Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[JayUtah]

That's a terrible analogy.

Good grief, yes, I have to agree. Especially since Jabba has already tried to use the oft-employed dualist analogy to which you allude: that the soul is like radio waves and the body or brain is like a radio, and that it takes the two together to make music.

In that analogy there's no proof "radio waves" (i.e., the soul) exists. Second, radio waves can be detected by instruments other than radios, and in a manner that doesn't produce music. Dualists can present no other evidence for the operation of the alleged soul than through its purported interaction with the body. Jabba has frankly told us science can't possibly detect the soul, for ... reasons.

That's where the dualist claim runs afoul of parsimony. In order to have the property they want -- immortality -- they have to invent a phenomenon that magically has the property of immortality yet has no other observable properties that aren't connected with causes science already knows produces the other purported effects of the soul: the sense of self. That is, we can already explain the sense of self by means of causes for which there is already evidence, and we can strongly correlate the observations to the presence or absence of those causes alone. Since we don't need there to be a soul to explain observations, it's not a component of the model.

I frequently see non-scientists struggle with parsimony. It's an important requirement of a scientific model to include no more than what is required to explain the observations, because to do otherwise purports causality for which there is no evidence and which would lead to incorrect predictions. Non-scientists, and especially the fringe, translate this into a belief that science cannot allow extraneous causes for some particular effect, and they argue this is irrational.

A parsimonious model is sufficient. That is, if the goal is to explain some phenomenon such as the sense of self, a parsimonious model contains all the causes that are necessary to explain the entire phenomenon. If a newcomer argues that a new cause should be added to the mix, then he has to show the existing model is insufficient without it. He has to show phenomena that the model doesn't explain. Then, in a following step, he has to show that his purported cause explains the missing phenomena, and therefore that the model is sufficient only if it includes his proffered cause.

Without that exercise it's useless for a fringe claimant to beg skeptics to stipulate arguendo that a soul exists. So what if it does? The goal is to show that it exists and that it explains some phenomena. You can't do that to an already-sufficient model.

To say that the same thing happens to the running of an engine when it blows a gasket as happens when a radio is switched off, would mean that "running" is some thing that is independent of an engine...

Indeed, as is common to so many of Jabba's arguments, he wants to equivocate -- in this case, over what it means to be a property of something. He struggles ever so hard to make it seem as if the self must necessarily be an external item.

 

[Belz...]

I frequently see non-scientists struggle with parsimony. It's an important requirement of a scientific model to include no more than what is required to explain the observations, because to do otherwise purports causality for which there is no evidence and which would lead to incorrect predictions.

That's because humans struggle with causality itself, due to an important psychological function they have which goes against causality: superstition.

 

[Mojo]

[Nothing to see here. Move along.]

 

[Mojo]

Jabba has frankly told us science can't possibly detect the soul, for ... reasons.

The reason for that was that he wanted to make it unfalsifiable. Which is another problem with his approach.

ETA: OK, maybe he didn't want to make it unfalsifiable. But he certainly did so.

 

[JayUtah]

The reason for that was that he wanted to make it unfalsifiable. Which is another problem with his approach.

ETA: OK, maybe he didn't want to make it unfalsifiable. But he certainly did so.

Indeed, many fringe claimants fall back to a position where, unable to prove their claims, they assert their critics similarly cannot dispute or disprove them. They search for an elusive position in which they say the evidence can only prove them right, never prove them wrong. And yes, to this end Jabba has said science doesn't have the power to study the soul. He has also said you need a particular mode of thinking in order to understand the nature of the soul -- a mode of thinking he just happens to excel at and which his critics lack (according to him).

If all this sounds like a litany of excuses for why he can present no evidence of a soul, that's because it is.

 

[Mojo]

He actually, at one point, defined the soul as having no characteristics of its own, all the characteristics of the living individual's personality being produced by the body. Where's William of Ockham when you need him?

 

[Mashuna]

He actually, at one point, defined the soul as having no characteristics of its own, all the characteristics of the living individual's personality being produced by the body. Where's William of Ockham when you need him?

If he's not around any more, I suspect aliens took him to a parallel dimension.

 

[Agatha]

Where's William of Ockham when you need him?

Spinning in his grave so fast that he's generating enough electricity to power Blackpool Illuminations.

 

[JayUtah]

He actually, at one point, defined the soul as having no characteristics of its own...

No doubt to deny science a means of testing for their presence or absence. If you can't study it, you can't say it doesn't exist. And that leaves Jabba with the thin shred of hope to which he's been clinging lo these four years and counting.

Where's William of Ockham when you need him?

And how many legs does he have?

 

[Mojo]

And how many legs does he have?

That depends on whether you multiply him unnecessarily.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I've said it before but understanding something as a process and not a "thing" is not that hard.

When you blow a candle out you don't have a crisis of faith over where the fire "went."

When you park your car you don't have a crisis of faith over where the "driving" went.

When I'm playing a game of Fallout and turn off my Xbox I don't have a crisis of faith over where the game went.

 

[theprestige]

I've said it before but understanding something as a process and not a "thing" is not that hard.

When you blow a candle out you don't have a crisis of faith over where the fire "went."

When you park your car you don't have a crisis of faith over where the "driving" went.

When I'm playing a game of Fallout and turn off my Xbox I don't have a crisis of faith over where the game went.

You would if you presupposed that these processes exist independently of the things that produce them.

Then you might be motivated to prove that their independent existence is statistically likely, somehow.

 

[Sideroxylon]

A vinaigrette, or other emulsion, only exists when it is in motion.

http://historyofphilosophy.net/mccabe-on-heraclitus

 

[Pixel42]

I've said it before but understanding something as a process and not a "thing" is not that hard.

When you blow a candle out you don't have a crisis of faith over where the fire "went."

When you park your car you don't have a crisis of faith over where the "driving" went.

When I'm playing a game of Fallout and turn off my Xbox I don't have a crisis of faith over where the game went.

Where does the wave go after it hits the shore, that's what I want to know. It might have travelled for days and hundreds of miles, still the same wave even though its shape and the molecules of water that constitute it are constantly changing, then it hits the shore and poof it's gone.

Still at least the wave got to exist. Just think of all those potential waves that never will.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Where does the wave go after it hits the shore, that's what I want to know. It might have travelled for days and hundreds of miles, still the same wave even though its shape and the molecules of water that constitute it are constantly changing, then it hits the shore and poof it's gone.

Still at least the wave got to exist. Just think of all those potential waves that never will.

Where does the white go, when the snow melts?

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- There is something (perhaps an illusion) that we call the self. Whatever it is, that's what I'm talking about.
- And, OK. There is no pool of selves at all -- yet, these selves I'm talking about keep popping up. There must be no limitation on how many selves there could be.

And the scientific hypothesis is that this self is activity of a living physical brain.
Some people postulate that the self is the brain in its entirety. Some postulate that it is localized to one part of the brain, the fronto-parietal cortex. It could be decades or centuries before we really understand it. But there is nothing suggesting that anything except the physical brain is involved.
They keep popping up in exactly the same way that physical brains keep popping up. Is there a pool of brains?

Dave,
- No problem. According to modern science, whatever this thing is, it never existed before, it will never exist again and didn't have to exist in the first place. [That's what counts.]

Exactly like your physical brain.

Dave,
- In that respect, yes. There are, however, other respects.

What respects would those be?

Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not). But then, the self is.
- For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not). But then, the self is.

Why would that make a difference?

- For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was.

But the self wasn't created out of nowhere. A brain produced it. Everything about the self is determined by the brain.

 

[Belz...]

Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not).

That doesn't make sense. Of course it is.

- For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was.

Is "running" created out of nowhere?

 

[Hokulele]

Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not). But then, the self is.
- For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was.

The self was created out of the brain, not out of nowhere. Where on earth did you get the idea it comes from nowhere?

Tornadoes are an emergent property of certain weather conditions. Does that mean they come out of nowhere?

 

[John Jones]

Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not). But then, the self is.
- For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was.

This is preposterous. The brain is not made up of emergent properties. It is made up of water and organic chemicals that had their origins in some stellar furnace billions of years ago. The self was not created out of nowhere. It is an emergent property of a brain.