(2023-06-12, 11:45 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I disagree. I think humans can have thoughts about things. I am having thoughts about things right now, as a matter of fact.
Ah, you are having thoughts too? So Rosenberg is wrong?
If material things cannot have thoughts, how do you know that immaterial things can have thoughts? Wouldn't all the arguments that say material things cannot have thoughts also apply to immaterial things? How do immaterial things get around that? By magic?
How do you define physical and non-physical? What does one even mean when he says a soul is non-physical? I don't even know what that word means.
How can one have a non-materialist conception of the brain. Are you suggesting it might not be material? Is anything material?
I agree. I present my beliefs, but I am in no sense a fanatic about my beliefs, and I do not demand everyone believe what I do.
Physicalists, holding to a particular metaphysical position, are the ones who've told us that "physical" means lacking mental character. This has led them into the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which is really the Hard Problem of Aboutness, Hard Problem of Subjectivity, Hard Problem of Rationality, and Hard Problem of Memory.
Of course as previously noted the "physical" beyond this definition seems quite unclear and given the varied QM interpretations it's not clear even mental character is ruled out if one insists "
physical" is what is revealed
by physics.
So really things like the Hard Problem, and Materialism needing a logically impossible Something-From-Nothing miracle to produce consciousness, are due to how Physicalists insist "physical" has to mean no mental aspects.
To requote Peter Sjöstedt-H:
Quote:It is often expected that a position be defined before it be rejected. In the case of physicalism, however, a reason for rejecting the position is the fact that it cannot be properly defined. This ambiguity in the meaning of “physicalism” is brought out through what is known as Hempel’s Dilemma, named after its formulation by philosopher Carl G. Hempel,[1] though it was in fact formulated earlier by Herbert Feigl.[2] The dilemma: it seems that the meaning of physicalism can be grasped through either of two horns. The first horn is exclusive belief in the phenomena of current physics, such as matter-energy, space-time, the fundamental interactions, and so on. The problem herewith is that such a belief is highly unlikely to be true. This is in part because we can witness the constant change of physics through history, realizing that our current state of understanding is but a moment within this history and thus, by pessimistic induction,[3] we realize that physics is likely to continue changing. Secondly, as is well known, the current state of physics cannot be final due, in particular, to the inconsistency between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Thirdly, as will be seen below, the role of the mind in current physics is undetermined.
Thus a self-proclaimed physicalist might therefore instead embrace the second horn of the dilemma: belief in the phenomena of a future, ideal physics. Yet there are two chief problems with this alternative. Firstly, how could one believe in physicalism if one did not know what that was? One may almost as well profess one’s adamant belief in drallewertism. Secondly, it may turn out that a future physics would include mentality amongst its fundamental elements. But because physicalism, as material monism, is as such opposed to dualism (one where mind and matter are equally fundamental), such a possibility would seem to contradict the current understanding of physicalism. As a result of this implication, many self-proclaimed physicalists add a “no-fundamental-mentality” condition to the meaning of physicalism to preclude such a possibility.[4] However, one cannot determine the future direction of physics, thus physicalism, by advancing ad hoc exclusionary clauses to suit one’s current preferences. It may well be that a future physics will be contrary to “physicalism,” as understood in such current exclusionary terms.
If you want to get past Materialism's Something from Nothing problem and make a convincing case souls need brains you would need to have a different conception of matter ->
For example, the Catholic Scholastics hold qualia are in the world (negating the Hard Problem of Subjectivity) and all matter had final causes (a teleology) which would (arguably) allow brain parts to inherently be about things. This latter aspect would (arguably) negate the Hard Problem of Aboutness.
(I say "arguably" because I'm not sure how it would work or if it could work, but I've seen more than one Catholic Scholastic say something along these lines.)
However the Scholastics still hold that there are aspects of mind that are distinct from what is physical. Namely those that turn on Rationality. So they would partly agree with the paper linked above in this respect:
Quote:If one accepts, as even Papineau suggests, that there exists what the logician Frege called “the third realm”[16] (beyond physicality and mentality) of objective truths—such as the truth of modus ponens, the properties of Pi, the Pythagorean theorem, or the Form of Beauty—truths that exist whether or not they are discovered, meaning that they are in essence neither mental nor physical (as there can be no neural correlates of non-existent mental events), then it implies that their existence has an effect upon the physical through their discovery. For example, the discovery of the golden ratio had an effect upon the bodies of its discoverers in terms of their expression of it, and subsequently upon mathematics, aesthetics, architecture, and upon me in writing this essay. Thus the existence of such universal truths implies the falsity of one of physicalism’s key tenets: the causal closure of the physical. Universals crack open the causal closure principle of physicalism, which is to say they crack open physicalism itself.
Of course, a physicalist could deny the existence of such universals, such objective truths. But in doing so, he would destroy the underlying assumptions of his position and thus succumb to inconsistency regardless. If physicalism considers itself to be a logical position, it must maintain the underlying truths of the laws of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction, formal fallacies, and so on. But these laws are not the laws of physics, which as such can be established through empirical observation or through modelling. Thus emerges another predicament for physicalism: the dilemma of logical objectivity. On the one side, if the laws of logic are to be considered objective—that is, they are true for all—then they must exist in a non-temporal, non-physical third realm that has causal influence upon the physical, thereby annulling the causal closure principle and, in turn, physicalism. On the other side, if the laws of logic are considered to be not objective, then physicalism cannot claim to be objectively logical. Either way, physicalism falters.
Where, as I understand, the Scholastic would differ is rejecting a "third realm". Rather that the intellect holds the capacity for logic and it is that part of the Mind that is not physical. As Feser writes in
Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought:
Quote:Now an Aristotelian who takes the redness we see really to exist in the rose,
and who regards material processes to be inherently directed toward ends beyond
themselves insofar as they are teleological, is not going to find such arguments
compelling if intended as a completely general critique of materialism. What
such arguments show is at most only that qualia and intentionality cannot be
material given the “mechanistic” conception of matter the early moderns inherited
from the Greek atomists. But the arguments do not show that these features
cannot be material given some other conception of matter—and indeed, they
are material on an Aristotelian conception of matter.
Quote:Of course, writers like Aristotle and Aquinas did regard certain aspects of
intellectual activity as immaterial, and intellectual activity is certainly an instance
of intentionality. Indeed, contemporary philosophers typically regard beliefs as
the paradigm instances of intentionality. But for Aristotle and Aquinas, that a
belief is “directed toward” or “points to” its object is not what makes it immate-
rial; indeed, non-human animals have internal states that are “directed toward”
objects—for example, a dog’s desire for food is “directed toward” the food—but
they do not have beliefs, certainly not in the sense we have them. The reason is
that they do not have concepts; and it is the ability to form concepts, to com-
bine them together into judgments, and to go from one judgment to another
in accordance with the principles of logic, that not only marks the difference
between human and non-human animals, but also the difference between a
truly immaterial faculty and the purely material, sensory capacities we share
with the lower animals.
So you could maybe go this route and end up with the Scholastic claim that the soul needs a brain and has to wait for God to give it a new brain & body after Judgement Day or however it works. The challenge for Scholastics is their conception of matter, even to those like me who reject standard Physicalism as a metaphysics, seems wrong in some way or another. It isn't clear that
causal dispositions - what less religious philosophers would see as akin to "final causes" - can accommodate the Mind's Aboutness for example.
Also unclear if qualia are in the world because of issues like color blindness. So really no clear reason to accept Scholasticism, which I think would have been the best bet for you to make a case for the "Souls need brains" position. Even if they were right, Survival cases have the dead possessing bodies of some kind...so worst case would be God makes special new bodies for the soul which needs these bodies to actually exercise the Rational faculty that marks it as immaterial.
Of course part of the issue with "Souls need Brains" is the position accepts the existence of souls and Survival cases are rife with examples of souls having memory. As such you would need an argument that is so good that a vast number of Survival cases - possibly all but the looping apparition cases - could be dismissed. You could argue the Survival cases are all flawed, but this is an odd tactic for the "Souls need Brains" position as existence of souls is assumed. Even if Survival cases aren't good enough to convince one of the afterlife, once souls are assumed they seem more than adequate to give us a picture of what this assumed soul existence is like.
As an aside, the last line in the last quote concerns the supposed difference between animal and human minds...Finally this question of animals and souls sees some relevance. Some theists seem to hate the idea, but I've never seen a problem if animals have souls. I certainly don't think animals having mental faculties makes said faculties material in [the] way Physicalists would use the term "material". Why I've never grasped the reason you bring up animal souls as if this were some reason to suddenly accept Physicalism-Materialism as true.
In fact, Physicalism-Materialism's ad hoc criteria that something "physical" or "material" exists without any mental characteristics opens it up to even more problems ->
Why evolutionary theory contradicts materialism
Is Matter Conscious? - Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics.