Why we're immortal

[Jebus]

I don't know what to say, @Sunflowers. I mean, it's hard to imagine how can somebody get things that wrong

@teo123 You are, of course, right. I hope, with this experience, you can relate to a bit of the frustration we have when debating with you.

[PhilRisk]

I, a mind - that is, a thinking thing - appear to be indivisible. And this seems to be the nature of minds. The idea of a half a mind appears, well, incoherent.

If something is indivisible, then it is simple. For any complex object has parts into which it could, in principle, be divided.

If an object is simple, then it is indestructible. After all, how could one destroy a simple thing, given there is nothing into which one can deconstruct it?

Thus, I, a mind, am indestructible. That is to say, I am immortal.

Of course, none of this goes for my physical body. Physical things, by their very nature, appear to be divisible and thus complex. But all this does is show that I am not my body.

I think I will take a different attack, than leo, who attacked the premise, that minds are undividable.

There is just a small fine non sequitur in your argument. Destruction in the sense of falling into pieces might not be the only way to cease. Simple things might just cease at some point. Because you cannot be destroyed by deconstructing your pieces does not mean your are immortal. Just to block one possible move: If minds are so different than physical things, there is no reason to apply conservation laws.

There are good reasons, that the existence of your mind started of some point. The development of your mind is coherently explainable by you learning in your younger ages. Therefore, your mind might just cease as it came into existence. As coming into existence was correlated to physical events, there is a good reason to expect the same for the end of the mind.

[Sunflowers]

I, a mind - that is, a thinking thing - appear to be indivisible. And this seems to be the nature of minds. The idea of a half a mind appears, well, incoherent.

If something is indivisible, then it is simple. For any complex object has parts into which it could, in principle, be divided.

If an object is simple, then it is indestructible. After all, how could one destroy a simple thing, given there is nothing into which one can deconstruct it?

Thus, I, a mind, am indestructible. That is to say, I am immortal.

Of course, none of this goes for my physical body. Physical things, by their very nature, appear to be divisible and thus complex. But all this does is show that I am not my body.

I think I will take a different attack, than leo, who attacked the premise, that minds are undividable.

There is just a small fine non sequitur in your argument. Destruction in the sense of falling into pieces might not be the only way to cease. Simple things might just cease at some point. Because you cannot be destroyed by deconstructing your pieces does not mean your are immortal. Just to block one possible move: If minds are so different than physical things, there is no reason to apply conservation laws.

There are good reasons, that the existence of your mind started of some point. The development of your mind is coherently explainable by you learning in your younger ages. Therefore, your mind might just cease as it came into existence. As coming into existence was correlated to physical events, there is a good reason to expect the same for the end of the mind.

So if I understand correctly, what you are suggesting is that one way in which an object may cease to exist is that it may simply vanish.

I accept that 'if' that is a coherent possibility, then the above argument would not establish the immortality of the soul (though it would still establish the existence of the soul).

However, the possibility simply does not seem coherent. This is what I meant earlier when I mentioned magic - to block my argument you must insist that sometimes things just vanish. Literally, vanish. They have not been destroyed. They have just disappeared. Completely, and utterly and inexplicably.

The reverse would also have to be accepted, of course. That is, you would also have to accept that sometimes things just pop into existence out of nowhere. There is not currently a dinosaur in your garden, but any second one could pop into being and there be no cause of this, no explanation whatsoever. For on what possible grounds could you affirm one and not the other? That is, on what non-arbitrary grounds could you insist that something can become nothing, but nothing cannot become something?

Our reason is our one and only guide to reality. And our reason, or at least the reason of most of us, simply does not accept such possibilities.

So clearly and distinctly does our reason reject it that it has been elevated to the status of a basic principle of reality: the principle of sufficient reason.

And in everyday life you do not accept that something can just disappear, or that something can just spring into existence from nothing. If your wife did not come home one evening you would not accept as a possibility that she just vanished. And if you woke one morning to find a woman in your bed you would not accept that she just materialised there out of nowhere. I mean, try it. Put a woman in your bed and when your wife comes in and finds her there see if the explanation that 'she just appeared there out of nothing" flies. It won't. I think your wife will not accept that explanation - indeed, she'll be insulted by how utterly pathetic it is - because your wife accepts that something cannot come out of nothing, and something cannot become nothing. Your wife is quite right.

And consider complex things - such as a cake. Now, you do not think the cake just came into being and requires no explanation. You accept, surely, that this complex thing's existence is explained by its being composed of parts that have somehow been combined - the flour, the eggs, the sugar, and so forth. And those too have some explanation in terms of whatever it is that they are composed of.

Would there come a point where you would simply accept that the complex ingredients have simply sprung into being? If so, why seek to explain the cake at all - for it is a complex thing, so why not just say 'it sprang into being from nothing'?

But anyway, the simple fact is that of these two premises:

a) Something cannot become nothing
b) something can become nothing

'a' is orders of magnitude more prima facie plausible than 'b'. So to insist upon b's truth to block my conclusion is to allow a weaker premise to overrule a stronger one. And that, of course, is irrational.

So my argument is more reasonably considered sound than unsound. It should persuade a reasonable person. They, of course, are always in short supply, especially here!

[Sunflowers]

I don't know what to say, @Sunflowers. I mean, it's hard to imagine how can somebody get things that wrong.

I'm a professional philosopher. How many of those have you spoken to in your life? If what I say seems wrong to you, have the humility to take seriously that it is you who is mistaken.

After all, wasn't it you who insisted that Descartes did not appeal to indivisibility as an argument for the soul? An argument he did make, an argument he is famous for having made.

Second, knowing a little philosophy can be worse than knowing no philosophy whatsoever.

Yes, you said it. I know a ton of philosophy. You, by contrast, know little. Yet you're confident you know a lot, aren't you? You confidently got Descartes wrong, and yet here you are still as confident as ever and as ignorant as ever. The less they know, the less they know it. Tattoo that across your forehead please so that you may serve as a warning to others.

You seem unaware of the fact that almost all philosophers today, including dualists, consider Cartesian Dualism to be incoherent, primarily because of the mind-body-interaction problem. Furthermore, most philosophers today accept at least methodological naturalism. Also, most philosophers today adhere to positivism, and that means that scientific arguments are welcome in philosophy.

Well, part of that is false - positivism (if by that you mean logical positivism) is almost universally rejected. As for my being unaware that most contemporary philosophers are not Cartesian dualists - er, nothing I said gave you grounds for thinking I was unaware of that. I am abundantly aware of it.

A) they have no good argument against the view. The problem of interaction is shit and I'll show you it is shit the instant you try and describe it. I dare you to give it a go. Go on. Say what it is, and I'll take you to Mr Reason and he'll smack your botty good and proper. Look, most contemporary philosophers are hacks of no marked originality. Unlike you, I've met a lot of them and read their stuff. But if you're interested in numbers - and that's really not how philosophy works, but meh - then historically most philosophers have believed in the immaterality of the mind. I mean, the overwhelming majority of the best philosophers believed in the soul, and believed in it on rational grounds. So, I've got Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, Plato, hell, even Aristotle, on my side. If you choose to side with 'contemporary' philosophers versus my little crowd of geniuses then you're a bigger fool than I think you are (and I think you're a really big one).

B) all of this is irrelevant. The divisibility argument establishes that the mind is immaterial and immortal and simply pointing out that most contemporary philosophers have made it their job to try and show how the mind can be material, is neither here nor there. And that is all they're trying to do. They're trying to show how it is metaphysically possible for the mind to be material (and whether they've succeeded is, of course, contested). But showing that it is metaphysically possible for the mind to be material is not to challenge the idea that it is actually immaterial.

For instance, showing that it is metaphysically possible for me to be in Paris - which is obviously is - is not evidence that I am in Paris. For it is entirely consistent with it being metaphysically possible that I am in Paris that I am in fact in Rome. Likewise, even if it is metaphysically possible for the mind to be material (and it isn't, because the mind is indivisible and all material things are divisible), that would not be evidence that the mind is in fact material, for it would be entirely consistent with this thesis that the mind is in fact immaterial.

Tell you what, get in contact with a contemporary philosopher and ask them to provide you with a good argument against the immateriality of the mind, because I am unaware of one. I am a professional philosopher, and I've never heard a good argument against it. But by all means provide me with one.


As for Descartes and the immortality of the soul: first, stop pretending you're an authority on Descartes. Once again: you've already confidently asserted that Descartes did not appeal to the indivisibility of the mind as evidence that it is a soul, despite the fact that he most certainly did.

Yet rather than being humbled by this, you now insist that he did not think the mind's indivisibility was evidence of its immortality. Interesting!! I wonder if you're right!! You've read the objections and replies section of the Meditations have you? (No, thought not - few have).

[Not The Real JReg]

I'm a professional philosopher.

No you are not.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm a professional philosopher.

No you are not.

Even if he is an academic, he's certainly not professional given his behavior here. He couldn't admit his name if he wanted because then this is what would come up in Google search results.

Interestingly, he holds some uncommon views among philosophers. I'd bet if you Google searched for somebody who subscribes to both antinatalism and particularism and frequently cites god, you'd have a small handful of academics who would come up. (If you do that, don't write his name here)

If @Sunflowers would like to admit who he is privately (by private message) we could settle this question of whether he is a professor or not.
Of course, it would do nothing to bolster his argument about his superior credibility here. Most philosophers do not agree with him on these points and for good reason, and his arguments have already been discredited in this thread. In either case a valid appeal to authority relies on consensus, which means a lot more than the opinion of one academic, *particularly* in philosophy. An issue that is very contentious within a field isn't meaningful to support with appeals to authority because far more authorities disagree, making such an argument counterproductive.

I don't know what to say, @Sunflowers. I mean, it's hard to imagine how can somebody get things that wrong

@teo123 You are, of course, right. I hope, with this experience, you can relate to a bit of the frustration we have when debating with you.

It makes sense for an academic, particularly in philosophy, where there's a bias to have unique ideas. Most philosophers are going to be substantially wrong about something, which is their pet issue (and they have to be, since they all disagree on so much). It's interesting that this guy is substantially wrong about SO MANY things... that is unique. Given that he's probably staked his professional reputation on these claims and basically spent his whole life working on them, it's likely that he's psychologically incapable of accepting correction and admitting he has not only wasted his life on falsehoods but even done harm by promoting them.

To be fair, Teo is on record for changing his mind on a number of topics. He no longer believes the Earth is flat and has had some hard lessons in epistemology and science. He also seems to have given up the claims about the Vukovar massacre being made up. I think he's also softened his position on the "murder should be legal" anarchism to more of a libertarian political position that agrees some laws can be useful.

If there were one example of Sunflowers changing his mind on something, and if I knew he was actually influencing students, then it might be worth engaging here with the potential to save a generation of students from these terrible ideas. I don't think he's actually able to change his mind, though as mentioned. He won't even consider the possibility that quantum mechanics contradicts his third premise.

[teo123]

Other than giving you a lesson in Quantum Mechanics 101

I mean, I haven't really studied quantum mechanics. I didn't even think this was related to quantum mechanics, I thought quantum mechanics was a study of the consequences of the wave-particle-duality. That with photons just popped into my mind when I read that "indivisible things can't be destroyed", I am not even sure I properly explained it. But the fact that somebody who was a good student at high school, and can get into the university to study philosophy, doesn't even seem to know that physics tells us that photons can be turned from particle into energy and vice versa, well, that's just weird.

You are, of course, right. I hope, with this experience, you can relate to a bit of the frustration we have when debating with you.

I don't think that my anarchism is comparable to what Sunflowers is saying.

I'm a professional philosopher.

The fact that you imply talking about metaphysics means limiting yourself to the knowledge that was available in the 17th century strongly suggests you aren't.
But let's assume you are. Philosophy is a broad field. Which parts of philosophy did you publish papers about? Being an expert in one part of philosophy doesn't make you an expert in all philosophy in any way.
I have published a few papers about historical linguistics, about my alternative interpretation of the names of places in Croatia. Yet, I also thought searching for ironic meanings in names and asserting a conspiracy was a valid argument for Vukovar Revisionism, and it was obvious even to laymen here that it wasn't.

How many of those have you spoken to in your life?

A few of them, and they don't talk nonsense like that.

After all, wasn't it you who insisted that Descartes did not appeal to indivisibility as an argument for the soul?

No, I didn't. I said I doubt he used it as an argument for the immortality of the soul. Using it as an argument for the existence of an immaterial soul is an argument with a questionable premise, using it as an argument for the immortality of the soul is obviously an extreme non-sequitur.
The truth is obvious, Descartes didn't say that indivisibility of mind proves immortality of the soul, and you are putting words into Descartes'es mouth here. Which is wrong for many reasons. First of all, it's an argument from authority, and that's in itself fallacious. Second, it's an appeal to unreliable authority, since almost no philosopher today subscribes to Cartesian dualism, therefore Descartes can't be taken seriously about metaphysics. Third, Descartes didn't actually say the stuff you are saying he said.
If you don't see how it's an extreme non-sequitur, you could be a lost case. But let me try to explain with another example: do words need to be divisible? For instance, what would the word "read" be composed of? What can it be decomposed into? Words are abstract entities and it doesn't make sense to talk about half a word. Yes, written words are composed of letters, which are
res extensa and can be divided. Spoken words are composed of sounds, and they can also be divided. But when you say out loud "read" and when you write "read", it's still the same word. You can say words contain phonemes, but words aren't made only of phonemes any more than a mind is made only of memories. Many words can't be divided into smaller words, yet all the words are obviously mortal, and will disappear from a language sooner or later.
Descartes'es main argument for the existence of a soul was, as far as I know, the existence of qualia. That's also an argument with a questionable premise.

positivism (if by that you mean logical positivism) is almost universally rejected

By positivism I mean the idea that scientific arguments are welcome in philosophy. The fact that artificial intelligence is a major topic in philosophy these days proves that.

nothing I said gave you grounds for thinking I was unaware of that.

The fact that you think that Descartes is an authority when it comes to metaphysics.

The problem of interaction is shit and I'll show you it is shit the instant you try and describe it.

Sure.
Problem #1: Is the pituitary gland composed of res extensa or res cogitans? Descartes claimed that those two don't interact, so, either way, it can't be a way for soul and body to communicate.
Problem #2: Descartes claimed that animals other than humans are composed only of res extensa, rather than of both res extensa and res cogitans. If so, how come it is that many animals have a pituitary gland?
Cartesian dualism is an incoherent hypothesis made by somebody who didn't have access to modern science, and the fact that it's incoherent was obvious even in his time. Leibniz tried to make a coherent metaphysical theory by taking some of his ideas and replacing some of them with his ideas about monads. But here is a thing, they both thought they were describing the physical world, rather than expressing some unfalsifiable ideas. Leibniz'es idea about monads was rejected because of the discovery of the atoms, which it couldn't handle. Boscovich'es work, in which he tried to make a more coherent theory than the Leibniz'es monads (and is arguably more in line with modern science), it was rejected because it couldn't handle the existence of electromagnetism. He didn't think he was expressing some unfalsifiable ideas, he thought he was describing the physical world. Boscovich, when he talked about atoms, he meant that there are actual atoms in the world around us, not that there are some metaphysical atoms.

But showing that it is metaphysically possible for the mind to be material is not to challenge the idea that it is actually immaterial.

Actually, it does, by the Occam's Razor. All the things we have ever observed turned out to be material, and there is no reason to think mind should be different.

But by all means provide me with one.

There are countless of them.
David Hume made a relatively good one, which doesn't require knowledge of science to be evaluated, "The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned; their vigour in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death.".
And with the information about neuroscience we have today, the suggestion that mind is not (at least mostly) merely a product of the brain seems ridiculous. If there was a soul controlling the brain, how do you explain the alien hand syndrome? If you assume mind is merely a product of brain, the explanation seems obvious: the part of the brain that controls the hand isn't receiving the information from other parts of the brain.

[Sunflowers]

Most philosophers do not agree with him on these points and for good reason, and his arguments have already been discredited in this thread. In either case a valid appeal to authority relies on consensus, which means a lot more than the opinion of one academic, *particularly* in philosophy. An issue that is very contentious within a field isn't meaningful to support with appeals to authority because far more authorities disagree, making such an argument counterproductive.

I have not appealed to authority. You are, repeatedly, which is why you're so obsessed with whether I really am what I say I am.

I have simply presented an argument and then, when told I don't know what I am talking about or told, condescendingly, false things about Descartes, I have then - then - appealed to my authority. So, when someone addresses the argument - you know, like you're not - I respond with reasoned argument. When someone pretends they know things they don't, I appeal to my authority.

It makes sense for an academic, particularly in philosophy, where there's a bias to have unique ideas. Most philosophers are going to be substantially wrong about something, which is their pet issue (and they have to be, since they all disagree on so much). It's interesting that this guy is substantially wrong about SO MANY things... that is unique. Given that he's probably staked his professional reputation on these claims and basically spent his whole life working on them, it's likely that he's psychologically incapable of accepting correction and admitting he has not only wasted his life on falsehoods but even done harm by promoting them.

More ignorant and incompetent armchair psychologising. First, it wouldn't be in my academic interests to defend these views - the views I am expressing here - in peer review publications given the conservative nature of the academic world, would it? (and that goes for other academic philosophers as well). This place isn't peer reviewed. Academic journals are. Given most philosophers are not immaterialists about the mind, what would be easier - publishing something defending immaterialism about the mind or publishing some pointless piece making some quibbling point about an existing materialist thesis? The latter, obviously. And that's true regardless of whether one thinks materialism is true or not. (So immaterialism about the mind may be much more widely believed than the literature implies).

If there were one example of Sunflowers changing his mind on something, and if I knew he was actually influencing students, then it might be worth engaging here with the potential to save a generation of students from these terrible ideas. I don't think he's actually able to change his mind, though as mentioned. He won't even consider the possibility that quantum mechanics contradicts his third premise.

I love the arrogance. You are not a professional assessor of ideas, are you? So how do you know they're terrible ideas? What authority do you have to make that judgement? You think that you - someone untrained in this area - is better qualified than someone who is trained to know what students ought to be taught? No. That's why you're not employed to make that judgement and I am. ha. I win. What next - you going to give flying a jumbo jet a go because, well, who do the pilots think they are with their training and charts? The arrogance of the pilots thinking they know best what to do. I say give the passengers a go.

Anyway, I think there was someone else who was accused of 'corrupting the youth' by some self-satisfied ignorant idiots, but I can't remember who it was....

[Sunflowers]

I'm a professional philosopher.

No you are not.

Are you?

[Red]

Anyway, I think there was someone else who was accused of 'corrupting the youth' by some self-satisfied ignorant idiots, but I can't remember who it was....

It would be cute if it wasn't so sad.

You are not on the level of Socrates. Please stop with this.