Why Are We Here? : George Ellis

I tend to agree with you and property dualism is definitely not what Descartes meant by dualism. But for the reason I have outlined I would have liked the interviewer to dig a bit deeper in this interview.

Yeah that's fair, I mean I sort of agree with David that Property Dualism seems like word salad designed to deny a possibility for an afterlife but it would be nice to get a clear answer from some of these people regarding Survival.

It's a bit odd that the interviewers did ask about God and Platonism (Truth/Goodness/Beauty) to many if not all interviewees but not much was said about Survival.

@sbu

I know you still sit on the fence about the nature of reality, but ask yourself why it is that philosophical proponents of materialism/naturalism/physicalism like to confuse questions by introducing multiple versions of basic terminology, like Dualism, or free will. Typically these variants assert the opposite concept but are dressed up to conceal this.

We have already discussed property dualism, so consider Compatibilist Free will, constrained so as to be compatible with determinism (even though Determinism seems incompatible with QM)! I have participated in a few debates over the years (mainly on Skeptiko) in which someone mentioned Free Will, and then someone else would respond, "Well which kind of free will are you talking about?". What exactly does this obfuscation achieve?

I'm afraid all this confusion has crept in because orthodox explanations are so very weak.

David

@sbu

I know you still sit on the fence about the nature of reality, but ask yourself why it is that philosophical proponents of materialism/naturalism/physicalism like to confuse questions by introducing multiple versions of basic terminology, like Dualism, or free will. Typically these variants assert the opposite concept but are dressed up to conceal this.

We have already discussed property dualism, so consider Compatibilist Free will, constrained so as to be compatible with determinism (even though Determinism seems incompatible with QM)! I have participated in a few debates over the years (mainly on Skeptiko) in which someone mentioned Free Will, and then someone else would respond, "Well which kind of free will are you talking about?". What exactly does this obfuscation achieve?

I'm afraid all this confusion has crept in because orthodox explanations are so very weak.

David

I agree generally with your position but I think varied sorts of "compatibilism" have existed going far back, possibly to the Stoics if not earlier...

@sbu

I know you still sit on the fence about the nature of reality, but ask yourself why it is that philosophical proponents of materialism/naturalism/physicalism like to confuse questions by introducing multiple versions of basic terminology, like Dualism, or free will. Typically these variants assert the opposite concept but are dressed up to conceal this.

David

On this we don't agree. David Chalmers who invented the term "hard problem" of consciousness is definitely not a materialist. At the same time he can't ignore the overwhelming evidence pointing to consciousness being dependent on brain state. Therefore he and others invent middle-of-the-road explanations like property dualism and panphysicism. I understand they feel compelled to this. But I also feel these positions leads to a dead end that doesn't really explain anything. (I know my wording here states this as a hard fact, I'm sure you understand that this is just based on me guessing on other peoples motivations)

On this we don't agree. David Chalmers who invented the term "hard problem" of consciousness is definitely not a materialist. At the same time he can't ignore the overwhelming evidence pointing to consciousness being dependent on brain state. Therefore he and others invent middle-of-the-road explanations like property dualism and panphysicism. I understand they feel compelled to this. But I also feel these positions leads to a dead end that doesn't really explain anything. (I know my wording here states this as a hard fact, I'm sure you understand that this is just based on me guessing on other peoples motivations)

Chalmers seems to be pretty open minded to some things, he's ranged from talking about how consciousness collapsing a wave-function could be tested to how to build AGI so we can have conscious computer programs.

However he also seems to think there's just no evidence for an immortal soul. I don't think he's looked at any Survival literature so no idea what he would think if he read it.

I'm fine with Chalmers' current stance, because I think ultimately Psi and Survival will bear out the atheist-materialist capture of Western academia. As Gordon White says, if something is real it can take the pressure...

Chalmers seems to be pretty open minded to some things, he's ranged from talking about how consciousness collapsing a wave-function could be tested to how to build AGI so we can have conscious computer programs.

However he also seems to think there's just no evidence for an immortal soul. I don't think he's looked at any Survival literature so no idea what he would think if he read it.

I'm fine with Chalmers' current stance, because I think ultimately Psi and Survival will bear out the atheist-materialist capture of Western academia. As Gordon White says, if something is real it can take the pressure...

I think everybody in the "Western" cultural sphere (which happens to include Australia etc.) knows about NDEs by now. We are just many who thinks that even though it's an interesting phenomena it's an overwhelming stretch to extrapolate this phenomenon to suggest that there must exist an immortal soul.

I think everybody in the "Western" cultural sphere (which happens to include Australia etc.) knows about NDEs by now. We are just many who thinks that even though it's an interesting phenomena it's an overwhelming stretch to extrapolate this phenomenon to suggest that there must exist an immortal soul.

Why is it an "overwhelming stretch"? What makes it a stretch at all? It seems to me to be a reasonable conclusion.

What we are faced with is an academic system which trains minds to think in a certain way. Which discourages speculation and imagination by employing terminology like "overwhelming stretch". Even at high school level we are taught that science excludes the notion of souls or a spiritual dimension. We are led by the nose in one of two directions - towards science or towards religion. The "geeks" who gravitate to science are conditioned throughout their education and careers to reject the spiritual because that belongs in the domain of the religious. I find it amazing that there are scientists who are also devoutly religious and that they somehow seem able to compartmentalise these two aspects of their thinking.

So Chalmers and others who might be sympathetic to spirituality (if it is given another label such as philosophical idealism) are acutely aware that they will probably not be taken seriously by the overwhelmingly materialist community of scientists and philosophers who are their peers.

The "geeks" who gravitate to science are conditioned throughout their education and careers to reject the spiritual because that belongs in the domain of the religious.

Hey I was definitely one of those geeks

Other than that, I agree with your post completely.

David

On this we don't agree. David Chalmers who invented the term "hard problem" of consciousness is definitely not a materialist. At the same time he can't ignore the overwhelming evidence pointing to consciousness being dependent on brain state. Therefore he and others invent middle-of-the-road explanations like property dualism and panphysicism. I understand they feel compelled to this. But I also feel these positions leads to a dead end that doesn't really explain anything. (I know my wording here states this as a hard fact, I'm sure you understand that this is just based on me guessing on other peoples motivations)

Surely science can work with concepts that are not completely established - you don't need to invent a weaker version of the same concept! Before gravitational waves were established adequately, there was no need to use a weaker version of the concept - either gravitational waves existed or they didn't - the job was to devise sufficiently sensitive detectors to settle the matter.

Anyway, I don't think property dualism is a weaker form of dualism, I think it is essentially materialistic.

Property dualism describes a category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

I can't see how that doesn't reduce to mind being a property of a physical system - i.e. the brain.

I don't see that there is any value in inventing property dualism. Its meaning is extremely vague, and probably leads to confusion, and how does it resolve the hard problem - just for starters.

David

I think everybody in the "Western" cultural sphere (which happens to include Australia etc.) knows about NDEs by now. We are just many who thinks that even though it's an interesting phenomena it's an overwhelming stretch to extrapolate this phenomenon to suggest that there must exist an immortal soul.

My understanding is afterlife belief and interest in NDEs are both high in the public, whereas in academia there is still the lingering shadow of the materialist-atheist dogmatism preventing more robust research into Survival.

Admittedly there are religious groups that fear this research as well, for varied reasons. But overall my feeling is that people would rather have research into Survival than, say, pouring more money into colliders. Or if we include private funding, the money that goes into driverless cars.