Searching for GOD...

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

You're still not getting it. We have many models for describing aspects of how we engage with the world - aesthetics, morality, language, and yes even gender if you like. There's no universal law about split infinitives though, or about the morality of equal marriage, or about whether the picture of the young woman scratching her backside on a tennis court is good art or lousy art. No-one however says that there are no such things as language or morality or aesthetics or any of these other models. The only disagreement is about how they should be populated, not about whether the models exist.

"Soul" on the other hand is in a different category of belief - along with unicorns and Jack Frost. It's a claim about an objectively true fact about the world - ie that it exists regardless of whether we know about it. And it's trivially easy to conclude that there's no such thing - or more accurately that there are no good reasons so far for thinking there to be such a thing.
 
Short version: if people didn't exist nor would our descriptive models about aesthetics and morality and language and gender; there would still though be mountains and Hailey's Comet and (according to AB) "souls", presumably just hanging around in some kind of celestial waiting room hoping for their future hosts to be pouffed into existence by a god.

These are different categories of belief.

It seems you're not getting it. While there may be no good reason for you to accept the idea of a soul, another person's perception of their reality could be that there is an influence on them apart from biological mechanisms and chemical reactions and such a perception is already accommodated by society, for example in the way courts treat aberrant behavior, or people claiming to have been born in the wrong body. 

Alan seems to have a good reason to label his perception of this influence in religious terms such as "a soul" even though he offers no evidence other than his perception to support his particular concept of a soul or any of the other claims he has made to flesh out his "soul" narrative. He can offer no method to test the concept of a soul let alone prove its existence so claims about a soul that can apparently only be perceived by individuals who believe it exists are not like claims about mountains and Hailey's comet, as we can offer methods to detect and prove their existence objectively.

[Stranger]

No idea why you believe that is the important distinction. The more important distinction is between what is claimed and what can be agreed as being established objectively.

And some claims are about objective reality and some aren't. If a claim is made about objective reality and there is no evidence or reasoning to support it, then it is rational to reject it. That's why what a claim is about is the important distinction.

Alan said "your soul is you" , which I interpreted as meaning that his subjective reality is that even if his brain biology altered significantly, he considers there is a part of him separate from the brain biology that makes up who he is. He has called it a soul as that is the religious terminology that he is familiar with and has acquired a belief in that particular line of thinking. But the claim is expressed by other people using different terminology as part of their subjective reality. It can't move from claim to fact if there is no way to define and test for it objectively.

But he isn't making a claim about his subjective reality, he's making a claim about objective reality. He has stated quite clearly that he doesn't believe brains can produce minds.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And some claims are about objective reality and some aren't. If a claim is made about objective reality and there is no evidence or reasoning to support it, then it is rational to reject it. That's why what a claim is about is the important distinction.

But he isn't making a claim about his subjective reality, he's making a claim about objective reality. He has stated quite clearly that he doesn't believe brains can produce minds.

But I think what is under the spotlight here is what you mean by objective reality and whether it amounts to anything more than physicalism.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

It seems you're not getting it. While there may be no good reason for you to accept the idea of a soul, another person's perception of their reality could be that there is an influence on them apart from biological mechanisms and chemical reactions and such a perception is already accommodated by society, for example in the way courts treat aberrant behavior, or people claiming to have been born in the wrong body. 

Alan seems to have a good reason to label his perception of this influence in religious terms such as "a soul" even though he offers no evidence other than his perception to support his particular concept of a soul or any of the other claims he has made to flesh out his "soul" narrative. He can offer no method to test the concept of a soul let alone prove its existence so claims about a soul that can apparently only be perceived by individuals who believe it exists are not like claims about mountains and Hailey's comet, as we can offer methods to detect and prove their existence objectively.

This has nothing to do with the argument that undoes you. AB asserts something he calls “soul” that’s an objectively real thing that would exist even if no person was aware of it – just as, say, Pluto did before it was found. Aesthetics, gender, language, morality etc on the other hand are human-made models we have developed for ourselves to understand and engage with the world we perceive. If people didn’t exist, nor would any of these models. 

In short, gender and AB’s “soul” are in different categories of belief (subjective vs objective), so your analogy remains a category error. You can address the problem or not as you wish, but so far you’ve just ignored it.

[Stranger]

But I think what is under the spotlight here is what you mean by objective reality...

I'm not using it in any unusual way.

objective Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.

...and whether it amounts to anything more than physicalism.

 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

This has nothing to do with the argument that undoes you. AB asserts something he calls “soul” that’s an objectively real thing that would exist even if no person was aware of it – just as, say, Pluto did before it was found. Aesthetics, gender, language, morality etc on the other hand are human-made models we have developed for ourselves to understand and engage with the world we perceive. If people didn’t exist, nor would any of these models.

Not what it reads like to me. AB's posts seem to infer a soul from his perception that he is using his will to make choices and he has extrapolated that to other people using their will to make choices.

In short, gender and AB’s “soul” are in different categories of belief (subjective vs objective), so your analogy remains a category error. You can address the problem or not as you wish, but so far you’ve just ignored it.

I haven't ignored it - it's called disagreeing with your assessment - you can get used to being disagreed with or not as you wish, on a debate forum.

[SusanDoris]

Not what it reads like to me. AB's posts seem to infer a soul from his perception that he is using his will to make choices

What AB infers from his post is a mystery to all but himself, I think! What his posts demonstrate, as far as I'm concerned, is very muddled thinking, using a random word salad each time.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Not what it reads like to me. AB's posts seem to infer a soul from his perception that he is using his will to make choices and he has extrapolated that to other people using their will to make choices.

No – he’s said clearly and repeatedly that he thinks “soul” to be an objective, out there, factual truth about something that exists independently of whether or not we know about it. So far as he's concerned his little man at the controls really is a little man at the controls. He fundamentally does not think "soul" to be just a human-made, subjective, functionally useful tool for engaging with reality (like morality, language etc).

That is, he does not think that without us his souls would not exist.     

I haven't ignored it - it's called disagreeing with your assessment - you can get used to being disagreed with or not as you wish, on a debate forum.

Of course you’ve ignored it, and you can’t disagree with something if you make no attempt to address it.

“Souls” according to AB actually exist whether we’re aware of them or not; gender, language, morality etc on the other hand exist only because we have developed them for ourselves. That’s why conflating them is a category error. If your attempt to get out of that is to decide that AB doesn’t actually mean everything he’s ever told us he means when he talks about “souls” that’s something you’ll have to take up with him.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

No – he’s said clearly and repeatedly that he thinks “soul” to be an objective, out there, factual truth about something that exists independently of whether or not we know about it. So far as he's concerned his little man at the controls really is a little man at the controls. He fundamentally does not think "soul" to be just a human-made, subjective, functionally useful tool for engaging with reality (like morality, language etc).

That is, he does not think that without us his souls would not exist.     

Of course you’ve ignored it, and you can’t disagree with something if you make no attempt to address it.

“Souls” according to AB actually exist whether we’re aware of them or not; gender, language, morality etc on the other hand exist only because we have developed them for ourselves. That’s why conflating them is a category error. If your attempt to get out of that is to decide that AB doesn’t actually mean everything he’s ever told us he means when he talks about “souls” that’s something you’ll have to take up with him.

Nope. You're still not getting it. AB infers what he calls a soul based on his personal experience of how he thinks he makes decisions. That's subjective and a narrative he has created, influenced by existing religious narratives. Some/ many trans people thinks they are born in the wrong body based on their personal experiences of how they perceive their authentic selves, which they separate from biology or anatomy. Saying there is a you that was born in the wrong body is a subjective assessment and a body is not something we have created for ourselves, unlike cultural norms about who wears dresses.

That you interpret AB's statements in a different way and interpret my disagreement of your interpretation as me ignoring something or making no attempt to address it, is your problem. Not much I can do about the way you interpret posts.

[Gordon]

Nope. You're still not getting it. AB infers what he calls a soul based on his personal experience of how he thinks he makes decisions. That's subjective and a narrative he has created, influenced by existing religious narratives.

At one point Alan opined that he thought the 'soul' originated in a dimension other than ours (though he never did explain this) so I think he does envisage this 'soul' as being somehow independent of humans and that it has independent agency too: that he thinks 'soul' is an objective fact.

Perhaps he could clear this up by explaining exactly what he means by 'soul'.

[ekim]

Perhaps he could clear this up by explaining exactly what he means by 'soul'.

.... and perhaps he could include it in the recently opened topic 'Soul'.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

At one point Alan opined that he thought the 'soul' originated in a dimension other that ours (though he never did explain this) so I think he does envisage this 'soul' as being somehow independent of humans and that it has independent agency too: that he thinks 'soul' is an objective fact.

Perhaps he could clear this up by explaining exactly what he means by 'soul'.

I'm sure Alan has come up with theories to explain how a soul is not biological, such as it is  supernatural or from another dimension. My point is that these explanations came about after he perceived he had a soul based on his view of how he experiences making decisions. When I compared it to trans people who express the view that they have an authentic self that has been born in the wrong body, I was making the comparison that some trans people believe they have an spiritual/ non-physical/ immaterial essence that is stuck in the wrong body rather than that they are not free to ignore cultural norms people have created about how they should dress.     

Alan's idea of a soul having agency is probably linked to his belief about the existence of a god that influences our morality - it sounds like he thinks his soul is influenced by god to influence his moral choices. But as you say, I might have interpreted his post in a different way from what he meant. 

[Stranger]

Nope. You're still not getting it. AB infers what he calls a soul based on his personal experience of how he thinks he makes decisions. That's subjective and a narrative he has created, influenced by existing religious narratives.

Part of Alan's problem is that he's taking his subjective experience and then claiming that he can draw objective conclusions about the existence of a soul from those experiences. That's a point that has been made many, many times in the course of the discussion.

He's also claimed that his argument is a "logical analysis" (it's a laughable claim, admittedly, but he obviously thinks there is a logical, objective case to be made) and he's frequently claimed that "physical chains of cause and effect" cannot explain his "demonstrable" freedom to choose. He's claimed that his soul exists apart from the brain and interacts with it and has suggested that this is via quantum indeterminacy. That's not only an objective claim, it's a scientific claim.

I'm totally mystified as to how you can possibly think that he isn't making objective claims.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Part of Alan's problem is that he's taking his subjective experience and then claiming that he can draw objective conclusions about the existence of a soul from those experiences. That's a point that has been made many, many times in the course of the discussion.

He's also claimed that his argument is a "logical analysis" (it's a laughable claim, admittedly, but he obviously thinks there is a logical, objective case to be made) and he's frequently claimed that "physical chains of cause and effect" cannot explain his "demonstrable" freedom to choose. He's claimed that his soul exists apart from the brain and interacts with it and has suggested that this is via quantum indeterminacy. That's not only an objective claim, it's a scientific claim.

I'm totally mystified as to how you can possibly think that he isn't making objective claims.

I think he is making an objective claim that is drawn from his perception of his experiences of making decisions. All he has is this perception of his decision-making - everything else is just what Alan has added to his perception and is a variation on saying "I don't know" in trying to define the soul or explain how it doesn't exist in the material world but in another dimension. He can claim his soul is made from pre-universe pre-atoms or the same substance as god and lives in the spiritual realm as no method is offered to test these claims. But those objective claims are secondary conjectures and all stem from his perceived reality, which is subjective, of how he makes decisions.

My comparison was to trans people making an objective claim based on their subjective perceived reality that they have a female or male essence / soul/ identity/ non-physical aspect/ authentic self that is trapped in the wrong biological body, which supports their claim that they really are a man or a woman, and that biology or anatomy is irrelevant to who they really are. This is not the same as claiming they don't want to conform to cultural gender identity stereotypes manufactured by society about how they dress or their preferred hobbies.

My point was that as a society we are already accommodating subjective perceptions by trans people that lead to objective claims, and i also mentioned as an example how the judicial system does not take the approach that all our thoughts are derived from our biology and chemistry but does take the approach that our thoughts / intentions / motivations will be judged differently from our bio-chemistry.

Hence, my post was that it seemed pointless to think that Alan is able to deny his perception of his reality of how he makes decisions. You can keep going around in circles but it would be as pointless as trying to convince a trans woman that they are a man, despite their perceived reality that they possess a female essence, even if they can't explain what that means. I was not addressing Alan's secondary conjectures about his supernatural soul existing in another dimension and having some connection with god, if that was one of his claims. If something exists in the material world and can therefore be tested it is not supernatural, and therefore does not fit with Alan's perceived reality of a supernatural involvement in his choices.

[wigginhall]

I thought that Alan claims that there is a supernatural entity, (soul), which controls the brain, and hence choices.  Also, this comes from God.   But these seem to be pure assertions; without evidence or arguments.

[Stranger]

Sorry Gabriella but the comparison is still just as absurd. Alan's claims are about things external to the content of human minds and those of gender identity are not.

You also seem to think you can read Alan's mind. I'm going on what he's actually said in his posts. He doesn't say that he doesn't know or that some of his claims are secondary conjectures - quite the opposite.

[Gordon]

In addition Alan seems to think that 'souls' aren't subject to either determinism or randomness, which effectively sets 'souls' apart from everything else - yet 'souls' can somehow routinely interact with our biology.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

Nope. You're still not getting it. AB infers what he calls a soul based on his personal experience of how he thinks he makes decisions. That's subjective and a narrative he has created, influenced by existing religious narratives. Some/ many trans people thinks they are born in the wrong body based on their personal experiences of how they perceive their authentic selves, which they separate from biology or anatomy. Saying there is a you that was born in the wrong body is a subjective assessment and a body is not something we have created for ourselves, unlike cultural norms about who wears dresses.

That you interpret AB's statements in a different way and interpret my disagreement of your interpretation as me ignoring something or making no attempt to address it, is your problem. Not much I can do about the way you interpret posts.

Flat wrong again for the reason I explained and you have still ignored. If you think that you know better than AB does what AB actually says he means when he asserts his little man at the controls then take it up with him. The words he uses though unequivocally tell us that he thinks there to be an objectively real and independent "soul" regardless of whether or not we’re aware of it. Gender, language, morality, aesthetics etc by contrast are human-made models – which is fundamentally not what AB tells us he thinks a “soul” to be.

That's not a difference of interpretation at all - it's just a matter of reading the plain word he uses (albeit in the service of disastrous reasoning).

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Sorry Gabriella but the comparison is still just as absurd. Alan's claims are about things external to the content of human minds and those of gender identity are not.

Ok - no reason why you need to agree with me - we'll just have to disagree on this one.

My view is still that, based on the posts I've read, Alan's claim of a soul seems to be based on what he perceives as going on in his head when he makes a decision. Perception of your own process of decision-making is mind-related. If he has claimed to have external evidence apart from his own perceptions of a soul interacting with his brain to make decisions, let me know the post number and I will have a read, as the posts I read all seemed to be about him feeling and demonstrating his freedom to choose.

His claim of another dimension apart from the ones that everyone experiences is not a claim that can be tested so is not like the existence of a mountain or Pluto - the dimension currently exists only in Alan's mind, based on his reasoning that if the soul giving him the free-will that he perceives he has, is not something material or part of the natural world or subject to natural laws, it must be in an alternate dimension.

As I said earlier, trans people thinking they are men or women is also based on what they perceive inside their heads - many say they have an innate compulsion to behave in a way that is not in line with their anatomy or biology. Current research is that it is not social norms and nurture (human cultural constructs) that solely dictate behavioural differences between men and women, so gender is not just a social construct. 

You also seem to think you can read Alan's mind. I'm going on what he's actually said in his posts. He doesn't say that he doesn't know or that some of his claims are secondary conjectures - quite the opposite.

Not at all, I think I am interpreting what he actually said in his posts, which is that he perceives free will when he is making decisions and he believes the source of this free will is a soul. And I have allowed for the possibility that my interpretation of his posts are not what he was trying to convey. Posters reading and interpreting ideas in other people's posts in order to continue the discussion seems to have worked fine on all the other threads on this forum. No reason to make an exception for this thread or Alan's posts.

Not sure what the difference is between me attempting to interpret Alan's words and all the theories other posters have come up with about what is in Alan's mind, including his supposed motivations and fears.

I am not saying that Alan said anything was a secondary conjecture. What I am saying is that my interpretation of his posts is that his subjective perception of free-will is the basis for him believing this free-will is related to a soul. And I am saying that my interpretation of his posts is that all his other guesses about which dimension souls exist in and what they are made of etc are secondary to his perception he has a soul giving him free-will. And that if he perceives this as his reality, I don't see how he can perceive something different, though he can of course choose to say he perceives he doesn't have free-will or a soul. Presumably he would feel the same way as a trans woman who can also choose to say she is a man i.e. not being authentic.

By the way, my posts are going to be even longer than they need to be if I have to keep writing "my interpretation of his posts" in every sentence....

[Stranger]

His claim of another dimension apart from the ones that everyone experiences is not a claim that can be tested so is not like the existence of a mountain or Pluto - the dimension currently exists only in Alan's mind, based on his reasoning that if the soul giving him the free-will that he perceives he has, is not something material or part of the natural world or subject to natural laws, it must be in an alternate dimension.

As I said earlier, trans people thinking they are men or women is also based on what they perceive inside their heads - many say they have an innate compulsion to behave in a way that is not in line with their anatomy or biology. Current research is that it is not social norms and nurture (human cultural constructs) that solely dictate behavioural differences between men and women, so gender is not just a social construct. 

There's the fundamental difference. Alan has gone from how he subjectively feels about something to a proposed explanation of it in the objective world. I don't think for a minute that Alan thinks his soul isn't every bit as real as a mountain or Pluto. That's what he keeps on trying to convince us of.

Not sure what the difference is between me attempting to interpret Alan's words and all the theories other posters have come up with about what is in Alan's mind, including his supposed motivations and fears.

The difference is that yours seems to have little to do with what he actually said. He is trying to convince us of the (logical, in his mind) necessity of the existence of souls as real, objective parts of the world. Yet again, he frequently makes the scientific claim that brains cannot produce minds.

Alan's claims that brains cannot produce minds and that all humans have a non-physical soul, is either objectively true or objectively false. It's a claim about the external world, not about the contents of his mind.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

As I said, I wasn’t making comparisons about Alan’s explanations so not much point leaving out the first part of my post and including the part I wasn’t making a comparison about.

I was making comparisons about Alan’s subjective perception of reality and how he is not going to state something opposite to what he believes is true and comparing it with subjective perceptions of reality made by trans people that they were born in the wrong body.

Alan’s perception of free will may well be as real to him as Pluto or a mountain, and when people believe a claim to be true they don’t tend to phrase their claim as “this is true for me”, especially if they are evangelising. In the absence of evidence for their claim that other people find credible, such as objective evidence, I don’t know about you but I view the claim as a belief. I don’t see viewing the claim as a belief is reading Alan’s mind or is not based on his words, that’s how I treat all claims put to me

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

Alan’s perception of free will may well be as real to him as Pluto or a mountain, and when people believe a claim to be true they don’t tend to phrase their claim as “this is true for me”, especially if they are evangelising. In the absence of evidence for their claim that other people find credible, such as objective evidence, I don’t know about you but I view the claim as a belief. I don’t see viewing the claim as a belief is reading Alan’s mind or is not based on his words, that’s how I treat all claims put to me

Can I ask you why you insist that you are a shape-shifting lizard alien with a penchant for picked eggs on Fridays? Of course that’s just my interpretation of your words, but if you think I’m wrong about that then I guess we’ll just have to disagree.

See, that’s the thing when you claim an “interpretation” that's unrelated to the words you're supposedly interpreting. You can say anything you like and when someone points out that there’s no coherent way to arrive at that interpretation rather than address the problem you can just retreat to, “we’ll just have to disagree then” as if the question is an open one.

AB insists not only that souls are as real for him as mountains and Pluto, but that they are real as mountains and Pluto for everyone else too if only we had the insight or (especially ludicrously) the “courage” to realise it. That is, he asserts them to be an objectively true fact about the world that's true for everyone, only some of us just don’t see it.

By contrast, questions about language, aesthetics, morality, gender etc are opinions – they’re subjectively derived and they make no claim to being necessarily true for anyone else. I might really, really think that, say, split infinitives are fine, that gender should be determined by shoe size, that equal marriage is a good thing except on Tuesdays and that Sassoferrato's Virgin Mary is a terrific work of art but I cannot claim these opinions to be facts that are true for everyone else if only they could see it.

That’s why you made a category error, and no amount to post facto convolutions about AB’s “perception” changes that.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

Can I ask you why you insist that you are a shape-shifting lizard alien with a penchant for picked eggs on Fridays? Of course that’s just my interpretation your words, but if you think I’m wrong about that then I guess we’ll just have to disagree.

See, that’s the thing when you claim an “interpretation” that has nothing to do with the words you're supposedly interpreting. You can say anything you like and when someone points out that there’s no coherent way to arrive at that interpretation rather than address the problem you can just retreat to, “we’ll just have to disagree then” as if the question is an open one.

If you genuinely interpret my post as me insisting I am a shape-shifting lizard, that's fine. It's then up to me to decide if I want to try to clarify my meaning by writing further posts and continue the discussion. If we're discussing someone else's posts rather than what I wrote, then yes we'll have to agree to disagree if the shape-shifting lizard is your interpretation of the post.

AB insists not only that souls are as real for him as mountains and Pluto, but that they are real as mountains and Pluto for everyone else too if only we had the insight or (especially ludicrously) the “courage” to realise it. That is, he asserts them to be an objectively true fact about the world that's true for everyone, only some of us just don’t see it.

By contrast, questions about language, aesthetics, morality, gender etc are opinions – they’re subjectively derived and they make no claim to being necessarily true for anyone else. I might really, really think that, say, split infinitives are fine, that gender should be determined by shoe size, that equal marriage is a good thing except on Tuesdays and that Tintoretto’s Last Supper is a terrific work of art but I cannot claim these opinions to be facts that are true for everyone else if only they could see it.

That’s why you made a category error, and no amount to post facto convolutions about AB’s “perception” changes that.

I've already addressed this in my previous post and disagree with your assessment and conclusions for the reasons given.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

If you genuinely interpret my post as me insisting I am a shape-shifting lizard, that's fine. It's then up to me to decide if I want to try to clarify my meaning by writing further posts and continue the discussion. If we're discussing someone else's posts rather than what I wrote, then yes we'll have to agree to disagree if the shape-shifting lizard is your interpretation of the post.

No it isn’t fine. If you want to claim an interpretation unrelated to what someone actually says, then the interpretation is worthless and whatever consequential argument you’re attempting collapses. 

I've already addressed this in my previous post and disagree with your assessment and conclusions for the reasons given.

No you haven’t – you’ve just avoided it by diverting into irrelevant discussion about AB’s supposed perception. The point remains that conflating the subjective (eg, opinions about gender) with the objective (eg, claims of fact about “souls”) is a category error. If you don’t want to address that, that’s up to you.   

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

No it isn’t fine. If you want to claim an interpretation unrelated to what someone actually says, then the interpretation is worthless and whatever consequential argument you’re attempting collapses.

It is fine because in a discussion it is up to me to clarify what I mean by my posts and to tell you that I wasn't trying to express that I am a shape-shifting lizard when I wrote the post. That's how discussion works - if people wish to continue the discussion they write another post explaining what they meant by what they wrote that they think you have misinterpreted. 

No you haven’t – you’ve just avoided it by diverting into irrelevant discussion about AB’s supposed perception. The point remains that conflating the subjective (eg, opinions about gender) with the objective (eg, claims of fact about “souls”) is a category error. If you don’t want to address that, that’s up to you.

I haven't avoided anything - for the reasons already given, which is that the only comparison I was making was about Alan's perceptions of reality based on what he perceives himself as experiencing when he makes decisions. How about I save us some time - you can carry on insisting I meant something else, and I can carry on clarifying what I meant if you like, and then I can say we'll just have to agree to disagree and you can say you refuse to agree to disagree, and that's fine - because only you can decide whether you want to agree to disagree or not. And you can have the last word saying you think I'm wrong and you're right.