Souls are the best response to the Mind-Body Problem |w/Dr. Ralph Stefan Weir

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[@MrTylerhenry8]

I love that he's having a glass of wine during the whole thing

[@vexifiz6792]

Average European 😂

[@DarrenMcStravick]

I feel like in philosophy we've been looking in the wrong direction the whole time. Instead of questioning whether our strategies for adducing THE model of mind are even able to produce the correct representation, we simply keep hypothesising more and more and scavenge for reasons in all kinds of things. There's three problems here: (1) If the methods aren't able to hold the referent fixed, then we won't know if we're talking about different things or changing what target we originally had in mind (2) If we don't have a way to fix a target and get set on desiderata, then we simply will not know if we ever have any answer (3) If we unknowingly change the target but produce something seemingly well-supported, that gives license to all kinds of bias in trying to fit square philosophical concepts of "mind" into round empirical holes based on initial expectations. If you think any of these seem problematic and attempted solutions to which, unsatisfying, then I will be grateful to know I am not alone...

[@miaraqjones3308]

19:24 - I think the very deep thing is how shallow the time we live in. Mostly for lack of soul. Great discussion and interview, on my second listen!

[@theautodidacticlayman]

3:50 I’m so glad he called it “gaslighting” because that’s the term that comes up to my mind whenever I come across these types of views. Especially when I listen to Dennett. 😨 “The brain is great at deceiving itself.” I don’t see how anything held in conjunction with that can have a positive truth value and count as knowledge.

[@nics4967]

Yes, it would seem difficult to trust a great deceiver.

[@StephenPaulKing]

Could we take a hint from Leibnitz and consider 1st person experience, raw awareness, as a "primitive substance"? But it could not be "empty".

[@Arunava_Gupta]

The presence of the soul is so obvious to anybody who reflects for even the slightest moment on the nature of the brain and the neurons. It would become very clear that the neurons are merely the wires supplying the data pertaining to the objects of the senses. [The brain is therefore a sensorium; ] And this immediately indicates the presence of a conscious feeler distinct from the neurons who would experience and feel the data brought in by the neurons.

[@ianviviTV]

So what you're saying is that we have a soul because we are aware of our physical sensations? That would support the Buddhist ideas reincarnation where the "soul" travels through bodies and feels pain according to our karma.

[@patrickwrites]

Very interesting conversation. Book is a bit expensive in Australia, but I'll keep an eye out for library copies.

[@Drdontcare1]

I am both shocked and offended that you talked about a blue museum, containing all instances of blue, without calling it the blueseaum… unfollowed. Blocked. Reported.. 1:13:00

[@Drdontcare1]

THEN you talk about blowing it up with even mentioning that if it blew up, then it blue up… seriously, this is beyond the pale…

[@vexifiz6792]

Super interesting

Thanks!

[@gor764]

Have you looked into hylemorphic dualism? Maybe consider having David Oderberg or Edward Feser on. Would love to see you interact with that view point.

Both had turned me down

But I'd done an episode on hylomorphic animalism

[@anteodedi8937]

“...as a teenager I had a sort of standard materialist, kind of new atheist leaning view of reality…” Lol, as an atheist, I love dualism and the concept of soul. Or, to be more specific, the classical Aristotelian concept of soul where only thinking and willing are immaterial (different from Descartes' dualism). It's quite similar to property dualism, and it goes pretty well with a naturalistic/atheistic view of reality.

[@aisthpaoitht]

Atheism makes no sense, particularly in that model of reality. There must be a God to sustain reality.

[@anteodedi8937]

@@aisthpaoitht Wrong! If you don't believe me, talk to philosophers like Huemer and Chalmers or to a dozen of atheists who are not materialists.

[@aisthpaoitht]

@@anteodedi8937 they are fools

[@anteodedi8937]

@@aisthpaoitht lol, ok pal

[@Wartenss]

I mean, to be fair, that's the standard for Western atheists, unfortunately.

[@adamschaafsma5839]

Uploading our brains into a computer makes me think: if we don't know how to measure the soul and know what it is or how to detect it then it seems likely the only person who would know you didn't wake up is you. If our soul imprints ourselves onto our brain then an accurate copy of our brain might look to everyone that the person is still around, if the source of our personhood is not the brain then we could not be copied only an illusion of a copy. Thought provoking stuff.

[@adamschaafsma5839]

Hilariously if I had listened for 3 more minutes I would have realized there is a term for this 😅. Pretty funny.

[@StephenPaulKing]

There might be an argument that a Mind is representable as a family or variety of logical algebras if that representation allows for arbitrary recursions?

[@D.E.Metcalf]

I'd love to know if you'd done any work reading Dooyeweerd on this point. I have been thinking about the concepts of "Reformational Philosophy" and "Revelational Epistemology" which both broadly represent the Neo-calvinistic approach to philosophy and epistemology as seen in some reformed scholastics (Consistent with what I've read in Turretin), Bav/Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, and Van Til. In critiquing Van Til's appropriation of his work, Dooyeweerd tries to clarify what he means by a Critique of Theoretical Thought, and to illustrate, levels a charge at the scholastics, and the Westminster assembly for maintaining a conception of "human nature in terms of the dualistic Thomistic-Aristotelian conception" (I'm guessing he's referring to Thomistic-hylomorphism). He then says that this distinction flows from an unbiblical ground-motive, thus he claims to "subject this traditional scholastic view, inclusive of its whole Greek metaphysical background, to a transcendental critique from the radical biblical standpoint" or in other words, subjects dualism to a critique so that Christian Philosophy can be better brought into alignment with the "Cosmonic idea" on this point. He seems to maintain an unresolvable antithesis between pagan philosophical syncretisms (such as hylomorphism) and a truly biblical ground-motive (taking scripture strictly on its own terms),which Christians often in turn use as unfaithful shibboleths (my summary of his argument). How would you respond to his claim? Van Til has a fairly robust response to Dooyeweerd's broader argument which I'm still decoding. With that out of the way! Wanted to say that I've been loving the podcast and wish I had more time and faculty of mind for working through these issues. Trying to work through these as an aspirational autodidact/polymath in my 5 minutes of daily spare time. Source (Excerpt from "Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til"): docs.google.com/document/d/13hmyEP_sPkb2jzG8pl8Tqg60GQN9jiwh0Ct_poY3Xz0/preview

[@D.E.Metcalf]

"We take“soul” to mean the inner life-principle of an organic being, the basis of itsexistence52 and its movement. Angels are spirits (Heb. 1:14). God is also aspirit ( John 4:24). But people are souls. In them the spirit is organized asa soul-that is, the life-principle of a material organism. When the Scrip-tures tell us that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the groundand breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became aliving creature,” [Gen. 2:7]53 they cut off every Platonic or Cartesian du-alism.The person as soul cannot be outside of the body.This applies to hisessence as well and, thus, to the image of God. Spiritualism and asceticismmust be rejected no less than materialism. The two substances, body andsoul, do not exist isolated alongside each other; neither are they enemiesof each other. From the very beginning they never had conflicting intereststhat, according to Rome, could be brought into harmony only by the bridleof supernatural grace. No, they are most closely related, most intimatelyconnected, by nature and from the very first moment intended for eachother and uniquely designed for each other. In a certain sense, they haveflowed together to constitute a third nature, which we call human nature.Notwithstanding the two substances comprising it, in the consciousness,in the self, this human nature constitutes an unseparated, undivided, un-mixed, unchanged unity." Foundations of Psychology x Herman Bavinck bavinck.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/br9.pdf

[@ashikpanigrahi]

Please try to get David Deutsch in the podcast 😊

[@quad9363]

If a substance is just something that can exist apart from anything else, then anything whose existence depends upon another to be brought about (such as a child or an angel) would not be a substance, technically. So, the only substance that exists would be the uncaused cause of the world, IE Spinozism.

[@ralphweir8567]

That depends on whether substance = something that can exist without anything else for the entirety of its existence (so it could not depend on something else causing it to exist), or just something that can continue to exist by itself once it exists (just as children can outlive their parents). I'd opt for the latter definition.

[@clarabella8]

Parker, are you italian? "Settecase" is an italian surname and it means "seven houses" ;)

Yep and yep. My Sicilian grandfather adopted my half Italian father

[@clarabella8]

@ it fits you so well, à la "Nomen Omen". Like you're entering and exploring the "seven houses" of knowledge, the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic + arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy to reach the philosophia prima: theology.

@@clarabella8 wow!! Never thought of connecting it to the seven liberal arts (I'm kind of a trivium guy but I can get down with the quadrivium too!)

[@real_pattern]

non-relational, intrinsic existents seem utterly unintelligible to me. i am inclined to think that it's just word salad, syntactically functional goof-gunk, like a substance is a sheirfsjhf which exists in sfhsoahPOAFI way. one of the books that immensely influenced my thinking in metaphysics and tuned me in to the notion of interdependence is... interdependence: biology and beyond by kriti sharma. unfortunately, she hasn't appeared much online, discussing her work, so if maybe you could invite her to your show to discuss contingentism as an alternative to physicalism, dualism, idealism, that'd be super awesome!

[@ChristianSt97]

do one with Bernardo Kastrup!!

Tweet at him and tell him you want to see him on here. I couldn't get past his assistant. He's only doing big podcasts this year 😪

[@anteodedi8937]

😱 The more you guys mention him in the comment section, the more worried I am that Kastrup and his followers have turned into a KZbin cult 😱

[@ChristianSt97]

@@anteodedi8937 should we call all materialists a sect then or maybe a religion?

[@real_pattern]

​@@anteodedi8937def some cultish aspects and quirks of the kastrup bubble, but he's intellectually honest. his position is just taking experientiality *very* seriously without explaining anything about it, and making a huge inferential metaphysical leap that grounds everything in terms of experientiality.

[@anteodedi8937]

@@real_pattern lol

[@mkl2237]

Name spelling correction for your description (above): Weir. (Currently spelled “weird”)

Lol obviously I know how to spell it. I spelled it correctly in the description. But thanks I changed it

[@mkl2237]

@ I knew it was a typo: dude, I wasn’t ragging on ya. My iPhone always does auto-corrects some of which are Funny.

@@mkl2237 thanks for pointing it out. I'm surprised to find out people read the descriptions on this channel 😁