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

What an uncharitable reading of what I've written [and frankly a somewhat dishonest reading of what Tallis has written]. I am the one who has said Materialism being false does not immediately mean Survival is true multiple times in this thread.

Huh? You write this in response to, "Tallis is not making the positive case that souls can do it. Rather he is saying we don't know how it is done."

He never even mentions souls. In his summary he says he is not making a positive case for anything. So if he never mentions souls, and says he is not making a positive case for anything, why is it dishonest to say he is not making the positive case for souls?

He does make a case that thoughts cannot be about things, but I don't think his case is convincing. After all, toads have thoughts about jumping, for instance.

Even in that link:

Huh? Looking at a hypothetical soul proposed by others is not the same thing as saying I think a soul exists.

There may be something non-material that works with the brain. I acknowledge that. But if that exists, I don't think it would be able to carry on my mental function when the brain is gone. For I see that thoughts depend on the brain. So I would not call that non-material thing that works with my brain a soul. You can call it a soul if you want, but it would be very different from what most people call a soul.

Huh? You write this in response to, "Tallis is not making the positive case that souls can do it. Rather he is saying we don't know how it is done."

He never even mentions souls. In his summary he says he is not making a positive case for anything. So if he never mentions souls, and says he is not making a positive case for anything, why is it dishonest to say he is not making the positive case for souls?

Eh, not sure how many more times I can say Materialism being false doesn't mean souls are real.

He does make a case that thoughts cannot be about things, but I don't think his case is convincing. After all, toads have thoughts about jumping, for instance.

Tallis' point is that material objects - defined by Physicalists as lacking mental character - cannot have thoughts about things.

As already noted in this thread Materialist Alex Rosenberg uses animal examples to support his position that we as humans never really have any thoughts about anything precisely because animals don't have thoughts about things. One of you two must be wrong. Rosenberg's position seems consistent with what Harris says, that logically without a Something from Nothing miracle you can't consciousness from non-conscious information processing. Rosenberg's own argument that Materialist attempts to explain thoughts lead to the absurdity of infinite regression also seems compelling.

But I am having thoughts right now, so it seems my mind is immaterial. Not necessarily immortal or a "soul", but something that cannot exist if everything is "physical" as defined by Physicalists.

Thus Materialism, the metaphysics, is false. This doesn't make Survival true but it does make Survival more plausible.

Could there be some non-Materialist conception of the brain that works but leave personal Survival false? Sure, even Idealism could be true without personal Survival (Kastrup's & Sudduth's position). But we have Survival cases, and no a priori reason to dismiss them. And in most of these cases it seems the dead have at least some memories.

As such, having gone through many cases over several years, I think Survival is a reasonable belief to hold. It's opposite is still also reasonable, why it doesn't bother me you don't believe there's an afterlife. I see no need to be a fanatic about my beliefs and demand everyone believe what I do...

As already noted in this thread Materialist Alex Rosenberg uses animal examples to support his position that we as humans never really have any thoughts about anything precisely because animals don't have thoughts about things.

I disagree. I think humans can have thoughts about things. I am having thoughts about things right now, as a matter of fact.

But I am having thoughts right now

Ah, you are having thoughts too? So Rosenberg is wrong?

so it seems my mind is immaterial.

If material things cannot have thoughts, how do you know that immaterial things can have thoughts? Wouldn't all the arguments that say material things cannot have thoughts also apply to immaterial things? How do immaterial things get around that? By magic?

Not necessarily immortal or a "soul", but something that cannot exist if everything is "physical" as defined by Physicalists.

How do you define physical and non-physical? What does one even mean when he says a soul is non-physical? I don't even know what that word means.

Could there be some non-Materialist conception of the brain that works but leave personal Survival false?

How can one have a non-materialist conception of the brain. Are you suggesting it might not be material? Is anything material?

I see no need to be a fanatic about my beliefs and demand everyone believe what I do...

I agree. I present my beliefs, but I am in no sense a fanatic about my beliefs, and I do not demand everyone believe what I do.

Eh, not sure how many more times I can say Materialism being false doesn't mean souls are real.

I didn't say you said souls are real.

What I said was,

Huh? You write this in response to, "Tallis is not making the positive case that souls can do it. Rather he is saying we don't know how it is done."

He never even mentions souls. In his summary he says he is not making a positive case for anything. So if he never mentions souls, and says he is not making a positive case for anything, why is it dishonest to say he is not making the positive case for souls?

We are discussing what Tallis said. I said he was not making a positive case for souls and you said that was wrong. I was showing you that Tallis was indeed not making a positive case for souls, just as I had claimed. I wasn't even talking about your position on souls. I was talking about what Tallis said.

I disagree. I think humans can have thoughts about things. I am having thoughts about things right now, as a matter of fact.

Ah, you are having thoughts too? So Rosenberg is wrong?
If material things cannot have thoughts, how do you know that immaterial things can have thoughts? Wouldn't all the arguments that say material things cannot have thoughts also apply to immaterial things? How do immaterial things get around that? By magic?
How do you define physical and non-physical? What does one even mean when he says a soul is non-physical? I don't even know what that word means.

How can one have a non-materialist conception of the brain. Are you suggesting it might not be material? Is anything material?

I agree. I present my beliefs, but I am in no sense a fanatic about my beliefs, and I do not demand everyone believe what I do.

Physicalists, holding to a particular metaphysical position, are the ones who've told us that "physical" means lacking mental character. This has led them into the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which is really the Hard Problem of Aboutness, Hard Problem of Subjectivity, Hard Problem of Rationality, and Hard Problem of Memory.

Of course as previously noted the "physical" beyond this definition seems quite unclear and given the varied QM interpretations it's not clear even mental character is ruled out if one insists "physical" is what is revealed by physics.

So really things like the Hard Problem, and Materialism needing a logically impossible Something-From-Nothing miracle to produce consciousness, are due to how Physicalists insist "physical" has to mean no mental aspects.

To requote Peter Sjöstedt-H:

It is often expected that a position be defined before it be rejected. In the case of physicalism, however, a reason for rejecting the position is the fact that it cannot be properly defined. This ambiguity in the meaning of “physicalism” is brought out through what is known as Hempel’s Dilemma, named after its formulation by philosopher Carl G. Hempel,[1] though it was in fact formulated earlier by Herbert Feigl.[2] The dilemma: it seems that the meaning of physicalism can be grasped through either of two horns. The first horn is exclusive belief in the phenomena of current physics, such as matter-energy, space-time, the fundamental interactions, and so on. The problem herewith is that such a belief is highly unlikely to be true. This is in part because we can witness the constant change of physics through history, realizing that our current state of understanding is but a moment within this history and thus, by pessimistic induction,[3] we realize that physics is likely to continue changing. Secondly, as is well known, the current state of physics cannot be final due, in particular, to the inconsistency between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Thirdly, as will be seen below, the role of the mind in current physics is undetermined.

Thus a self-proclaimed physicalist might therefore instead embrace the second horn of the dilemma: belief in the phenomena of a future, ideal physics. Yet there are two chief problems with this alternative. Firstly, how could one believe in physicalism if one did not know what that was? One may almost as well profess one’s adamant belief in drallewertism. Secondly, it may turn out that a future physics would include mentality amongst its fundamental elements. But because physicalism, as material monism, is as such opposed to dualism (one where mind and matter are equally fundamental), such a possibility would seem to contradict the current understanding of physicalism. As a result of this implication, many self-proclaimed physicalists add a “no-fundamental-mentality” condition to the meaning of physicalism to preclude such a possibility.[4] However, one cannot determine the future direction of physics, thus physicalism, by advancing ad hoc exclusionary clauses to suit one’s current preferences. It may well be that a future physics will be contrary to “physicalism,” as understood in such current exclusionary terms.

If you want to get past Materialism's Something from Nothing problem and make a convincing case souls need brains you would need to have a different conception of matter ->

For example, the Catholic Scholastics hold qualia are in the world (negating the Hard Problem of Subjectivity) and all matter had final causes (a teleology) which would (arguably) allow brain parts to inherently be about things. This latter aspect would (arguably) negate the Hard Problem of Aboutness.

(I say "arguably" because I'm not sure how it would work or if it could work, but I've seen more than one Catholic Scholastic say something along these lines.)

However the Scholastics still hold that there are aspects of mind that are distinct from what is physical. Namely those that turn on Rationality. So they would partly agree with the paper linked above in this respect:

If one accepts, as even Papineau suggests, that there exists what the logician Frege called “the third realm”[16] (beyond physicality and mentality) of objective truths—such as the truth of modus ponens, the properties of Pi, the Pythagorean theorem, or the Form of Beauty—truths that exist whether or not they are discovered, meaning that they are in essence neither mental nor physical (as there can be no neural correlates of non-existent mental events), then it implies that their existence has an effect upon the physical through their discovery. For example, the discovery of the golden ratio had an effect upon the bodies of its discoverers in terms of their expression of it, and subsequently upon mathematics, aesthetics, architecture, and upon me in writing this essay. Thus the existence of such universal truths implies the falsity of one of physicalism’s key tenets: the causal closure of the physical. Universals crack open the causal closure principle of physicalism, which is to say they crack open physicalism itself.

Of course, a physicalist could deny the existence of such universals, such objective truths. But in doing so, he would destroy the underlying assumptions of his position and thus succumb to inconsistency regardless. If physicalism considers itself to be a logical position, it must maintain the underlying truths of the laws of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction, formal fallacies, and so on. But these laws are not the laws of physics, which as such can be established through empirical observation or through modelling. Thus emerges another predicament for physicalism: the dilemma of logical objectivity. On the one side, if the laws of logic are to be considered objective—that is, they are true for all—then they must exist in a non-temporal, non-physical third realm that has causal influence upon the physical, thereby annulling the causal closure principle and, in turn, physicalism. On the other side, if the laws of logic are considered to be not objective, then physicalism cannot claim to be objectively logical. Either way, physicalism falters.

Where, as I understand, the Scholastic would differ is rejecting a "third realm". Rather that the intellect holds the capacity for logic and it is that part of the Mind that is not physical. As Feser writes in Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought:

Now an Aristotelian who takes the redness we see really to exist in the rose,
and who regards material processes to be inherently directed toward ends beyond
themselves insofar as they are teleological, is not going to find such arguments
compelling if intended as a completely general critique of materialism. What
such arguments show is at most only that qualia and intentionality cannot be
material given the “mechanistic” conception of matter the early moderns inherited
from the Greek atomists. But the arguments do not show that these features
cannot be material given some other conception of matter—and indeed, they
are material on an Aristotelian conception of matter.

Of course, writers like Aristotle and Aquinas did regard certain aspects of
intellectual activity as immaterial, and intellectual activity is certainly an instance
of intentionality. Indeed, contemporary philosophers typically regard beliefs as
the paradigm instances of intentionality. But for Aristotle and Aquinas, that a
belief is “directed toward” or “points to” its object is not what makes it immate-
rial; indeed, non-human animals have internal states that are “directed toward”
objects—for example, a dog’s desire for food is “directed toward” the food—but
they do not have beliefs, certainly not in the sense we have them. The reason is
that they do not have concepts; and it is the ability to form concepts, to com-
bine them together into judgments, and to go from one judgment to another
in accordance with the principles of logic, that not only marks the difference
between human and non-human animals, but also the difference between a
truly immaterial faculty and the purely material, sensory capacities we share
with the lower animals.

So you could maybe go this route and end up with the Scholastic claim that the soul needs a brain and has to wait for God to give it a new brain & body after Judgement Day or however it works. The challenge for Scholastics is their conception of matter, even to those like me who reject standard Physicalism as a metaphysics, seems wrong in some way or another. It isn't clear that causal dispositions - what less religious philosophers would see as akin to "final causes" - can accommodate the Mind's Aboutness for example.

Also unclear if qualia are in the world because of issues like color blindness. So really no clear reason to accept Scholasticism, which I think would have been the best bet for you to make a case for the "Souls need brains" position. Even if they were right, Survival cases have the dead possessing bodies of some kind...so worst case would be God makes special new bodies for the soul which needs these bodies to actually exercise the Rational faculty that marks it as immaterial.

Of course part of the issue with "Souls need Brains" is the position accepts the existence of souls and Survival cases are rife with examples of souls having memory. As such you would need an argument that is so good that a vast number of Survival cases - possibly all but the looping apparition cases - could be dismissed. You could argue the Survival cases are all flawed, but this is an odd tactic for the "Souls need Brains" position as existence of souls is assumed. Even if Survival cases aren't good enough to convince one of the afterlife, once souls are assumed they seem more than adequate to give us a picture of what this assumed soul existence is like.

As an aside, the last line in the last quote concerns the supposed difference between animal and human minds...Finally this question of animals and souls sees some relevance. Some theists seem to hate the idea, but I've never seen a problem if animals have souls. I certainly don't think animals having mental faculties makes said faculties material in [the] way Physicalists would use the term "material". Why I've never grasped the reason you bring up animal souls as if this were some reason to suddenly accept Physicalism-Materialism as true.

In fact, Physicalism-Materialism's ad hoc criteria that something "physical" or "material" exists without any mental characteristics opens it up to even more problems ->

Why evolutionary theory contradicts materialism

Is Matter Conscious? - Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics.

But as physicist Adam Frank - who I already linked to, not that this ever makes a difference apparently - notes ->

You give quotes from Frank indicating there are many interpretations of quantum mechanics with no agreement on which is right. Sure. But most of that is irrelevant to this thread.

But Frank goes on to say there are many interpretations about the so-called "hard problem of consciousness":

Some consciousness researchers see the hard problem as real but inherently unsolvable; others posit a range of options for its account. Those solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. Regardless of the direction ‘more’ might take, the unresolved democracy of quantum interpretations means that our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case.

And I agree. There is a lot of dispute on the hard problem of consciousness, and nobody really knows why it is like it is.

None of that is relevant to what I have been saying, that the brain is integral to all of our thinking process, and that continuation of our mental life without our brain looks impossible.

Is something somehow working with the brain to "turn the lights on", to make thoughts feel so real? Perhaps. But none of that changes the fact that without the brain, it appears we would not remember past events, would not be able store memories of new events, would not be able to speak and understand language, would not be conscious, etc.

You give quotes from Frank indicating there are many interpretations of quantum mechanics with no agreement on which is right. Sure. But most of that is irrelevant to this thread.

But Frank goes on to say there are many interpretations about the so-called "hard problem of consciousness":

And I agree. There is a lot of dispute on the hard problem of consciousness, and nobody really knows why it is like it is.

None of that is relevant to what I have been saying, that the brain is integral to all of our thinking process, and that continuation of our mental life without our brain looks impossible.

Is something somehow working with the brain to "turn the lights on", to make thoughts feel so real? Perhaps. But none of that changes the fact that without the brain, it appears we would not remember past events, would not be able store memories of new events, would not be able to speak and understand language, would not be conscious, etc.

My point, as said multiple times, is that if "physical" means "as determined by physics", then this leaves open the question of whether consciousness is derived from matter. Even the opposite position, that all matter is derived from consciousness, is an open possibility.

See my last just above post on this as well. [Made a few changes to clarify said post.]

the Materialist Alex Rosenberg...Materialism is nonsensical...the Materialist faith....Materialism is just nonsense...we have you telling us Materialism is true and the Materialist conception of the brain can produce Cogito Ergo sum. We have Rosenberg telling us Materialism is true and Cogito Ergo Sum is false...Rosenberg's argument about what Materialism...if Materialism-Physicalism means we cannot have thoughts about things we should conclude that Materialism-Physicalism is false.

Apparently we are playing dueling subjects here. My point is not that the thing that makes our thoughts needs to be entirely physical or material. And yet you keep harping on physicalism and materialism. Why?

Again, this is my point:

The activities of the mind require the brain. If the brain is destroyed, then, as far as we know, anything that would be left that had been part of the cause of my thoughts could not be expected to carry on the activities of the mind that occurred in this life. If the brain is missing, it is hard to see that anything that remained would continued to output any mental functioning that would continue to be the self.

But you just keep talking about materialism. Perhaps we should make two different threads, rather than just talking right past each other?

Is it possible that something other than my brain is involved in my mental activity? Sure. The brain can use water molecules, and oxygen molecules. Perhaps it somehow ties in to weak electromagnetic fields or something akin to dark energy or dark matter. Perhaps it ties into something you would describe as non-physical or non-material. We don't know. But I think we can be confident that any water molecule, oxygen molecule, electrical field, spirit, non-physical entity, soul, goblin, god, dark energy, demon, anti-matter, enemy radio waves or whatever else you can think of that might be part of the functioning of the mind on this earth would not be able to continue the functioning of that mind after the brain is gone. I detail the reasons for asserting this at https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

What does it even mean for something to be non-material? Why does it even matter? What you seem to be getting at is, if you can define something as non-material, than that something gets to defy the laws of physics. Uh, no, that is not true. The laws of physics are there because that is how we understand the world to work. If you know of an exception to the laws of physics, by all means, write it up. You could become famous! Future generations could learn of Patel's Law that tells us that an entity previously unknown to physics is able to fire neurons in brains. But once you made that discovery, this thing that fires neurons and makes our thoughts would be classified as physical. For it would be something that somehow interacts with the world to modify things in a certain way according to the laws of how the mind works.

A "soul" that could move things in our world would be like dark energy. We did not anticipate that dark energy would exist. But then, we discovered that the universe is accelerating outward consistent with a background field that permeates the universe. So we now see this dark energy as part of physics.

Likewise, if you could demonstrate that something thought to be non-physical moves neurons, we would give it a name and probably adopt it as part of physics.

Your argument seems to be that the laws of physics restrict things that are material. And as long as something is currently thought to be non-physical, you seem to be saying, it suddenly gets to violate the laws of physics. That is not the universe we live in. We live in a universe that follows strict "laws" that tell us how things work. You cannot simply claim that some things violate the laws of physics. That just seems to be another name for magic.  In what way are your claims about these things different from magic?

Apparently we are playing dueling subjects here. My point is not that the thing that makes our thoughts needs to be entirely physical or material. And yet you keep harping on physicalism and materialism...

If the brain is Material/Physical in the way Materialist/Physicalist define those terms, as in made up of some stuff that has no fundamental mental character, it cannot have thoughts or memories or subjective feelings or utilize logic. Even you seem to recognize this when you note that nails don't have Consciousness, you just need to realize the same problem of getting Consciousness from Matter extends to brains.

So where do these [mental aspects] go *if* there is a soul? The obvious answer is the soul.

If you want to get around this, you'd have to give us an actual metaphysical picture of the physical that gives us a convincing reason to believe the material brain can do the things Tallis & Rosenberg say is not possible - have thoughts about anything. You also have Harris saying Materialism has a Something from Nothing problem, and Emerson Green noting the Vagueness Problem of trying to relate brain states to consciousness.

(All four are atheists, if it matters.)

This is why I mentioned the Catholic Scholastic view of matter that does sort of get close to the idea of Souls Needing Brains...ironically I've now done more to make your position coherent than you have...

As for laws of physics - Where are they? How do they work? Why don't they change?

No God, No Laws by Nancy Cartwright

My thesis is summarized in my title, ‘No God, No Laws’: the concept of a law of Nature cannot be made sense of without God.....

Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen? by Stephen Talbott

The conviction that laws somehow give us a full accounting of events seems often to be based on the idea that they govern the world's substance or matter from outside, "making" things happen. If this is the case, however, then we must provide some way for matter to recognize and then obey these external laws. But, plainly, whatever supports this capacity for recognition and obedience cannot itself be the mere obedience. Anything capable of obeying wholly external laws is not only its obedience but also its capability, and this capability remains unexplained by the laws.

If, with so many scientists today, we construe laws as rules, we can put the matter this way: much more than rule-following is required of anything able to follow rules; conversely, no set of rules can by themselves explain the presence or functioning of that which is capable of following them.

It is, in other words, impossible to imagine matter that does not have some character of its own. To begin with, it must exist. But if it exists, it must do so in some particular manner, according to its own way of being. Even if we were to say, absurdly, that its only character is to obey external laws, this "law of obedience" itself could not be just another one of the external laws being obeyed. Something will be "going on" that could not be understood as obedience to law, and this something would be an essential expression of what matter was. To apprehend the world we would need to understand this expressive character in its own right, and we could never gain such an understanding solely through a consideration of external laws.

So we can hardly find coherence in the rather dualistic notion that physical laws reside, ghost-like, in some detached, abstract realm from which they impinge upon matter.

As for the accusation of believing in "magic", I think that arguably applies more to the varied times you've waved away problems by saying "I don't know" while insisting that Souls Need Brains ->

Magic versus metaphysics by Feser

Putnam surely captures one important sense of the term “magical” here (though there are other senses, as we will note below).  More to the point, he surely captures the sense of “magical” in which the notion of magic is thought by the atheist to be objectionable.  And rightly so, for it is objectionable.  “Magical” powers, as Putnam here describes them, are powers which are intrinsically unintelligible.  It’s not just that we don’t know how magic operates; it’s that there is, objectively, no rhyme or reason whatsoever to how it operates. 

Indeed, if any view is plausibly accused of being “magical” in the sense in question, it is atheism itself.  The reason is that it is very likely that an atheist has to hold that the operation of at least the fundamental laws that govern the universe is an “unintelligible brute fact”; as I have noted before, that was precisely the view taken by J. L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell.  The reason an atheist (arguably) has to hold this is that to allow that the world is not ultimately a brute fact -- that it is intelligible through and through -- seems to entail that there is some level of reality which is radically non-contingent or necessary in an absolute sense.  And that would in turn be to allow (so the traditional metaphysician will argue) that there is something which, as the Thomist would put it, is pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens or “subsistent being itself” -- and thus something which has the divine attributes which inexorably flow from being pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens.  Hence it would be to give up atheism.

But to operate in a way that is ultimately unintelligible in principle -- as the atheist arguably has to say the fundamental laws of nature do, insofar as he has to say that they are “just there” as a brute fact, something that could have been otherwise but happens to exist anyway, with no explanation -- just is to be “magical” in the objectionable sense.

I don't necessarily agree with all the Thomist claims but I think the general argument that atheist conceptions of the Laws of Nature are "magic" in the pejorative sense holds. Maybe not as embarrassingly "magic" as Consciousness coming from Matter that is Non-Conscious, but "magic" all the same...

[As for physics, we don't know what physics will ultimately say about the relationship between Consciousness and Matter. I also don't think it by necessity holds true that physics offers a complete description of reality, but given the incompleteness of physics not sure this even matters.]

To be honest I think you've yet to provide a single convincing argument that Souls Need Brains. Really not sure why Souls Need Brains is a position even worth holding, it's quite bizarre. If there are souls it seems there could be a myriad number of ways that [they] could access memories, have thoughts, etc - it would all depend on the overall metaphysical scheme.

For now one can just look at the Survival cases and be confident that *if* souls are assumed to exist, they have memories.