still out there, isn't that still the Theseus? Here we're talking about continuity.
The linguistic issue is that, based on our experience with language, we have one word to describe two things that we can easily differentiate. One simply has to choose more careful language if this becomes a real problem. For what it's worth, the "identical parts" idea of identity seems like a non-starter, since when I say "I", I am referring to a continuous thing that does not have static components. The "original you" or the "original Theseus" does not have any relevance in that case.
I think you're talking past me because it's hard for me to follow, sorry.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don't know if it is merely a language problem. We don't have the technology of course, but it still outlines a problem hypothetically, doesn't it? If we are nothing more than our physical body or its arrangement then there is no soul and thus if one were to make 2 of me then I should be both. But since that is impossible there has to be something else a pointer or whatever else extra you can get? It's not merely about continuity alone. It's about what constitutes the self in its entirety. So this problem is close to but not the same as the ship of Theseus.
Forgive my close mindedness but I'll resort to summarizing the 3 main positions as response to the problem.
1) Biological view = You are the matter, meat of the brain and not it's internal machining. When the machine deconstructs you, you die and a clone is created. One who thinks he is you but isn't. You die.
2) Psychological view = You are the constituents, internal processing of the brain. Emotions, dreams, hopes and ideas. Basically that which the brain does. When the machine recreates a machine that reforms these ideas aka the psychological bundle, You 'reawaken' as it were. As if nothing happened. You survive.
3) Further fact = Both of these miss something. Usually argued to by multiple duplication problems and argues that there is something more. A soul or whatever else. Basically: We don't know.
I'm guessing this is what Solar is trying to get to in his argument. And this is what I'm somewhat familiar with. If I understand you correctly, you mean to say that the clones being identical biologically has nothing to do with them being the original. So you would align yourself with the psychological view?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It seems like the teletransporter is forcing one to think what makes the I. If components are non starters and continuity is, then the real question is continuity of what?
Thought experiments involving cloning or teletransporting differ in an important detail: they start with there being a single person, who then undergoes some transformation. More importantly, these thought experiments are (in)famously controversial; they are the opposite of an argument. If anything, their controversy suggests that there may not be objectively right or wrong answers to the questions that they pose.
Where can I read up on the idea that they are controversial? Do you mean controversial in that it's a bad thought experiment? Or controversial in the sense of they are being discussed? I heard a lot of good stuff about Parfit's book that deals with these kinds of things. Sure there isn't an empiric conclusion since these techs are not within within our reach. But I don't see how they are unable to highlight problems with current ways of thinking. It would be silly indeed to say that there are end all be all answers to problems in philosophy.
Edit:I understand now what you mean, took me a while. I took it to be an insignificant detail sorry.
They aren't arguments no, that's a mistake I made with my wording. However I do believe, as I said above, that they can sway a person when it comes to their own idea of personal identity.
Solar is trying to make an argument out of it. That's their business.
The teletransporting / copy-beam thought experiment shows that it is unclear what the objective solution is, not that there is none.
Both the beaming and my thought experiment show the same thing: physics has an explanatory gap with personal identity => physicalism is incomplete.
Sure it's incomplete. So is dualism. And panpsychism.
Physicalists hold out hoping that science will in the end give an answer.
I just mean that there is a diversity of opinion when it comes to exotic imaginary scenarios involving personal identity. Our intuitions don't seem to deliver a uniform verdict. Some have strong (and divergent) opinions, others are uncertain.
Quoting SolarWind
Well, your thought experiment shows only that if you assume dualism at the outset, then dualism is what you will conclude. Same with identity thought experiments: they need not pose problems for physicalism unless you have already assumed that they do.
Also, If there is a well-proven fact in this world, it is the extrasensory perception during the state of clinical death. An inert body, with no heartbeat or any brain activity, suddenly awakens and describes, in great detail, what happened during his trance, not only in the room where he lay, but in the other rooms of the house or hospital, which from where he was he could not see even if he was awake, in good health and with his eyes open. This has been repeated so many times, and it has been attested by so many reputable scientific authorities, that only a complete ignorant in the matter can insist on remaining incredulous. But even some of those who recognize the impossibility of denying the fact are reluctant to draw the conclusion that it necessarily imposes: the limits of human consciousness extend beyond the horizon of bodily activity, including that of the brain. The reluctance to accept this shows that the “modern man” — the product of the culture that we inherited from the Enlightenment — has identified himself with his body to the point of feeling frightened and offended at the mere suggestion that his person is something else. It is evident that this is not just a conviction, an idea, but an incapacitating self-hypnotic trance, an effective block of perception.
This state is implanted in souls by the tremendous anonymous pressure of the collectivity, which keeps them in a state of spiritual atrophy through the threat of scorn and the fear — imaginary, but no less efficient — of exclusion. Infinitely multiplied and enhanced by the educational system and the media, what was once a mere philosophical idea, or pseudophilosophical, is incorporated into individual personalities as a reflection of self-defense and, to the same extent, restricts the self-perception of each to the minimum necessary for performance in the immediate tasks of socio-economic life. It is all a self-fulfilling prophecy: if overwhelming evidence of extracorporeal perception is denied, it is not just because people do not believe it — it is because they have become truly unable to live it consciously. They live alienated from their deepest and constant psychic experience, locked in a circle of banalities in which the “cultural” and “scientific” triumphalism of the popular media instills an illusion of wealth and variety.
The “real world” in which these people believe they live is the Galilean-Cartesian dualism, already totally demoralized by the physics of Einstein and Planck, but that the media and the school system continue to impose on the souls of the crowds as the definitive truth: everything that exists in this world are “physical things” and, on top of them, “human thought”, “cultural creations”. On the one hand, the harsh reality of matter governed by supposedly inflexible laws, on which the universal and unquestionable authority of “science” is based; on the other, the soft and ductile paste of the “subjective”, of the arbitrary, where every opinion is worth the same. This “subjective” sphere includes “religion”, which is the right to believe whatever you understand, with the proviso that it never proclaims objective truth or universal value.
I can simplify the thought experiment even further. Let us assume that physicalism is true. Then the description of the world would simply be the particles and fields. Some form living beings.
Nowhere in this description is there any mention of which living being you are.
The pointer is missing.
Compatibility is not enough. That 3 times 3 is 9 does not contradict the world formula, but it does not explain it either.
Physicalism, as epiphenomenalism, certainly does not contradict the first-person perspective, but it does not explain it either.
How, please, does a feeling arise from four forces, how many atoms does it need at the very least, does the C-virus also have feelings?
These are all questions I like to pummel physicists with.
"Both worlds are materially identical by definition. However, they differ in who one *is* in this world. If I am person A or Z, I have the body and the memories of person A or Z, respectively."
If they are different, you would indeed have 26 people. But there aren't people who are materially identical in every respect, including twins.
If they were identical in every respect in which we consider a person to be a person, and not a statue or something else, then we would have one person, not A-Z.
This hardly constitutes the rebuttal of monism at all.
If physicalists don't answer to feelings/qualia, you just admit that physicalism is incomplete?
1. A = Z [physicalism is true]
or
2. ~A = Z [nonphysicalism is true]
If 1 is true then physicalism/materialistic monism is true and if 2 is true [some kind of] dualism is true. We need to prove either 1 or 2 for us to settle the matter. From the OP it's clear that you feel 2. ~A = Z is true and your reasons I gather have to do with [experiences and] memories which will be different for A in world WA and Z in world WZ despite A and Z being the same body.
To what extent do [our experiences and] memories define us? The received wisdom on that score is that people identify themselves by their experiences and memories of these experiences. So, for example, Albert Einstein would've thought of himself as that German Jew who came up with the theory relativity and ushered in the atomic age with memories of that accomplishment to boot.
However, there's a sense in which a person's identity isn't defined by [experiences and] memories. For instance, for Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, Albert Einstein would've still been their adorable son had Albert Einstein chosen a different life say as ballet dancer or a trapeze artist in a circus. This, at a minimum, weakens your argument that [experiences and] memories define our identity. So, 2. ~A = Z is a dubious claim.
Quoting SolarWind
I do not compare A with Z, but A with A* and Z with Z*. And of course I consider not only the body but also the memories. The memories are stored physically, of course, and belong to the material world.
Quoting SophistiCat
Yes, I agree. In philosophy there's a whole lot of diversity as a whole.Quoting SophistiCat
I'll have to disagree with this though. Working with the given options I have found that the biological and psychological views both suffer greatly (In my opinion) from duplication problems. So I haven't necessarily arrived at dualism. But they both do certainly miss something. That's all really.
Both biological and psychological suffer from duplication problems though!
Are there people here who think everything is physics?
Please show your world view.
Sorry, I don't get you.
Only the question remains whether the qualia now belongs to the matter or to the pointer proved by me.
I'm not sure you proved anything on the first go around.
If the monist view is correct, biology provides your pointer. A specific brain encased in a particular skull implements personhood; it's that brain that generates experiences of seeing through the eyes on that skull, and that same brain that generates memories of having seen through those eyes. Subjectively I not only have experiences through my eyes, but recall having had them; I'm a distinct entity from others in this regard, and it can be explained perfectly with this monist pointer. Likewise, I don't have experiences seeing through your eyes, nor do I recall having seen through them; in the monist explanation, that's easily explained because the brain generating the experiences of seeing through your eyes is in your skull. These two brains are islands, disconnected from each other.
Re your OP, there's some present-me A and this is WA. Then, hypothetically, I'm being told there is a WZ in which there is at some point in time a Z (we've yet to define how WA/WZ time relates, so this is the best I can say). I'm to imagine that "I" am Z in WZ, but that doesn't mesh with the monist pointer. The brain in this skull is neither going to see a rabbit in WZ through Z's eyes, nor remember seeing a rabbit in WZ through Z's eyes. A and Z are as much islands as your brain and my brain are.
To get this scenario to make sense, it's necessary to presume that identity is, rather than constructed and generated by a physical construct, somehow fundamental and separate from physical constructs. And that presumption is basically just a presumption of dualism. IOW, as has been discussed 6 months ago, you're simply arriving at dualism from presuming it.
It is not true that you always get out what you put in. The proof that sqrt(2) is irrational starts with assuming it is rational.
I don't put anything into my proof except that it is conceivable to be a different person in a different (imagined) world. Then simply asking what the difference is between WA and WZ. There I still wait for a conclusive answer.
And the proof that sqrt(2) is irrational continues by exploring what it means for sqrt(2) to be rational.
Quoting SolarWind
But then I present that difference, and you ignore it to lecture me on sqrt(2). There's a reason I say I'm not the same person as you. That reason through a monist account when applied to Z in WZ suggests I'm not the same person as Z either. So what's the problem?
It's not about the triviality of you not being me or anyone else, it's about whether you COULD be someone else in a hypothetical world.
So I can imagine to have been born e.g. in India. It doesn't matter if this imagination is detailed, it is enough to have a rough and principled idea. If you don't know what an imagination is or have no imagination, then of course the discussion is superfluous.
Quoting SolarWind
The position person A occupies RELATIVE to other elements of WA (or WZ) is different to the position person Z occupies relative to other elements of WA (or WZ). So, even if WA and WZ are "materially identical", as you say, there is a difference in the relative positions of persons A and Z.
This isn't about lack of imagination. I can imagine sqrt(2) being rational as well, as I do when proving it's irrational.
Quoting SolarWind
For me to be that person has to mean something, else the entire exercise is pointless. "Same-person" is a kind of relation. I am the same-person as the guy who initially replied to you. I am not the same-person as you. For me to be this someone else, I need to be the same-person as that someone else.
I've described a perfectly viable monist same-person relation, and have worked out that I cannot in fact be someone else in a hypothetical world for the same reason I am not you. In other words, I do not relate to this hypothetical person in India through this same-person relation, therefore I cannot be that hypothetical person in India. This isn't a problem of my lack of imagining being a person in India; it's a problem of same-person not relating me to that person in India.
Sqrt(2) is not rational despite the fact that I can imagine it is. My belief in its irrationality is not due to a lack of imagination... quite the opposite. It's a consequence of my imagining it and working it through.
The monist perspective makes perfect sense here. Your imagined scenario only proves you can imagine the scenario, much like I can prove by demonstration that I can imagine sqrt(2) being rational; it does not prove I actually CAN be the person in India.