Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

What is doing these actions? Surely the brain is a key player. Are other physical entities involved? Perhaps. Are other non-physical entities involved? I think we can rule that out be definition. After all, if any entity affects something physical, then it seems to me, by definition, that entity would be physical.

That is very unclear. In the Copenhagen interpretation of QM it is consciousness that collapses the wave function.

If you think of a simple double slit experiment, then you can say that the wave function (of each photon) collapses when it hits the screen. However, since the screen is made of particles that are also obeying the laws of QM it is not clear why the wavefunction should collapse at this point. The physicists who came up with the Copenhagen interpretation certainly didn't include consciousness in the fundamentals of physics without a very good reason!

The physicist Henry Stapp has studied how consciousness can couple with matter in a bit more detail. He is easy to GOOGLE if you want more details.

David

The damage to the mind after damage to the brain is real. I see no question about that.

If a spirit intertwined with a brain loses the ability to remember when the brain loses the ability to remember, how would the soul remember anything about my life after my brain is gone? It seems it relies on what the brain knows.

How do you really know that the soul relies on what the brain knows? First thing, please define what you term the soul. It doesn't seem to be anything like the standard meaning of the term in English, which is an immaterial spiritual entity in part comprising the human self; this soul would by definition not be limited to or be composed entirely of the physical brain neurological structures. You appear to define the word soul  as meaning nothing more than the human self, which of course in physical life is drastically limited through its occupancy of the physical brain with all its vulnerabilities.

And now we have a crowd here.

I see a lot of responses, but nobody really addresses antegrade amnesia. 

Are memories stored in the soul? If so, why does the soul start forgetting things it experiences after brain trauma. If not, how can the survival of a soul after death have meaning without memories? 

I won't keep on beating a dead horse--and definitely not a living one--but I will simply note that I see no answer here to this question.

You are, at least, 10 years late to the debate. Back when Skeptiko was way (way!) different, the issue of antegrade amnesia was touched upon. In particular, a paper where a patient was asked to document his dreams and they corresponded to the happenings of the prior day, the same information that he could not recall under normal circumstances. Regardless of metaphysical stance, the obvious interpretation is that the ‘mechanisms’ for memory creation and recall are not necessarily one and the same. So, instead of beating a dead horse, you may want to consider getting off the high horse where you are currently sitting on.

You are, at least, 10 years late to the debate. Back when Skeptiko was way (way!) different, the issue of antegrade amnesia was touched upon. In particular, a paper where a patient was asked to document his dreams and they corresponded to the happenings of the prior day, the same information that he could not recall under normal circumstances. Regardless of metaphysical stance, the obvious interpretation is that the ‘mechanisms’ for memory creation and recall are not necessarily one and the same. So, instead of beating a dead horse, you may want to consider getting off the high horse where you are currently sitting on.

Yeah I don't see why the issue of amnesia is worse than the general forgetting we experience. How many people recall their time as a 2 year old?

It just seems there is supposed to be a starkness to illnesses that afflict the brain, but the conclusion that they show the mind is the brain would be the same from general forgetting...or so it seems to me. Similarly people can have personality change and forget events when "black out" drunk...yet it seems those who want to convince others - and IMO possibly try to convince themselves - always goes to illnesses...

The distinctness between mind and brain - and they seem very distinct IMO - would still be there and is the reason I think we can look at cases of claimed Survival as plausible. Survival is what I would expect given that distinct difference in the nature of what is mental and what is physical.

[Laird]

As I see it, the mind is nothing more than a set of actions, such as remembering, being aware, thinking, and deciding.

You're mistakenly conflating the mind itself with the mental processes it undergoes or undertakes (remembering, thinking, deciding, etc) and with its properties (awareness, etc).

So, the obvious answer to the question...

What is doing these actions?

...is "the mind" - the very thing which you had eliminated as an answer by your conflation.

Similarly, it is a mistake to conflate the body itself with the physical acts it performs (typing, walking, eating, etc), or with the physiological processes it undergoes or undertakes (respiring, digesting, circulating blood, perspiring, etc), or with its properties (temperature, blood pressure, etc).

Surely the brain is a key player.

Surely, but, except on idealism, it is part of the body, not the mind, so it is characterised by physicality/physiology, not mentality.

After all, if any entity affects something physical, then it seems to me, by definition, that entity would be physical. (see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/physical)

Though it seems so to you, it cannot be true, because, clearly, the mind does affect the body (including the brain), and, by definition, the mind is not physical. That said, the mind is plausibly substantive in some sense, as per "substance" dualism. I don't think that phenomenal experience itself is substantive though: it is only associated with, or - perhaps better, to avoid connotations of epiphenomenalism - is only a non-substantive aspect or property of, a substantive mind.

In any case, the definitions at the link you supplied do not explicitly support that which you say seems to be true by definition.

If there are other entities involved in the set of actions that we refer to as mind, I do not see that their contribution to any continuation of those activities after death would be significant.

Correcting for your conflation of the mind and its mental processes/properties, the "other" entity involved in those actions is the mind, and the continuation of a non-physical entity after the death of its associated physical-biological entity is clearly prima facie plausible.

For, from all we can see, when the brain is damaged, it affects all those activities.

Yes, just as the mind affects the body, the body (including the brain) affects the mind - at least, while they are intimately connected. That doesn't, though, compel the conclusion you draw:

One would think that death, which is the ultimate in brain damage, would be the ultimate in shutting down all mental activities.

If one did think that, the thought could easily be dispelled by evidence of the sort that @nbtruthman has shared in this thread already.

Sorry, missed this bit. The question how can the brain which is made up of stuff (particles, waves, fields, whatever) that is defined by physicalists/materialists as having no mental content end up producing something that has mental content.

To quote Neuroscience PhD and New Atheist "Horseman" Sam Harris:

Also here's the Atheists' Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg telling us Cogito Ergo Sum is false if everything is physical ->

“A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away? …Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion.

If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain… What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff. Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort…

…What you absolutely cannot be wrong about is that your conscious thought was about something. Even having a wildly wrong thought about something requires that the thought be about something. It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all…When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong.”

Surely it is reasonable, if not logically necessary, to take the other option - that because you cannot be wrong about your having thoughts even if those thoughts are mistaken that there has to be more to the mind than what is captured by the "physical".

But almost everything else Rosenberg says above seems to fit well as a description of the physical. So the mental and physical seem quite distinct. Though I would question whether "Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort" as there could be some form of Panpsychism...however I don't think Panpsychism makes sense if we are starting with bits of consciousness and putting them together to make a person who has the key parts of Fodor's "trinity" ->

"[S]ome of the most pervasive properties of minds seem so mysterious as to raise the Kantian-sounding question how a materialistic psychology is even possible. Lots of mental states are conscious, lots of mental states are intentional, and lots of mental processes are rational, and the question does rather suggest itself how anything that is material could be any of these."

You could maybe see how a bunch of particles feeling redness allow you to feel redness, but how could the particles Intentionality (thoughts about Paris) or Rationality (such as Modus Ponens) combine to become your thoughts and your rationality?

So it seems to me that even if little particles have consciousness they don't make up a person's consciousness (or even animal consciousness save maybe that of microbes...)

Also worth considering that "matter" is known by consciousness, and most (all?) the science-based manipulations of it have applicability at least in part [due to] mathematics which rests on proofs which are a mental endeavor.

In fact the brain we're talking about is a phenomenal brain, seen through the interface of our sensory experience. As the neuroscientist Smythies noted, "How can the brain be in the head when the head is in the brain?"

Smythies solution to the Mind-Body Problem was that the Mental and the Physical are separate dimensions intersecting...certainly seems to leave open a space for an afterlife...Another option would be that everything we call Physical has the Mind as its Ground of Being...but that also leaves open a space for an afterlife...

However even if there is space for an afterlife it is worth still asking about the role of the brain...the question of brain damage got me wondering again about cases beyond Terminal Lucidity ->

Studying Acquired Savant Syndrome May Increase Understanding of Creativity

S.Fitzgerald

Days after a head injury, Derek Amato acquired an extraordinary talent for playing the piano. Studying the phenomenon known as acquired savant syndrome may increase our understanding of creativity.

Brain Gain: A Person Can Instantly Blossom into a Savant--and No One Knows Why

D. Teffert

Some people suddenly become accomplished artists or musicians with no previous interest or training. Is it possible innate genius lies dormant within everyone?

If the brain allowed for mind's interaction through a body but also impeded said mind's consciousness in some way, isn't stuff like this - along with Terminal Lucidity - what we'd expect?

I think when you couple these more mundane findings with the metaphysical distinctiveness of the mind versus the physical, it gives good reason to assume that Survival evidence is genuine. There's a lot of discussion about witnesses one can go into, as with any legal case or historical record, but for me the idea everyone making a claim that supports Survival evidence is mistaken or "in on the trick" seems like an extreme assumption.

No one has to take Survival as true, but at the same time I don't see it as some unreasonable belief.

Yeah I don't see why the issue of amnesia is worse than the general forgetting we experience. How many people recall their time as a 2 year old?

It just seems there is supposed to be a starkness to illnesses that afflict the brain, but the conclusion that they show the mind is the brain would be the same from general forgetting...or so it seems to me. Similarly people can have personality change and forget events when "black out" drunk...yet it seems those who want to convince others - and IMO possibly try to convince themselves - always goes to illnesses...

The distinctness between mind and brain - and they seem very distinct IMO - would still be there and is the reason I think we can look at cases of claimed Survival as plausible. Survival is what I would expect given that distinct difference in the nature of what is mental and what is physical.

It was a common argument even then, but, if we can take anything from boring old psychology is that memories can be suppressed even after formation… And for purely mental reasons, like trauma. I suppose that as a talking point, it may seem pretty convincing for the people unfamiliar with the medical literature. Especially those that do not know just how far medical procedures such as hemispherectomy (or anything used to deal with epilepsy, really) truly went in the era where ethics were in the backseat. Trepanation, various forms of craniotomy, corpus callosotomy… The truth is that by the mid to late 20th Century, these procedures had been done in all kinds of ways. “Invasive” doesn’t begin to describe them, yet, despite severe functional limitations (including losing strength and coordination in half of their bodies) that little thing that we call the “self” persisted. Physically separating both hemispheres did not create two personalities, yet we are supposed to believe that amnesia -be it anterograde or retrograde- is truly the end-all argument. It’s science a la Neil deGrasse Tyson, pretentious, but surprisingly hollow And only meant to bring arguments to an end even when they do not know better themselves.

[Ninshub]

I see a lot of responses, but nobody really addresses antegrade amnesia. 

Are memories stored in the soul? If so, why does the soul start forgetting things it experiences after brain trauma. If not, how can the survival of a soul after death have meaning without memories?

How do you really know that the soul relies on what the brain knows? First thing, please define what you term the soul. It doesn't seem to be anything like the standard meaning of the term in English, which is an immaterial spiritual entity in part comprising the human self; this soul would by definition not be limited to or be composed entirely of the physical brain neurological structures. You appear to define the word soul  as meaning nothing more than the human self, which of course in physical life is drastically limited through its occupancy of the physical brain with all its vulnerabilities.

Yes, Merle seems to equate soul with the human mind.

[Laird]

Just a quick heads-up: @Merle seems likely to be the author of the articles shared by @quirkybrainmeat in post #13 of this thread, given that the author of those articles (Merle Hertzler) shares the same name, and presumably joined our board after noticing that we'd linked to his articles. Those wishing to know his definition of "soul" then can find a good start in those articles.

In the first article, Merle defines the soul as "that something else [beyond the brain that some tell him] lives on even after the brain has disintegrated" and which "ultimately [...] is the seat of the mind. And so, even if the brain is gone, the mind can continue as a function of a soul that survives death." He elaborates that on this definition, "the soul is really in charge", that "thinking is done by the soul", and that "the brain is simply an interface to the body. It gathers information from the senses and feeds it to the soul" which "processes the incoming data, saves memories, and makes decisions. The soul then somehow directs the brain to drive the muscles of the body". He sums up that, "The soul is in charge, and the brain handles the interface with the body", helpfully adding an indication that on this definition, the soul is "immaterial".

In the second article, responding to Ian Wardell - our own @EyesShiningAngrily - he summarises his understanding of Ian's view of the soul:

Wardell claims we have a soul that has psychological states that he calls mind. He sees that both the soul and the mind are far more than just the product of the brain. Wardell refers to himself as an idealist, a view that all reality is a mental construct, but his views also seem to have a lot in common with mind-body dualism. When it comes to the mind, he is interested in what might be there that is not accounted for by the material in the brain.

He loves to use the analogy of the brain as a pair of glasses or a TV set. The diagram below is based on my interpretation of what his words say. This model, which I will call the soul/glasses/TV (SGTV) model, illustrates how many see the soul. The brain acts as a pair of glasses that receives information from the world and transmits it to the soul. Here the soul experiences life and transmits commands down to the portion of the brain that he compares to a TV receiver. This TV then drives the body.

I hope that this is of use...

A sudden rush of lucidity after death--if it is a verified thing--could be similar to a rush of strength when the adrenaline flows.

Kindly explain how would "a rush of adrenaline" analogy would work in the case of terminal lucidity.
Why would a random rush of some unknown substance occur at the end of life in such patients? Moreover, how could a random rush like this work on a brain which has been ravaged by neurodegenerative diseases such as alzheimers, which are understood to be irreversible?