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

Not to drift off-topic, but I'd be curious to know your issues with Alexander. It's been a while since I looked into his story, but I do recall finding the issues of his conduct as a surgeon worrying while the attempted hole-poking at his experience unconvincing.

Nothing beyond what everyone knows - I do agree that the piece on him in the Esquire was a "hit piece", we only have to compare this to media darlings who have done far worse yet maintain media support.

However it did raise my suspicion enough that I am wary of using him as a prime example for the Survival Hypothesis. There are other NDE cases that I think don't have the same shadow of possible embellishment to them, including varied medical professionals.

Please do - I'm very interested to see them.

Here it is -> Kastrup basically accepts the randomness-determinism dichotomy that we reject.

You lay out your interpretation of mind which leaves open the possibility that some portion, potentially significant, may not be explained by brain function.  I think that's fair and a much more reasonable position that pure reductionist, physicalism.  You then offer up some potential explanatory phenomenon such as dark energy, dark matter, or 'strange fields'.  Notably, you do not offer any 'convincing evidence' for these possibilities but you leave them open nonetheless.  I find this reasonable and fair as well.

I am merely saying that science does not know it all. Years ago we had no concept that dark energy existed. Now we find it exists, and is forcing to universe to accelerate outward.

Likewise, when it comes to the brain, there is a lot we don't know. There may be a possibility that there may be something else involved. But if anything else is involved than that obviously cannot continue mind function in the absence of the brain. We know what happens when the brain function is slowed down by anesthesia--all consciousness ceases. We know what happens to damage in particular parts of the brain. The corresponding mental function is no longer works properly.

So, why then does your tone change when talking about continuation of consciousness?  You eliminate the possibility out of hand seemingly based on your own personal logic (i.e., you don't see a way this can happen). 

I don't eliminate the possibility. I just find it extremely unlikely that the mind function can continue without a brain, seeing the dependence that the mind has on the brain.

E. Feser

The ideology in question is, of course, materialism (or physicalism or naturalism, if you prefer). If you start with the assumption that thinking simply must be identical to, supervenient upon, or otherwise explicable in terms of brain activity, then it will seem to you at least plausible that logical relations might be reducible to causal relations, thoughts identifiable with the having of brain sentences, etc. But no one would think these things plausible even for a moment if they were not already seeing the world through materialist glasses – indeed, they would take the evident absurdity of such proposals as prima facie evidence of the falsity of materialism. (And that is, I propose, part of the reason why most philosophers historically have not been materialists.)

I find nothing absurd that patterns of signals in my brain corresponding with thoughts.

What do you think about the pattern of signals in the brain of a toad? Do they correspond to toad thoughts? Can a toad's entire thought process, with all her decision making, desires, and knowledge of the world, be nothing more than the signals in her brain? Or do all toads need a soul to think toad thoughts?

If you think toad thoughts might be physical, what about monkey thoughts?. Could they all be physical? Or do you say it is impossible for monkeys to do monkey thinking unless they have a soul?

If you say chimps or dolphins surely have souls, then where do you draw the line, and say anything dumber than this doesn't have a soul? If you cannot draw a line, how do you know there even is one?

These questions must be stomper questions. For so far I have not found a dualist that seems to be addressing these. Would you address them?

I see thought processes occurring throughout the animal kingdom. And that involves exactly the process that Feser rejects, that thoughts about the world correspond with brain signals. To get away from that, and dismiss all meaning of brain intelligence, you would need to conclude that all ants had souls.

I find nothing absurd that patterns of signals in my brain corresponding with thoughts.

What do you think about the pattern of signals in the brain of a toad? Do they correspond to toad thoughts? Can a toad's entire thought process, with all her decision making, desires, and knowledge of the world, be nothing more than the signals in her brain? Or do all toads need a soul to think toad thoughts?

If you think toad thoughts might be physical, what about monkey thoughts?. Could they all be physical? Or do you say it is impossible for monkeys to do monkey thinking unless they have a soul?

If you say chimps or dolphins surely have souls, then where do you draw the line, and say anything dumber than this doesn't have a soul? If you cannot draw a line, how do you know there even is one?

These questions must be stomper questions. For so far I have not found a dualist that seems to be addressing these. Would you address them?

I see thought processes occurring throughout the animal kingdom. And that involves exactly the process that Feser rejects, that thoughts about the world correspond with brain signals. To get away from that, and dismiss all meaning of brain intelligence, you would need to conclude that all ants had souls.

Materialism being false does not mean there are souls.

I've said this a few times over explicitly. Also said it implicitly by saying the falsity of Materialism does not make Survival true.

Also why I've quoted a variety of atheists who think materialism is flawed (Harris), impossible (Tallis), or true but having thoughts is false (Rosenberg). None of whom believe in souls.

I'd suggest reading up on Philosophy of Mind...

p.s. Not a Dualist.

Can it be a mere coincidence that sticking a hand in a fire hurts, or that sexual activity feels good? Such a suggestion strains credulity.

Can you imagine a species for which sticking one's hand in the fire felt good and sexual activity hurt? Natural selection, surely, would not favor such a species.

So why is your credulity strained that nature selected things the way it did?

Since you keep bringing up quantum mechanics, can I ask you where you learned about quantum mechanics? There is a lot of Creationist nonsense out there about quantum mechanics that misunderstands what it is all about. Is that where you are getting your information? If not, where are you getting this information about quantum mechanics you mention? Are you an expert on QM?

You know @David001 already mentioned the physicist Henry Stapp in a reply to you here...right?

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.

Additionally I don't think any of the physicists I quote in this post are/were Creationists...Nor, in the larger list of scientists I drew my subset from, are there any Creationists AFAIK...

As an aside:

Yes, of course, the brain does things subconsciously. And yes, we do fool ourselves regarding our motivation when the brain makes decisions.  See, for instance, this spilt brain experiment.

The link starts off by saying the concept is theoretical, and even says no conclusive evidence has been found?

Anyway ->

Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness

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.

So a GPS program in your phone that says the street names of Paris as you walk around the city...does that phone have thoughts about Paris?

Or is it just non-conscious information processing, the kind Sam Harris notes logically cannot produce consciousness unless one accepts a religious Something from Nothing miracle for the sake of the Materialist faith?

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.

Sorry but this seems like an incredibly ad hoc explanation... What is the mind that suggestions to talk about Paris come to?.Consciousness is a state the brain creates that says it (the brain?) is consciously aware of this? What is "this"? The computations Consciousness is not doing?

In any case the problem is not talking about Paris, the issue is that people can have a thought that is about the capital city in France. Maybe it's because they read/hear the word "Paris", maybe it's a scene from a movie, maybe it's a picture of the Eiffel Tower, etc...Regardless, their mind has at least one thought that is directly about Paris. You are almost certainly having at least one thought of Paris now as well.

Alex Rosenberg - who is a Materialist, to be clear - notes that the "physical", as defined by Materialists/Physicalist believers as that which lacks any mental character, cannot explain how a thought is about something because it would lead to an infinite regression of neurons for which there is obviously not enough space in the brain.

To quote from his The Atheist's Guide to Reality yet again ->

The first clump of matter, the bit of wet stuff in my brain, the Paris neurons, is [purportedly] about the second chunk of matter, the much greater quantity of diverse kinds of stuff that make up Paris.  How can the first clump -- the Paris neurons in my brain -- be about, denote, refer to, name, represent, or otherwise point to the second clump -- the agglomeration of Paris…?  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.Let’s see exactly why. Call that part of the brain the neural interpreter. It’s supposed to interpret the Paris neurons as being about Paris the way we interpret the red octagons as being about stopping. How can the neural interpreter interpret the Paris neurons as being about Paris? The interpreter neurons would have to have different parts that are about two different things, about Paris and about the Paris neurons. Already we can see trouble coming. We started out trying to explain one case of neurons being about something—Paris. Now we have two cases of neurons being about things—about Paris and about the Paris neurons...

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.”

I'd say Rosenberg is correct all the way up to the end, insofar as that is how Materialists/Physicalists think of physics, but then he makes the wrong turn of saying we cannot think about things. While this is the correct conclusion under the Materialist belief system, it's a leap of faith too far.

Better to be on the side of logic, continue to hold to Cogito Ergo Sum, and accept Materialism is false.

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

Your answer appears to me to be, "Yes, in order for a toad to do all that a toad does, then it needs to have a soul." Your link also seems to carry that requirement all the way down to a cell in your body, and perhaps even microplast subdomains of all your cells, all of which must need souls to do what they do. So are there untold millions of souls controlling each cell and microplast in your body? How many souls are at work in your body?

You say, "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," which seems to be a statement that if these animals, etc., didn't have these souls, they wouldn't be doing what they do. And that looks to me like just another way of saying, "These animals need to have souls to do what they do."

That looks to me to stray from the very concept of methodological naturalism, which is the method scientists use that seeks answers to everything based on natural, testable phenomena. But your answer implies that not only humans, but all animals, plants, cells, and even some parts of cells, behave in ways that are not natural, testable phenomena. Doesn't that rule out all the basis of natural science in the field of biology? How could biology proceed without using methodological naturalism?

You say animals can be part physical and non-physical. What do you mean by the word, "physical"? That is a word that gets thrown around a lot here. To me, any thing that in any way interacts with the universe in a way that is physically detectable and is theoretically capable of being studied by science is "physical". By that definition, everything you are talking about is physical. What do you even mean when you say something is "non-physical"?

Let me frame the questions that David and I are discussing in a different way. I would like to see more responses to this.

Question: Do the following need souls to do what they do? 

My answers are shown in red. Please feel free to post back with your answers, which do not need to be limited to just yes or no.

1. Waterfalls: no
   
2. Bacteria: no 
   
3. Sunflowers: no
   
4. Jellyfish: no
   
5. Ants: no
   
6. Toads: no
   
7. Monkeys: no
   
8. Chimpanzees: no
   
9. Homo erectus: no
   
10. Humans: no