Atheist defends the Soul: Substance Dualism with Michael Huemer

Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to defend interactionist substance dualism, the view that the mind and body are composed of different substances and can exert causal influence over each other.

Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Real... /

timestamps /
00:00 Intro
00:41 Why dualism instead of physicalism?
20:34 Emergence
30:47 Epiphenomenalism and Other Minds
37:53 Emergence II
39:45 Mental Substance and Spacetime
50:56 Personal Identity
1:09:44 Reincarnation
1:23:38 Audience Qs: Embodiment and Pairing
1:30:16 God

In this episode of the Parker's Pensées Podcast, I'm joined once again by Dr. Michael Huemer. This time we discuss two of his recent papers in which he argues that the probability we are reincarnated given the infinity of the past and the future is 1, and that we are immaterial souls! Huemer is a non-religious philosopher who argues for substance dualism and reincarnation! It's wild, but he's super sharp and provides really strong arguments for his conclusions.

Find more from Huemer here: https://fakenous.net/


Don't click on the link, seems the site is gone for whatever reason

Thanks for that sci! I am still watching the first video, and I definitely like Michael Heumer and his philosophy.

He has the guts (as an academic philosopher) to say that space and time are qualitatively different and that therefore even SR is somehow false - possibly because SR asserts there is no preferred frame of reference! He also supports Dualism.

His views about SR may relate to the fact that there are other theories of SR and GR that give similar/identical results, but don't have the same philosophical implications.

A big problem with science (as I see it) is that when someone invents a new theory T for some phenomenon, scientists are given a period of a few years in which to shoot the theory down or replace it, but at some point it becomes horrendously hard to displace T because the referees of any potential alternative have already used T for their own work!

It is as though science were organised a little like the fashion industry. If someone invents a new fashion nobody is supposed to copy it or even produce a similar product because all the rights (and $$$) should go to the original designer.

David

I think his reasoning is extraordinarily poor. Arguing against the existence of multiple universes on the basis that you don't experience the lives of other versions of yourself is flawed. He assumes, a priori, that thoughts do not have a physical representation, which can lead to any conclusion you desire. However, the issue arises if the underlying premises prove to be incorrect.

I think his reasoning is extraordinarily poor. Arguing against the existence of multiple universes on the basis that you don't experience the lives of other versions of yourself is flawed. He assumes, a priori, that thoughts do not have a physical representation, which can lead to any conclusion you desire. However, the issue arises if the underlying premises prove to be incorrect.

Do you have time stamps for what you are referring to.

Re: why there no physical representations that can represent thoughts, I believe he explains why in the second video (I might be mixing the two videos up which is why I ask for timestamps).

Also unclear why we would ever think there could be physical representations of thoughts, at least in the way the Materialist faith defines "physical". Also unclear why this can lead to any conclusion.

Seems to me once someone accepts the Materialist religion and the Something from Nothing miracle it requires due to its definition of the "physical" one can believe in anything...probably why [some of] the faithful of that belief system can believe in evidence-less stuff like MWI so long as it negates the arguments for Cosmic Fine Tuning.

Thanks for that sci! I am still watching the first video, and I definitely like Michael Heumer and his philosophy.

He has the guts (as an academic philosopher) to say that space and time are qualitatively different and that therefore even SR is somehow false - possibly because SR asserts there is no preferred frame of reference! He also supports Dualism.

His views about SR may relate to the fact that there are other theories of SR and GR that give similar/identical results, but don't have the same philosophical implications.

A big problem with science (as I see it) is that when someone invents a new theory T for some phenomenon, scientists are given a period of a few years in which to shoot the theory down or replace it, but at some point it becomes horrendously hard to displace T because the referees of any potential alternative have already used T for their own work!

It is as though science were organised a little like the fashion industry. If someone invents a new fashion nobody is supposed to copy it or even produce a similar product because all the rights (and $$$) should go to the original designer.

David

I'm wary of saying too much about SR/GR as while I have studied physics I am MANY years removed from those days.

I do agree that Time and Space are fundamentally different and to simply accept that Time is a Spatial 4D axial direction is [an unwarranted] leap. The physicist Adam Frank has actually commented on this as well:

In Bergson's philosophy, there was something greater to time than just measurements. Time was so central to human experience that fully unpacking it meant going beyond mere accounts of clocks or of even "psychological" perceptions. Instead, time was intimately connected to the bedrock of what it means to experience the world. It was, in some sense, the essence of human being and hence of being itself. For Bergson, that meant purely scientific accounts could not exhaust time's meaning or importance.

Note Frank has Co-Authored the forthcoming The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience.

Do you have time stamps for what you are referring to.

Re: why there no physical representations that can represent thoughts, I believe he explains why in the second video (I might be mixing the two videos up which is why I ask for timestamps).

Also unclear why we would ever think there could be physical representations of thoughts, at least in the way the Materialist faith defines "physical". Also unclear why this can lead to any conclusion.

In the second video he makes himself Noble price worthy in the first 5 minutes by refuting the possibility of other universes as summarized above.

Seems to me once someone accepts the Materialist religion and the Something from Nothing miracle it requires due to its definition of the "physical" one can believe in anything...probably why [some of] the faithful of that belief system can believe in evidence-less stuff like MWI so long as it negates the arguments for Cosmic Fine Tuning.

Science emphasizes objectivity and replicability, ensuring that results are not influenced by the researcher's bias and can be reproduced by others. It’s not a belief system but a methodology. MWI is a possible interpretation of QM. It’s incomprehensible but so is QM. While I don’t subscribe to MWI I believe that ultimate reality is fundamentally incomprehensible to us and naive arguments like those presented in the video bears little meaning.

In the second video he makes himself Noble price worthy in the first 5 minutes by refuting the possibility of other universes as summarized above.


Science emphasizes objectivity and replicability, ensuring that results are not influenced by the researcher's bias and can be reproduced by others. It’s not a belief system but a methodology. MWI is a possible interpretation of QM. It’s incomprehensible but so is QM. While I don’t subscribe to MWI I believe that ultimate reality is fundamentally incomprehensible to us and naive arguments like those presented in the video bears little meaning.

You seem to be judging an argument he briefly recounts for the sake of moving onto the main topic. I'll look into his papers for that particular detail and comment on that bit later.

And I didn't say Science was a belief system, I said the Materialist faith is a belief system since it defines the "physical" as lacking mental qualities but then turns around and says the consciousness containing those qualities is an "illusion".

That is "extraordinarily poor reasoning" that I think only a religious fanatic for scientism + atheism could swallow. I think such people actually believe in God and fear Hell so much they'll take any way out of feeling the terror of damnation.

And I didn't say Science was a belief system, I said the Materialist faith is a belief system  ...

Very important distinction.

I'm wary of saying too much about SR/GR as while I have studied physics I am MANY years removed from those days.

Me too, and I never attended a course on GR (only the much simpler SR). The problem is, perhaps, that a situation has developed in science in which physicists have come to only believe the maths - totally ignoring philosophy and common sense.

I do agree that Time and Space are fundamentally different and to simply accept that Time is a Spatial 4D axial direction is [an unwarranted] leap. The physicist Adam Frank has actually commented on this as well:

Of course, when people talk about 4D spacetime they forget (or don't know) that spacetime isn't analogous to space because whereas space has a diagonal metric containing all ones, spacetime actually singles out the time dimension with a -1. The older way of describing spacetime was nicer because it was explicit - the fourth dimension is actually c*t*sqrt(-1).

Note Frank has Co-Authored the forthcoming The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience.

Wow thanks! That sounds like a yet another interesting link - and maybe a book to discuss in a thread here.

David