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

Actually the Libet experiment has been verified in many ways. See Have Experiment Shown?  and Notable Experiments.

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked

How a Flawed Experiment “Proved” That Free Will Doesn’t Exist

Even in your second link ->

"Daniel Dennett also argues that no clear conclusion about volition can be derived from Benjamin Libet's experiments supposedly demonstrating the non-existence of conscious volition."

In nature we regularly see distinctly different things when other things are combined. One water molecule is not wet, but many together make up water.

Wetness is a sensation in consciousness, so I don't really see how this analogy works as it's begging the question.

In general I don't think there are distinctly different things when other things are combined. At the very least the potential for what is observed in the combination should be in the pieces that make up such composite structures. As previously noted atheists Sam Harris, Raymond Tallis, and Alex Rosenberg note the "physical" is defined as not having any mental characteristic whatsoever so one should not expect the material to produce the mental. Harris & Tallis see this as a flaw, with Tallis explicitly rejecting Materialism, whereas Rosenberg takes the odd stance of saying all thoughts are illusory and Cogito Ergo Sum is then false.

In fact this is one reason for thinking that the brain is a Filter/Transmitter/Valve for consciousness/soul though the three aforementioned atheists reject that their views point to a soul of any kind. However it does seem to me that if one started with the premise that there is a soul, it would only be a natural conclusion that said soul is not dependent on the brain for cognitive functioning.

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 mediates the interaction of consciousness/soul with our terrestrial existence, it's entirely possible damage to it affects access or even formation of memories. In regards to the latter, however, as @E. Flowers noted it seems that some research suggests the issue is not memory formation but memory access [sadly the article makes the common mistake that brains can store memories, something that Tallis in my quotes below notes is not possible]->

People who permanently suffer from amnesia can’t add new declarative or episodic memories. The parts of their brains involved in storing this type of information, primarily a region called the hippocampus, have been damaged. Although amnesiacs can retain new information temporarily, they generally forget it a few minutes later.

If our dreams come from declarative memories, people with amnesia shouldn’t dream at all, or at least dream differently than others do. But new research directed by Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School suggests quite the opposite.

Just like people with normal memory, amnesiacs replay recent experiences when they fall asleep, Stickgold’s study shows. The only difference seems to be that the amnesiacs don’t recognize what they’re dreaming about.

Though I am not sure why stroke would show something that regular forgetting doesn't. I just watched the last John Wick movie but don't recall every detail.

=-=-=

Moving on, to be clear the insurmountable flaws with materialist accounts of consciousness mentioned below are not proof that there are souls. However they do strongly suggest to me that *if* there are souls said souls are not lobotomized wraiths.

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? 

Tallis explicitly notes the issue and he doesn't believe in souls. To quote some small bits of the larger argument that requires reading the whole piece ->

"Well, I don’t believe that the difference between Kandel’s ‘memory in a dish’ and my actual memory is just a matter of the size of the nervous system or the number or complexity of the neurons in it. Clarifying this difference will enable us to see what is truly mysterious in memory..."

"...Making present something that is past as something past, that is to say, absent, hardly looks like a job that a piece of matter could perform, even a complex electrochemical process in a piece of matter such as a brain. But we need to specify more clearly why not. Material objects are what they are, not what they have been, any more than they are what they will be. Thus a changed synaptic connexion is bits present state; it is not also the causes of its present state. Nor is the connection ‘about’ that which caused its changed state or its increased propensity to fire in response to cues. Even less is it about those causes located at a temporal distance from its present state. A paper published in Science last year by Itzhak Fried claiming to solve the problem of memory actually underlines this point. The author found that the same neurons were active in the same way when an individual remembered a scene (actually from The Simpsons) as when they watched it.


So how did people ever imagine that a ‘cerebral deposit’ (to use Henri Bergson’s sardonic phrase) could be about that which caused its altered state? Isn’t it because they smuggled consciousness into their idea of the relationship between the altered synapse and that which caused the alteration, so that they could then imagine that the one could be ‘about’ the other? Once you allow that, then the present state of anything can be a sign of the past events that brought about its present state, and the past can be present. For example, a broken cup can signify to me (a conscious being when I last checked) the unfortunate event that resulted in its unhappy state.

Of course, smuggling in consciousness like this is inadmissible, because the synapses are supposed to supply the consciousness that reaches back in time to the causes of the synapses’ present states. And there is another, more profound reason why the cerebral deposit does not deliver what some neurophysiologists want it to, which goes right to the heart of the nature of the material world and the physicist’s account of its reality – something that this article has been circling round. I am referring to the mystery of tensed time; the mystery of an explicit past, future and present..."

Even sunflowers can "decide" to point their flower toward the sun. Do sunflowers also have souls?
Where do these souls come from?

I don't see why it is a problem for sunflowers to have souls, but as Tallis notes in the example of the sea slug these rote responses don't require any aboutness or subjectivity that are the hallmarks of human memories.

Why cannot physical brains hold memories?

For the same reason that Alex Rosenberg notes in the Atheist's Guide to Reality - as quoted in my previous posts in this thread (for example here) - that neurons cannot be about Paris, because physical things have no intrinsic aboutness. See also the Tallis quotes above how this problem is compounded when physical brains have to extend this aboutness to past events.

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?

Computers don't store conscious memories any more than an abacus does. Without a human observer these are just meaningless arrangements of matter. As Tallis notes above this is just smuggling in the consciousness that needs to be explained.

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.

But how are the patterns about redness unless, as Tallis notes above, one has already smuggled in the consciousness that is supposed to be explained by the material brain?

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 a change in matter is what resulted in memory then there would need be a perfect isomorphism between the material and the conscious memory. As Braude noted in the previously linked Memory Without a Trace, this is an impossible object because any bit of matter can represent a variety of possible things ->

...Trace theorists have always been tempted to regard traces as kinds of recordings of the things that produced them. In fact, some previous influential writings on memory compared traces to tape recordings or grooves and bumps in a phonograph record. The justification for that idea, as we’ve seen, is that traces must somehow capture essential structural features of the things that both produce and activate them. That’s one of the keys to how trace theory is supposed to work. Allegedly, what links together and unifies traces both with their causes and their activators is a common underlying structure.
 
So the issue we must now address is: What sort of thing is this structure? I’ll argue that the required structure is an impossible object...

One could seek to cross this divide by saying the material is storing Information, but as @stephenw has noted this opens many questions that leave the materialist-reductionist position open to attack. In fact as the biologist Johnjoe McFadden notes it can even be a tentative argument for Post Morterm Survival ->

My hypothesis is that conciousness is the experience of information, from the inside. There is a postulate in physics that information is neither created or detroyed – the conservation of information ‘law’. It is however just a postulate, nobody has ever proved it. But, if true, it would suggest that awareness (associated with that information) – in some form – might survive death.

Of course if information is neither created nor destroyed, it again becomes difficult for me to see why a soul could not have access to this information. So, again, I don't understand why *if* one accepts souls one must also accept that said souls must be lobotomized wraiths.

Its hard to really determine what is going on in the billions of neurons in the brain. I got the concept form Dennett's Consciousness Explained.

People like Denett provide 'explanations of consciousness' that are decidedly vague. The fact that I can dismiss his theory so easily should make you think - is he the great guru that you think he is?

Would you please postulate a more sane theory of memory that we can consider?

That is like being asked to explain QM in one post!

As I tried to explain above, I took a long time to move from a strictly materialist approach to where I stand now on these issues. You probably have to stand on your head and accept the possibility that consciousness is fundamental and that matter is somehow derived from consciousness.

One thing is certain, defining the concept of 'soul' (or non-material being) the way you do will get you nowhere.

Hint: Start by reading Dean Radin's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Minds-E...1416516778

David

People like Denett provide 'explanations of consciousness' that are decidedly vague. The fact that I can dismiss his theory so easily should make you think - is he the great guru that you think he is?

Yeah I feel like Dennett's whole position is fatally flawed because the claim that everything is "physical" just leads us to the question of what does it mean for something to be "physical"?

I've accepted, for the purposes of argument, that the "physical" lacks any mental aspects but we only apprehend this "physical" through our own mentality. This includes our own "physical" bodies...even the brain we discuss is a phenomenal brain ->

"How can the brain be in the head when the head is in the brain?" - John Smythies

And as Hoffman notes this phenomenal brain need not even resemble whatever is the real nature of the brain in the same way that a virtual volleyball in a shared video game does not resemble the computer parts that display it to users ->

But what is your relational brain? Does it resemble your phenomenal brain? There’s no reason to suppose it does. In fact, as we saw with the volleyball, there’s no reason to suppose that the nature of the phenomenal brain in any way constrains the nature of the relational brain. Your phenomenal brain is simply a graphical interface that allows you to interact with your relational brain, whatever that relational brain might be. And all that’s required of a graphical interface is that it be systematically related to what it represents. The relation can be as arbitrary as you wish, as long as it’s systematic. The trash can icon on your computer screen is a graphical interface to software which can erase files on your computer disk. The trash can icon is systematically related to that erasing software, but the relation is arbitrary: the trash can icon doesn’t resemble the erasing software in any way. It could be any color or shape you wish and still successfully do the job of letting you interact with the erasing software. It could be a pig icon or a toilette icon instead of a trash can icon. All that matters is the systematic connection.

Now one attempt to move away from the phenomenal aspect of the physical by referencing the "hard" mathematical aspect of physics...but this path has led to a few physicists actually becoming if not full Idealists at least leaning toward some irreducible mental aspect to reality ->

“The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind… To put the conclusion crudely – the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by ‘mind’ I do not exactly mean mind and by ‘stuff’ I do not at all mean stuff. Still this is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness… It is the physical aspects of the world that we have to explain.”

– Sir Arthur Eddington

“The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognises both sides of reality – the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical – as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously. It would be most satisfactory of all if physis [physical nature] and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

– Wolfgang Pauli

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

– Max Planck

“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”

– Sir James Jeans

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

– Erwin Schrödinger

Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the ma- terialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.”

– Richard Conn Henry

“It is not matter that creates an illusion of consciousness, but consciousness that creates an illusion of matter.”

– Bernard Haisch

“Thought and matter have a great similarity of order. In a way, nature is alive, as Whitehead would say, all the way to the depths. And intelligent. Thus it is both mental and material, as we are.”

– David Bohm

The question is, if somebody says humans need to have a soul in order to have will and memories, what else requires a soul? Do monkeys need souls? Toads? Ants? Jelly Fish? Sunflowers? Where do you draw the line?

I have wondered quite a lot about this. I'd say most animals have souls of some sort. Plants may do too. They only look passive on our timescales - a speeded up film of plants growing and competing for sunlight looks remarkably as though they are conscious.

It isn't exactly a question of do they need souls, it is that these natural phenomena (animals etc) are part physical and part non-physical.

Do look at this!

http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/FRAME.HTM

Obviously, I'm not stating facts here, so much as trying to widen your concept of what may be possible.

David

I have wondered quite a lot about this. I'd say most animals have souls of some sort. Plants may do too. They only look passive on our timescales - a speeded up film of plants growing and competing for sunlight looks remarkably as though they are conscious.

It isn't exactly a question of do they need souls, it is that these natural phenomena (animals etc) are part physical and part non-physical.

Actually the question I have for you is indeed whether you think animals need to have a soul to do what they do. Can a chimpanzee do everything a chimp does if the only thing controlling it is its brain? Or does it need to have a soul in order to think chimp thoughts and have chimp memories?

Do toads, ants, jelly fish, and sunflowers also need souls to do what they do? Or can their actions be strictly physical?

If you tell me a toad can do what it does without needing to have a soul, then that shows that brains can indeed think and have memories.

But if you tell me a toad needs a soul to be a toad, then where is the line that limits the smartest living thing that exists without a soul? The ant? The jelly fish? The sunflower? A virus? If you cannot identify that dividing line, how can you even know such a dividing line exists?

I contend that no animal, including humans, needs a soul in order to function fully as a member of that species. Brains can think. Brains can remember. Brains can decide what to do and direct the animal to do actions.

That is like being asked to explain QM in one post!

Let me guess. Do you think souls form sentences strictly by magic? Is that it?

To form a sentence, one must be aware of the meaning of many words, of the rules of grammar, and of the idea one wants to express. Then one needs to put that together. That is a huge task. Do you personally look through a mental dictionary with the meaning of all words when you pick words for a sentence? Or does something do that for you?

Is it simply magic that the sentences come to you? Or is there some huge effort going on below the level of consciousness that sorts it all out and forms the sentences that come to awareness? I contend it is the later, and that the heavy lifting is done by neurons.

One thing is certain, defining the concept of 'soul' (or non-material being) the way you do will get you nowhere.

I define what I mean by the concept of a soul at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ . Have you read it? Can you tell me specifically where my concept of a soul is wrong?

If the brain mediates the interaction of consciousness/soul with our terrestrial existence, it's entirely possible damage to it affects access or even formation of memories.

This looks like the "possible therefore probable" fallacy.

Many things are possible. After all, it is also entirely possible, that, given enough miracles, I will become omnipotent tomorrow and rule the entire universe. (So you better be nice to me ).

But I don't find either brain injuries hindering souls or me becoming omnipotent to be very likely.

Is this not also the ad hoc fallacy suggested in the thread title? If you say souls exist and get inputs from the brain, then how does that in any way predict that the soul of a stroke victim will be fully aware of my visit after a brain injury but be unable to recall that visit later? 

But if the brain does the remembering, then there is nothing ad hoc about saying a damaged brain loses function. 

To illustrate, if you and I are on a call, and I drive through a tunnel, you might predict the call would get cut off. But you would never predict that my voice would come through clear, with you unable to remember anything you heard while I was in the tunnel.

For the same reason that Alex Rosenberg notes in the Atheist's Guide to Reality - as quoted in my previous posts in this thread (for example here) - that neurons cannot be about Paris, because physical things have no intrinsic aboutness. 

I disagree. If I am in Paris and experience all the sights and sounds there, it will make neural patterns in my brain. When I am at someplace similar later on, the patterns will be similar to the patterns that I saved from Paris, and that will resonate with the saved patterns in Paris. Neurons in my brain can combine those patterns and cause my mouth to say that this reminds me of this experience in Paris. All of that could be done by AI also.

Without a human observer these are just meaningless arrangements of matter. As Tallis notes above this is just smuggling in the consciousness that needs to be explained.

No need to smuggle in consciousness. The brain matches the patterns, and suggestions to talk about Paris come to mind. And as the thought of talking of Paris comes to mind, the brain puts together the story that it is consciously comparing the scene in front of it to Paris. The consciousness is not doing the computations. The consciousness is simply a state that the brain creates that says it is consciously aware of this.

But if a change in matter is what resulted in memory then there would need be a perfect isomorphism between the material and the conscious memory. 

I disagree. Foggy memories work just fine. In fact, most of our memories are foggy and change with time.

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked

How a Flawed Experiment “Proved” That Free Will Doesn’t Exist

Even in your second link ->

"Daniel Dennett also argues that no clear conclusion about volition can be derived from Benjamin Libet's experiments supposedly demonstrating the non-existence of conscious volition."

I am aware of the controversy over the Libet experiment. As I mention in the first link, it is hard to know exactly when a brain begins the process of acting and when a person is aware of choosing. The second link provides references to various variations of the Libet experiment, with the evidence in general confirming Libet.

It's hard for the non-expert to put this all together. As I see it, the evidence is certainly consistent with the brain initiating acts before the person is aware of it, and the evidence probably even favors this conclusion.

Regarding Dennett's views, I understand him to be saying that the mind consists of actions done by the brain. He refers to the sum of his brain as "I". So when he says "I" am free to choose what I want, he means that the self created by the brain is free to do what the self created by the brain wants. And since the self is made up of the molecules of the body, those molecules "want" to do what the laws of physics dictate.

Sam Harris, on the other hand, says that since the laws of physics dictate what the molecules do, the brain is not free.

I think it is just two different ways of saying the same thing. One says the molecules of me do what physics dictate, so I am not free. The other equates the molecules in me to the self, so the self (that is, the molecules) do what the self (that is, the molecules) "choose" to do.