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

It isn't clear that it is the soul that loses the ability to remember. But it's fine if you want/need to believe that death is the end.

"Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him" - EM Forester

Well, whatever my grandmother used for remembering was no longer working well. She had a hard time remembering new experiences after her stroke. 

What is it that does the remembering? If the soul does the remembering, why was her soul no longer able to remember after the brain was damaged?

If the brain does the remembering, what would her soul know about her life on Earth after her brain was gone?

Well, whatever my grandmother used for remembering was no longer working well. She had a hard time remembering new experiences after her stroke. 

What is it that does the remembering? If the soul does the remembering, why was her soul no longer able to remember after the brain was damaged?

If the brain does the remembering, what would her soul know about her life on Earth after her brain was gone?

If the brain is just matter that has no consciousness, then as noted by neuroscientist-philosopher Tallis in the article I previously linked it cannot hold memories.

That remembered smile is located in the past, so my memory is aware that it reaches across time. In the mind-independent physical world, no event is intrinsically past, present or future: it becomes so only with reference to a conscious, indeed self-conscious, being, who provides the reference point – the now which makes some events past, others future, and yet others present. The temporal depth created by memories, which hold open the distance between that which is here and now and that which is no longer, is a product of consciousness, and is not to be found in the material world. As Einstein wrote in a moving letter at the end of his life, “People like me who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” I assume that those who think of memory as a material state of a material object – as a cerebral deposit – also believe in physics – in which case they cannot believe that tensed time exists in the brain, or more specifically, in synapses. A material object such as the brain may have a history that results in its being altered, but the previous state, the fact of alteration, or the time interval between the two states, are not present in the altered state. A synapse, like a broken cup, does not contain its previous state, the event that resulted in its being changed, the fact that it has changed, the elapsed time, or anything else containing the sense of its ‘pastness’ which would be necessary if it were the very material of memory. How could someone ever come to believe it could?

Those who imagine that experiments with Aplysia cast light on memory betray the origin of the erroneous belief that memory is inscribed in matter. The belief is based on a slither from memory as you and I understand it, to learning; from learning to altered behaviour; from altered behaviour to altered properties of the organism; and viola! – the materialisation of memory! However, with Einstein’s help, we can see that sincere materialists must acknowledge that they have no explanation of memory. Instead of thinking that memories can be located in the brain (or even more outrageously, captured in a dish), they ought to hold, along with Bergson, that “memory [cannot] settle within matter” even though (alas), “materiality begets oblivion.” In short, they should take off their dull materialist blinkers and acknowledge the wonderful mystery of memory.

Personally I don't think the material brain holds any memories or thoughts, but I do think your position that the brain is necessary for mental functioning is a reasonable position to have. (Tallis' position agrees with yours).

I just disagree on thoughts because as Rosenberg notes in the Atheist's Guide to Reality what is physical cannot hold thoughts, and on memories a physical device - even a biological one - would be a memory trace which to me seems like an idea rife with confusion ->

Memory without a Trace 

Braude

So why is the concept of a memory trace fundamentally nonsensical? Let’s begin with an analogy drawn from John Heil’s outstanding critique of trace theory.4 Suppose I invite many guests to a party, and suppose I want to remember all the people who attended. Accordingly, I ask each guest to leave behind something (a trace) by which I can remember them. Let’s suppose each guest leaves behind a tennis ball. Clearly, I can’t use the balls to accomplish the task of remembering my party guests. For my strategy to work, the guests must deposit something reliably and specifically linked to them, and the balls obviously aren’t differentiated and unambiguous enough to establish a link only with the person who left it.
 
So perhaps it would help if each guest signed his or her own tennis ball or perhaps left a photo of himself or herself stuck to the ball. Unfortunately, this threatens an endless regress of strategies for remembering who attended my party. Nothing reliably (much less uniquely and unambiguously) links the signature or photo to the guest who attended. A guest could mischievously have signed someone else’s name or left behind a photo of another person. Or maybe the signature was illegible (most are), or perhaps the only photo available was of the person twenty-five years earlier (e.g., when he still had hair, or when he had a beard, wore eyeglasses, and was photographed outdoors, out of focus, and in a thick fog), or when he was dressed in a Halloween costume or some other disguise.
 
But now it looks like I need to remember in order to remember. A tennis ball isn’t specific enough to establish the required link to the person who left it. What the situation requires is an unambiguous representational calling card, and the tennis ball clearly doesn’t do the job. So we supposed that something else might make the tennis ball a more specific link—a signature or a photo. That is, we tried to employ a secondary memory mechanism (trace) so that I could remember what the original trace (the tennis ball) was a trace of. But the signature and photo are equally inadequate. They, too, can’t be linked unambiguously to a specific individual. Of course, if I could simply remember who wrote the signature or left behind the photo, then it’s not clear why I even needed the original tennis balls. If no memory mechanism is needed to make the connection from photo to photo donor or from illegible signature to its author, then we’ve conceded that remembering can occur without corresponding traces, and then no trace was needed in the first place to explain how I remember who attended my party. So in order to avoid that fatal concession, it looks like yet another memory mechanism will be required for me to remember who left behind (say) the illegible or phony signature or the fuzzy photo. And off we go on a regress of memory processeses. It seems that no matter what my party guests leave behind, nothing can be linked only to the guest who left it. We’ll always need something else, some other mechanism, for making the connection between the thing left behind and the individual who left it.

It seems to me memory can mediated by the brain but there is no storage mechanism in matter just like matter doesn't have the aboutness of thoughts. Those are located in what I guess we would call the "soul" though at that point I think "storage mechanism" is the wrong term...

I was thinking this morning that a short post might clarify my positions in this discussion:

1. I think it is quite reasonable to believe that there is no afterlife, that one holds the mind is dependent on the brain due to the brain changes affecting the mind in this life. This is not my position, but I feel it's a reasonable one.

2. What I think is bizarre is this idea that even if there is an afterlife, the mind's dependence of the brain would render it incapable of most/all function. If a person accepts Survival, and then looks at varied Survival cases in Reincarnation & NDEs, it seems pretty clear that memory function - along with a host of other capabilities - doesn't need a brain.

It isn't clear that it is the soul that loses the ability to remember. But it's fine if you want/need to believe that death is the end.

"Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him" - EM Forester

I don't need to believe anything but the truth. My search is for the truth.

I don't need to believe anything but the truth. My search is for the truth.

If you say so...

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 don't know if souls exist, but yes if souls exist, then I find their functionality would be extremely limited if not connected to active brain. See https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

I don't know if souls exist, but yes if souls exist, then I find their functionality would be extremely limited if not connected to active brain. See https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

....we've been discussing this the whole time...

Sciborg_S_Patel,

You write this in response to my questions about what you think holds our memories. You tell us the brain does not do this. OK, then what remembers? The soul? And was my grandmother's soul aware that I was there? If my grandmother's soul knew I was there, and her soul was not damaged by the stroke, why did my grandmother lose the ability to remember that I visited her?

If the brain is just matter that has no consciousness, then as noted by neuroscientist-philosopher Tallis in the article I previously linked it cannot hold memories.

I don't see anywhere that this link supports the assertion that brains cannot hold memories. Even the simplest animals can have memories. Do they all have souls? 

Even sunflowers can "decide" to point their flower toward the sun. Do sunflowers also have souls?

Where do these souls come from?

I just disagree on thoughts because as Rosenberg notes in the Atheist's Guide to Reality what is physical cannot hold thoughts, and on memories a physical device - even a biological one - would be a memory trace which to me seems like an idea rife with confusion ->

Why cannot physical brains hold memories? Let's say I see the color red for the first time. A distinct brain pattern forms in some of my neurons. Suppose somebody tells me that color I saw is named red. A different distinct pattern forms for the sequence of sounds that make the word "red". Why cannot those patterns simply be etched into my neurons, much like a computer stores memories?

Then later, when I see something red, many thought patterns may be stimulated in my brain, but those patterns that are strongly associated with the red color I am seeing will predominate. If you ask me what color I see, those brain patterns associated with the sound pattern for the word red will predominate, and win out over any other brain patterns. My brain will direct my mouth to say, "red"? We refer to this as "memory".  I see no reason to believe molecules cannot do that. You links in no way refutes that.

It seems to me memory can mediated by the brain but there is no storage mechanism in matter just like matter doesn't have the aboutness of thoughts. Those are located in what I guess we would call the "soul" though at that point I think "storage mechanism" is the wrong term...

If memories are not stored, how is it that after you are taught to call that color red, you are able to remember that?

It seems to me that there is no other way to remember anything, other than for some change to occur in the state of something. If, for instance, you now remember my name, surely the state of something somewhere must be different compared to the state it was in when you did not recognize my name. What changed state? If matter does the remembering, that question is easy to answer: the matter in your brain changed state. Your brain now has brain patterns associated with "Merle" that are associated with brain patterns that are associated with the things you now know about me.

But if souls remember, what changed state when you learned my name? Is the soul made of a substance that can be rearranged to remember things it needs to remember? Does the soul consist of some structure of some non-material substance?  

Here is a link arguing that disembodied minds could not possibly remember things.

Even sunflowers can "decide" to point their flower toward the sun. Do sunflowers also have souls?

Where do these souls come from?

Here is a link arguing that disembodied minds could not possibly remember things.

Thanks for sticking around.  I, for one, appreciate your arguments and efforts to support them.

On the pragmatic side of things..  
Sunflowers react logically to increase a personal supply of photons due to their biological information processing.
Whether you call it a soul, they, and all living things are able to purposefully change real-world probabilities in their environment.  This is achieved in a way that corresponds to a first-person POV.  These individualized centers of information-processing develop as part of the ontogeny of the organism, in a natural fashion.  The primary process is learning from experiencing physical, emotional and cultural environments.  

ontogeny, all the developmental events that occur during the existence of a living organism

There is a measurable information object in place, with each living thing.  Its output has predictable patterns as to past behavior.  It enforces a personal POV with the affordances in its local environment.  Measuring the behavioral output of living things involves many scientific fields.  Religious in may not be, but their is an identifiable object developed from scratch for each mind.

Read the link, not a very impressive argument by Carrier.

 Concepts can’t think or act; so disembodied mental concepts can’t “do” things either. They can’t have physical relationships to each other. They can’t have structure. They can have the concept of structure, but again concepts can’t do things; and they can have structure when we simulate them in our brains, but that gets us right back to the point: that appears to be the only way they can ever actually exist.

 

Pragmatically, concepts can be structured and communicated electronically, outside of brains and be very effective.  AI is "doing" things.  This defense of "magic" brains seems silly and out of date.

...........................
Why cannot physical brains hold memories? Let's say I see the color red for the first time. A distinct brain pattern forms in some of my neurons. Suppose somebody tells me that color I saw is named red. A different distinct pattern forms for the sequence of sounds that make the word "red". Why cannot those patterns simply be etched into my neurons, much like a computer stores memories?

Then later, when I see something red, many thought patterns may be stimulated in my brain, but those patterns that are strongly associated with the red color I am seeing will predominate. If you ask me what color I see, those brain patterns associated with the sound pattern for the word red will predominate, and win out over any other brain patterns. My brain will direct my mouth to say, "red"? We refer to this as "memory".  I see no reason to believe molecules cannot do that. You links in no way refutes that.
............................

Of course the patterns for the color red may be impressed on certain neurons in the brain in response to the eyes registering that frequency of light.

But then you make it clear that you don't comprehend the well-known "hard problem" in the philosophy of mind. You blithely remark that the neurons of your brain direct your mouth to say "I see red", not recognizing that this action automatically assumes, in addition to the neurons, the overriding existence of an "I" or conscious self that experienced the color red.

The nature of this conscious self with its subjective awareness remains a total mystery, and is fundamentally, existentially different from the physical neurons and all their interactions. The conscious perception of the color red has no physical parameters like length, width, depth, weight, energy, voltage, frequency, velocity, it goes on. This subjective awareness can't in principle be the physical neurons or their interactions, but this conscious self indubitably exists since we directly experience it. 

That's the "hard problem".

So you can't get away with this, with stealthily slipping in the consciousness of the perceiver as an unspoken assumption, without explaining how mind and subjective awareness arise from neurons when the parameters of these two entities are fundamentally different.