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

That seems to be a common complaint, that I misunderstand what is meant by the soul. 

I could argue that everybody misunderstands what is meant by the soul. For there is often endless confusion over terms like soul, mind, spirit and self, with people often bouncing back and forth between definitions. Sometimes they use these terms interchangeably. Sometimes one is defined as a part of another, and then, in the next paragraph it is described as something distinct from the other or as the same as the other. Such confusion of terms makes it difficult to make any progress in discussions.

Anyway, as @Laird has posted, I do describe what I think people mean when they use the term soul at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ . In particular, the picture that @Laird posted here represents what I am hearing when I hear people describe the soul. Does that match what you think it is?

I realize that the very concept of the soul allows for an existence independent of the brain. That is why I show two pathways in that diagram that show the soul interfacing with the world without using the brain. But, as I contend in that post, I don't think the physical evidence is consistent with such a soul existing in the role described in that diagram.

I like your diagram!  Can you further specify the object or process that is represented by the screen?

The nervous system is believed to command and control muscles, in a physicalist flow chart.  Maybe the output from the screen object is intent which commands and controls the nervous system.  Intent as meaningful instruction can be measured by information theory, logic and behavioral science metrics.

I like to sort my metaphysics from science data and analysis.

That particular avenue seems to depend on a very particular definition of consciousness. For example, what if a primary requirement of consciousness was the ability to at least occasionally demonstrate psi?

Certainly for me, one of the big kick-starts in the exploration of consciousness as distinct from either material or cold mathematical logic was the observation in my own life of events which were neither.

Insightful comments.

I suggest that Psi is a natural phenomena, and detectable as bioinformation processes.   I am unsure about its relation to consciousness, because much of Psi phenomena appear to be subconscious.  Most people lose capability the harder they try.  Many seers use trace states, again moving away from consciousness
I think what is meant by consciousness is the totality of self-aware experience.  We can directly sensate (1) materials, (2) forces and intuit (3) logical structure in doing things.  Add to that the (4) meaningful thought processes underlying essential behavior.  Four sources - all come to conscious minds.  IMHO, consciousness is a sum total, rather than a separated object.

Materials, mathematics and logics are structural.  Mind and experience are more like energy and communicated meanings, where the natural action is happening.

I don't think this follows at all David.  You're making a massive volume of assumptions here.

Here is an illustrative example of AI in action:

On March 23, 2016, Microsoft released Tay, designed to be an exciting and new chatbot, not hand-wired entirely in advance, like the original chatbot, Eliza, but instead developed largely by learning from user interactions. An earlier project, Xiaoice, which chats in Chinese, had been a huge success in China, and Microsoft had high hopes. Less than a day later the project was canceled. A nasty group of users tried to drown Tay in racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic hate. Vile speech in, vile speech out; poor Tay was posting tweets like “I fucking hate the feminists” and “Hitler was right: I hate the Jews.”

OK that is not about automatic driving, but automatic driving is hard to discuss in detail because all you are left with is A bumped into B and the damage was...

When you think about the above example bear in mind that:

1) This was newly released by Microsoft.

2) Something similar had been in use in China.

3) The thing simply took whatever was being discussed, and riffed on the theme completely uncritically.

4) The product wasn't fixed, the project was cancelled. That strongly suggests that the fault was impossible to fix.

Obviously it could have been 'fixed' by excluding certain words, but that would leave plenty of other unsavoury topics, the point is that it didn't have a clue what it was talking about.

David

I like your diagram!  Can you further specify the object or process that is represented by the screen?

The nervous system is believed to command and control muscles, in a physicalist flow chart.  Maybe the output from the screen object is intent which commands and controls the nervous system.  Intent as meaningful instruction can be measured by information theory, logic and behavioral science metrics.

I like to sort my metaphysics from science data and analysis.

The eyeglasses and TV metaphors come from a comment that was posted on my blog. See, for instance, https://mindsetfree.blog/dare-to-questio...omment-737 .

I discuss the diagram more at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

Could you provide some examples of what you are talking about?

Getting confused by the terms. Some quotations actually said about the soul as part of or distinct from the "other" would be very helpful.

See, for instance, the discussion of the meaning of the word "soul" on this thread.  https://www.christianforums.com/threads/...t-76914698  .

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 write this in response to my questions, "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?" Can you please address them?

Regarding the victim of antegrade amnesia who had dreams related to the past day's events, all of that is consistent with the conventional scientific understanding of memories. Memories are stored in the brain. Conditions that lead to antegrade amnesia make it hard to store new memories in the brain. But if those memories truly somehow got partially stored such that they are accessible only as a basis for dreams, that fits quite well with the scientific view.

But antegrade amnesia does not fit with the idea that the central consciousness of a person is in an immaterial soul that never was directly affected by the stroke. Please address my questions above. I think then that you will see why this is an issue.

See, for instance, the discussion of the meaning of the word "soul" on this thread.  https://www.christianforums.com/threads/...t-76914698  .

I think it would be more helpful to just explain what you mean.

Is your basic position that the soul requires something akin to the brain, but by most accounts lacks one?

I get you really want Christianity to be false, and you have some interesting posts on the potential falsity of the Biblical claims of prophecy and Resurrection of Jesus, but I don't want to get into a whole thing with another forum.

In general we try to avoid fights with other forums, and just stick to ourselves. (for historical reasons not worth getting into)

You write this in response to my questions, "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?" Can you please address them?

Well here is my response. A considerable amount of evidence points to a reality in which people as such are immortal, but they incarnate into bodies for periods of time - seemingly to learn lessons such as how to live together.

When you go and watch a film you basically suspend your normal memories and focus on what is on the screen. When you reincarnate, you have to forget who you really are, in order to experience what it is like to be here.

Forgetting seems to be a function of the brain as such, but even though we have memories of everything we did in this and other lives, they are blocked from us while we are incarnate.

You may consider that explanation is just too 'just so' but that is the way I think it is.

David

The eyeglasses and TV metaphors come from a comment that was posted on my blog. See, for instance, https://mindsetfree.blog/dare-to-questio...omment-737 .

I discuss the diagram more at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

Thanks for the links.  I found this part "stimulating".  I like you have a model but don't see the processes that flow from it.

 Fortunately for Keller, she had a teacher who taught her sign language using the sense of touch on her hands. One day it dawned on her that the word “water” when spelled in her hand meant the wet substance she was feeling on her other hand. More importantly, she realized that everything had a name. Later, by stringing those names together, she learned that one could portray complex thought. Words opened a whole new world to her. Without words, telepathy just didn’t hack it. But once she had words, her entire consciousness changed.

The active and functional processes you point out are "dawning", realizing everything had a name and stringing.  I just don't seem to remember these functional stages of learning in Maslow or Piaget.  I certainly didn't read them in Eric Kandel, where the descriptions of bio-signaling are formatted data.  His work won the Nobel and is void of metaphysics.  Code can be in strings, but only an active mind can abstract and create code.  Brains came from DNA not the other way around.

Thanks for the example of Helen Keller.  What she did is exhibit a special ability in semiotics.  Achieving deep understandings about the natural world without sight or sounds.  She was able to symbolize reality without the majority of signals the rest of us are immersed in.  Was it her magic brain cells where calories go in and abstract thought comes out?

Or was it the bioinformation processing whereas a mind developed and evolved healthy, even with damaged sensory input.  The mind can rewire the brain for better memory and function, just like brain wiring issues can be noise blocking intent and awareness.  

How can you be so sure that once a mind co-evolves with a physical brain, it stops processing real-world probabilities in an informational environment, one without physical signals?

That seems to be a common complaint, that I misunderstand what is meant by the soul. 

I could argue that everybody misunderstands what is meant by the soul. For there is often endless confusion over terms like soul, mind, spirit and self, with people often bouncing back and forth between definitions. Sometimes they use these terms interchangeably. Sometimes one is defined as a part of another, and then, in the next paragraph it is described as something distinct from the other or as the same as the other. Such confusion of terms makes it difficult to make any progress in discussions.

Anyway, as @Laird has posted, I do describe what I think people mean when they use the term soul at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ . In particular, the picture that @Laird posted here represents what I am hearing when I hear people describe the soul. Does that match what you think it is?

I realize that the very concept of the soul allows for an existence independent of the brain. That is why I show two pathways in that diagram that show the soul interfacing with the world without using the brain. But, as I contend in that post, I don't think the physical evidence is consistent with such a soul existing in the role described in that diagram.

Some representative passages from the post you linked, that certainly indicate you are a convinced materialist:

"If we were to redraw the picture above such that the soul was inside the brain as part of the brain and give it a generic name such as mental processes, we would have a simplified model of how scientists understand the brain works. I support this view, in which the brain itself is the seat of all mental activity.

The mind, as I understand it, is just a name we give for the set of mental functions that the brain performs. Likewise, consciousness is just a name for the act of being conscious. Just like a conversation or an exercise routine are not physical objects but are simply names that we give to a set of actions, so the mind and consciousness are not physical objects. They are names for the things brains do. These actions of the brain are often personified, as if they are a separate entity. But they are not. The words mind and consciousness are just names for sets of things that the brain does.
.........................................
....could it be that the soul somehow bypasses the dead brain, and gets input from the world through some other path? I show (on the diagram) these proposed paths as two light lines that bypass the brain in the diagram above. But we have no good evidence that such paths exist. Some suggest things like near-death experiences show such paths are possible, but scientific investigations consistently show there is no convincing evidence of this possibility. (Augustine, 2015, pp 529-570) In this life, when we try to peek around the blindfold, when we try to observe the world without using our bodily senses, we find it hopeless. We are limited to the information we get through our bodies and our brains.

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(Concluding remarks):
I realize that the very concept of the soul allows for an existence independent of the brain. That is why I show two pathways in that diagram that show the soul interfacing with the world without using the brain. But, as I contend in that post, I don't think the physical evidence is consistent with such a soul existing in the role described in that diagram."

Yes, your linked post does definitely define what you think the word "soul" means (something that you think is impossible). It doesn't look like there is much room for dialogue here, since with the highlighted assertions you simply deny, dismissively wave away, the huge amounts of empirical evidence to the contrary accumulated over many years, in addition to by implication similarly dismissing the massive metaphysical/philosophical problems of materialism. Far be it from me to attack your faith.