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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <27500111@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 23:29:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27500111
Posted: Tue Aug 27 23:29:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 21:42:21 EDT
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Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Aug 27 23:29:00 1985


> ---------- "More Atheistic Wishful Thinking" ----------

The thinking being criticized is reductionism, not atheism.
While I would be quite offended to be called a reductionist,
I have no problem with sharing the religious views of Einstein, Russell,
and most other great modern thinkers.

>Wishful thinking: it's like saying that a robot chess player is "just a bunch
>of ICs".

Right, the robot is a *well-organized* bunch of ICs, not *just*.
"Just" is a fundamentally dishonest, misdirecting word that no self-respecting
philosopher should ever use, but behaviorists and other reductionists love it.

>The huge volume of stories concerning the transmission of minds
>from one body to another indicates that people do not really believe that a
>mind is a bunch of chemicals any more than they believe that a chess program
>is a bunch of ICs (or take the reduction to an even more absurd level, a
>bunch of electrical charges).

But they *do* believe that the mind is a bunch of chemicals, *with* structure;
the structure is necessary and cannot legitimately be ignored, but there is
no reason to suspect anything *other* than the chemicals (or charges or
probability waves) *plus* the structure.

>The pejorative phrasing clearly indicates that
>Padraig would rather have us overlook the absolute importance of the
>ORGANIZATION of those chemicals.

I think he made this error, but not in the intentional or misdirective way
you imply.

>The fact that people can talk seriously
>about transferring people's minds (and one assumes, the essential person)
>into computers indicates that, not only can in fact say that a person is NOT
>just chemicals, but even that the essential nature of a person is
>immaterial-- since it is information, and not matter or energy.  It it
>certainly beyond contest that the information represented in the mind is an
>essential component of a person, so that "just a bag of chemicals" he ain't.

But it is reasonable to think of a personality and set of memories as a
bag of chemicals in a particular state.  As for "essential person",
I think it is somewhat phrenomorphic (Oh, boy! I coined a word!) to think of
it as excluding the body, its age, its hormones, its physical state, etc.,
which is why I find the whole concept of afterlife incredibly juvenile.

>>I have no idea why he
>>opts for denying the existence of a soul since it presents a simple
>>and "natural" explanation for his scenario, and is just as credible.
>
>Newtonian physics is also simple, and natural, and wrong.  The point is not
>whether or not I "accept" an explanation.  The point is that Padraig is
>demanding that this explanation be accpeted, AND NO OTHER.  Since he has
>absolutely no objective evidence to work from, he has no basis to either
>assert or deny ANY hypothesis about "life after death", especially since the
>root idea comes out of a religious domain where we readily admit that we use
>the term without any precise notion of what we mean by it.  I choose not to
>believe in souls, but on rather different grounds, which Padraig has already
>stated his lack of interest in.

I love Charley's willingness to talk about terms that he admits he has no
notion of what he means by.  I know, that wasn't honest because you
say "precise notion", but I believe my stronger statement, given your
rather perverse use of language.  If I can die and then live again later,
there must be some way of identifying the two me's as being the same.
Since there is something *other* than mere continuity of the physical body
that the two me's have in common, we must give the something a name.
Traditionally it has been called the soul.  Of course, I must wonder
whether the new me will be senile, or depressed, or in incredible pain,
dependent upon the state I was in at the time of my death.  And if you
say that the new me is my "essential person" in some "exalted" painless
and perfected form, then I know for sure you have no notion of what you are
talking about.

Note that Padraig made no demand, he just asked a question.  We believe
Newtonian physics to be wrong due to a series of directed observations.
Einsteinian explanations in the 17th century would have been quite
justifiably rejected because there was no evidence or cause to support them,
just as the mere fact that Democritus was right in many ways is not
notable or complimentary to him, since it was often for the wrong reasons.
Ockham says we *do* have a basis for *rejecting* (not denying; Padraig
never did any such thing) hypotheses about undemonstrated phenomena
such as life after death.  *You* may feel that Biblical accounts of the
resurrection of Jesus are demonstration of the phenomena, but there are
plenty who do not, and in any case his resurrection is no demonstration of the
possible resurrection of anyone else, and no statement of one religious
figure recorded in one particular book, regardless of how many people
believe the statements of that book (which belief can be reasonably
be explained in sociological and historical terms), can be considered to be
evidence, so please leave this stuff in net.religion.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)