Conversation With Richard - Does Matter Equal Existence?

Here is Richard's reply to my piece on the Big Bang experiments:

Hi there Peter,

I have finally found time amidst the hustle and bustle of this busy time of year to reply to your message. Firstly, your first paragraph, it brings me to draw up the question, 'If matter behaves predictably, then why do surprises exist?.. Does this mean it happens outside of our knowledge, or does it happen through another means in something science will never find?' If either is the case, then the scientists are trying to find the answers in the wrong areas, which I suppose agrees with the points you were making towards the end of your message.

I heard about the Large Hadron Collider and was following the news of it's results very closely, until I heard it may not be fired up again for months maybe. How dissappointing. I hope they find some answers when it is next fired up, or maybe the leak it had wasn't an accident, maybe we aren't meant to find any answers to matter and the dark matter yet. I do however hope we do find answers that will build knowledge.

I have another point in difference to your point involving matter. I read that you thought "matter=existence". However, I tend not to agree with this, and take the road of a dualist. From my experience of life, life isn't just about substance, you have to experience it subjectively too. So in short, the mind is just as important as materialism, and together they both equal existence.

I guess in relation to dark matter a million different responses on what it is could make sense. However if it makes up 70% of the universe's energy, surely it could be said that it could be controlling what happens as we know it without realising? If this is the case, life is a constant struggle, and we will never be in control.


I shall leave my response here, and look forward to your response as always,

Richard Debnam

Tags: conversation Big Bang matter existence predictable science Large Hadron Collider dualist control dark matter

Conversation With Richard - Why? Why? Why?

As predicted, Richard has replied to my last post to him, the one entitled "It's Science Jim But Not As We Know It". He takes exception to the idea that science is always wrong and argues that it does answer some "Why?" questions very well. He makes a plea for patience in judging science.

On the problem of time and space he points out that everything has an opposite.

Hi Peter,

I've just jogged my memory into the flow of where our discussion was going, and I feel back on track again.

Firstly, I need some help if possible, wherever I look for a reliable cosmological resource on dark matter, it ceases to exist, as I'm not totally sure what it represents, and I remain intrigued into what it is. However, continuing on, I don't fully agree Science is ultimately wrong. Instead, isn't it true of the answers we are trying to find now? Our discussion's ideal aim is to try and find answers to philosophical questions we propose, but I find there are different types of "why" questions, one of them, Science does find an answer to.

If for example, one was to ask, "Why does the Sun dissappear from our sky during the day?" One would simply answer, because the Earth is rotating on it's axis which creates daytime and nighttime. This is the type of "why" question Science can answer in today's scientific knowledge. On the other hand, if one was to ask, "Why do we have daytime and nighttime on Earth?" This is where Science cannot answer, and can either only trial and error until it answers the question properly, or it can just explain, "because it does". Then it begs the question, "Who started daytime and nighttime on Earth, to answer the question of why?" Therefore, Science can answer the "why" inside it's knowledge, but not outside of it. However, Science has proved it can answer the main "why" and "who" questions gradually and somewhat controversially, contradicting faith of strong religions. Therefore I find Science needs patience in order to find an answer, and the way round it, is not to expect an answer to questions we face now, but to patiently contribute and accept that our future ancestors may know the answer before us.

In answer to your point about "..applying finite space to infinity, or time with eternity." I have to say that without one, we cannot know what it's opposite means. For example, if we do not know what infinity means, but you know what finity means, then you can only know from learning about things which could apply to infinity. Which means in order to find a true answer to whether Space is finite or infinite, we have to look at both possibilities in order to not miss something which could lead to an ultimate answer, regardless of Earth and human time that we have created and abide by.

I see Science, truth and our life-reflective curiosity as a jacket that is unzipped. We all wear different jackets, due to our diverse interests. Some people couldn't care about if there are other dimensions to life, so their jacket is done up very quickly, but then there are others of us who want to know about the unknown, making our jackets a whole lot bigger. The more Science finds a true answer to what originally seemed an unanswerable question, the jacket zips up, and completes part of the gradual journey science is made for, to chase true answers to curious questions or challenges we propose, whether involving everyday life, an afterlife, a parallel life or any other possible different dimensions which occur from the human mind. Therefore once our jackets are zipped right up, we continue in our course of paradoxical Earth days of eat, drink, and sleep to keep us alive until our dying day. Some of us need to wait longer for our jackets to be zipped up, and the obvious need to abide by our materiality in everyday life at the same time as zipping up our jacket.

I look forward to your response as always,


Richard Debnam

Tags: conversation why science time space dark matter patience truth

An Afterlife? - It's Science Jim But Not As We Know It

In this post I look at what science has to offer and where it falls down. I suggest that science is good at analyzing the known universe but fails when we ask it to explain anything beyond that. Our understanding of time and space suggest that they are paradoxes which we can't live with, scientifically, but can't live without, either. This suggests that we need to find something very big which is currently missing from our understanding. It would have to be non material to avoid an impasse. In order to identify it we may have to ask "why" rather than "how".

My post was made on 14 Jul 2008 at 04:25 pm:

Hi Richard. This is really getting tricky now so I think we need to just backtrack a little. You will be relieved to know that I do not believe there is an alternate universe out there inhabited by some geyser called God, although we could have a different conversation about string theory but not now, please, not now. I think we are both agreed that we have quite enough on our hands trying to make sense of the one world we do know. In trying to make sense of it we have identified what most people feel happy to call "matter" and we believe that matter behaves in predictable ways which we can discover by applying techniques which we call science. I have no problem with that. However, these intrepid scientists often claim that everything can be explained by science. I have a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, science is about process, by which I mean it attempts to make sense of matter, starting from how we find it behaves in our current environment. It projects forward and backwards but it never goes completely beyond that spectrum. The furthest back it goes is to around the Big Bang or thereabouts. In formulating its theories it posits various explanations which it then tests out with experiments. Eventually, these experiments hit upon problems which cannot be explained by the theories it is trying to prove and so another scientist has to posit a different theory which, therefore, requires a further set of experiments. This so called scientific revolution proceeds by a process of trial and error, with the ultimate aim of one day understanding everything there is to know about how matter works.

Therefore, at any one time, current scientific understanding is about to be superceded by the latest scientific revolution. In other words science is, by definition, always wrong. It is, simply, a part of the process of understanding matter and very imperfect at it. Only a few years ago our fearless scientists discovered a form of matter which it called "dark matter" and subsequent investigations revealed that it accounts for about 85% of the matter in the universe. Moreover, virtually nothing is known about it. Now, our understanding of matter is very limited and our understanding of dark matter even more limited so we can hardly look to science to give us anything approaching knowledge which will, in the foreseeable future, be adequate enough to explain even what is going on in the material universe, let alone anything further than that. Yet the scientists confidently tell us matter will explain everything!

But there is a further problem. As long as science confines itself to the process side of science, all is well. What happens when we try to take that process to its ultimate? We all rely on 2 very important concepts in our understanding of matter and they are "time" and "space". I have tried to think scientifically without applying these concepts but I can't. Even using Einstein's theory of relativity there does seem to me to be a fundamental problem. Both these ideas are about measurement, finite measurement. If we can measure time and space then we can, logically, project this measurement into infinity. Travel, if you will, beyond the edge of the universe. Project time back before the beginning of time. At this point both ideas become paradoxes. It does not make sense to juxtapose finite space with infinity or time with eternity.

I draw 2 conclusions from this. The first is that the current scientific language is fundamentally inadequate. It not only does not but cannot explain what it sets out to explain. Secondly, there is something missing which is so huge that it blows an almighty hole in our understanding of everything.

Arguing from ignorance is not something any of us like to do, but I think it is the position we are in. So, how far can we go? Well, my answer is that there must be something radically different which explains what is going on, not more of the same. An alternate universe inhabited by God would not cut it. That would be just another material universe and would, therefore, re-create the infinite regress we already have encountered. So, we are looking for something non material, in order to escape the problems of materialism.

We are, of course, surrounded by things which are non material, but we are also surrounded by people who want to make out that they are, in fact, material. As long as we base our thinking on the material, the logical impasse will persist.

As you say, some very different issues arise when we replace the "how" of science with, for example, "why" and it may be that we have to answer these non scientific questions in order to have a context for the mere process of science.

Peter Rayner

Tags: afterlife science God string theory process spectrum Big Bang scientific revolution matter dark matter time space paradox infinite regress why

An Afterlife? - The Chinese Room

This post consists of a detailed description of the analogy of the Chinese Room by Prof John Searle. It concerns the difference between a computer thinking and human intentions. It then describes Searle's wider orientation as a member of the group of philosophers who argued the case known as The Identity Hypothesis.

My post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 09:30 am:

Hi Richard, sorry to be a while replying - life got a bit busy.

I'm not sure whether we are both referring to the same Chinese room analogy. I think we probably are, but, for the sake of clarity I'll go through the whole story. The scenario was invented by Prof John Searle who was a trendy philospher in my student days. Alas, he is now 75 and no longer on the "A" list. Perhaps he should have a word with Pete Townsend to see how to become an everlasting hero! Anyway, to quote from his wikipedia entry (to save me explaining it myself):

"Searle asks his audience to imagine that many years from now, people have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. The computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of artificial intelligence would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does.

Now, Searle asks the audience to suppose that he is in a room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English version of the computer program, and processes the Chinese characters according to the instructions in the book. Searle notes that he does not understand a word of Chinese. He simply manipulates what to him are meaningless squiggles, using the book and whatever other equipment is provided in the room, such as paper, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. After manipulating the symbols, Searle will produce the answer in Chinese. Since the computer passed the Turing test, so does Searle running its program by hand: "Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don't speak a word of Chinese," Searle writes.

Searle argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that computers do not understand Chinese either, because they are in the same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols, just as he is. They don't understand what they're "saying", just as he doesn't. Since they do not have conscious mental states like "understanding", they can not properly be said to have minds."

Searle was interested in the idea of intentionality and, indeed, wrote a book called "Intentionality". As you can see he is saying that it is one thing to look at process and quite another to to look at understanding and intentions. No matter how sophisicated the science, can it ever be more than process? In my view the answer has to be "No". I think the point here is that science is invented by people to understand the processes of the real world. But it in no way explains anything beyond "How?"

I have noticed that many of the writers in this forum seem to think that science and matter are one and the same. If we accept that matter is a reality, that still leaves open the question of what science is and how accurate it is. I would suggest that science can never be more than a set of constructs attempting to explain a process. Moreover, it does not really require us to exclude other languages which explain other phenomena. For example, poetry, art, love, human experiences all have well developed means of communication. If they are just processes, like the chinese characters, then what is the point of them?

I suppose the obvious question which this line of thinking poses is "What is the point of science?"

Just to head off those out and out materialists who lurk around this forum, Searle is one of a group of philosophers, myself included, who believe what has come to be known as "The Identity Hypothesis". The idea is that once a line of thinking has developed into a permanent body it cannot be pushed back into its former identity. So, if you try to explain a crackling fire in scientific terms then you lose the point of it in a poem. Another like-minded philosopher called it the Humpty Dumpty Argument because once Humpty was broken into thousands of pieces "...not all the King's horses, nor all the King's men, could put Humpty together again."

So the science of material reality is just one of many ways of explaining the world around us and the experiences we have. No one language is sufficient.

All that without even considering the implications of consciousness as "non scientific" but still very real. I think I had better pause there to get some reactions.

Peter Rayner

Richard's response is to distinguish between "objective essence" and "formal essence" which seems to be another way of describing the difference between computer and human thinking.

He also considers meaning and science as things that happen in life which need to be explained.

Richard's post was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 06:21 pm:

Hi Peter, reading all of the last post I can safely say we're thinking of the same one. I have a few questions and answers of my own in response to it.

I still think that regardless of whether the person in the Chinese room understands Chinese or not, he can still relate to a human language that he can speak, this gives the Chinese language some form of meaning, instead of meaningless "squiggles". This contrasts with the case involving computers, as they are merely regurgitating what humans have programmed them to do. Computers can know grammar, spelling and dictionary meanings of words, but they have no mind or instinct to actually relate to how a language works in everyday life, slang words for example would seem like nonsense to computers, but some people abide by it by talking their own way. The best way to describe this in philosophical terms is that computers hold the "objective essence", knowing the idea of a language, but never have the "formal essence" of the language, which is what the language actually is.

I also find that scientific definitions and poetry can work together, because if you read a poem and you come across the word "fire", and you didn't understand what it was, and never experienced fire, then you would only look up its meaning in a dictionary or ask someone to find out it's meaning. Therefore, you have to have a sound understanding about what the poem's words mean to understand the point of the poem, which without scientific definitions or a working understanding of "fire", then it would just seem like a crazy random rambling that someone decided to put together.

Another response I have is that one concept we have to grasp in order to understand science, is to know things can happen above anyone's understanding. An example that comes to mind are radio waves that we send out to space. Law of gravity says on Earth "what goes up must come down", however we have sent radio signals into space for a long time, and the radio waves never bounce back to Earth, they continue to run deeper into space, this contradicts the law of gravity. If we didn't know what radio waves were and went out into space, received an alien signal and it turned out to be british world war II songs for example, it would be very hard and quite baffling to work out how it got into space without knowing that radio waves defy the law of gravity.

This continues onto my conclusion of what the point of science is, well.. It's a way of understanding what happens, and it is everyday life, without science unexplained things would be happening every second of the day, and people would react differently to how these random acts occur. It is from these reactions of the people that poetry lies, meaning "what happens+understanding of meaning=reaction" and equally, "what happens+reaction=understanding of meaning" However much this is juggled about it still all remains balanced and equal, you can't have one without the other.

Science and reactions are part of what happens in life, they just happen naturally, sometimes without a meaning, and most certainly without responsibility sometimes. I see science and reactions as a spectrum, at opposite ends they work together to form what we do, and how we live our lives... I apologise if this is too long-winded, but I look forward to seeing your response to mine all the same.

Richard Debnam

My reply is self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 06:34 am:

Richard you never cease to amaze me. None of this is what I expected and yet I can't dismiss it even though it is not standard philosophical response to the points I have made. Once again I find myself needing to think before replying to you. Long may it continue. I will think awhile before replying. Stay right there, buddy.

Peter Rayner

Richard's reply is also self-explanatory. It was made on 30 Jun 2008 at 11:50 am:

Hi Peter, yeh.. I found that I tend not to agree with the standard philosophical responses I read and come across, instead I try to think up what my mind tells me is right and I come up with alternate ones that are "outside the box" so to speak. No worries mate, patience is a virtue so they say. In the mean time, I have decided to add you as a friend, because I haven't come across a discussion as interesting as ours for a while.

Speak to you soon.

Richard Debnam

Tags: afterlife Chinese Room John Searle Identity Hypothesis computer artificial intelligence intentionality science process objective essence formal essence meaning

An Afterlife? - Science Has All The Answers

Another of my diversions follows, this time involving 2 other correspondents and so, once again, I am in the position of having to summarise their part of the debate. You can, however, read the exchange in full in its original location.

Gareth joined the discussion by pointing out that there are lots of things we don't know but that would just produce a long and imaginative list of unlikely items. Just as there is unlikely to be an invisible lizard living on his shoulder, so he can dismiss ideas of God, the soul, an afterlife and other anti-scientific ideas. He called this rationalism.

Gareth's post was made on 18 Jun 2008 at 02:38 pm. My reply was made on 18 Jun 2008 at 04:27 pm:

Hi Gareth. It always amuses me to find someone who dismisses an invisible lizard with a leap of faith, but thinks he's a rationalist, because it is rational to hold that the entire universe was caused by an exploding dot which is so powerful that it gives mankind the ability to make free decisions and have intentions. And as for logic I wonder if you have ever heard of either inductive or deductive logic or pondered what happens when cause and effect in science trace backwards into an infinite regression. Oh, and by the way, Gareth, that's not a lizard on your shoulder - it's a chicken - or is it an egg?

Peter Rayner

Gareth made a spirited reply by stating that he believed in science because it is supported by data and that the whole point of science is to explain everything. Otherwise we are at the mercy of superstition and dogma.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 12:57 am.

Tim replied to Gareth with a moral argument for life after death. He suggests that if people just die then it's "not fair". He suggests a moral force which makes some things true and others false and if there is no such force then he asks what it means to say something is true.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 01:37 am.

Gareth replied to this somewhat oddly claiming, on the one hand, that there is nothing outside the structure which we impose and, on the other, that we are bound by data.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 03:08 am.

Tim came back with the claim that the universe has its own moral structure and that there is such a thing as truth which we are, therefore, morally obliged to follow. He challenges Gareth to show why anyone should believe his theory of truth.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 04:08 am.

Gareth's reply, again somewhat oddly, is to seek the physical whereabouts of this moral structure. He then presents us full on with his, dare I say it, dogma that science has to be everything, although we are not told why this is so.

He then reveals his utilitarian view of morality, namely, that we make rules in order to run societies.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:35 am.

My reply to these exchanges follows. It consists of an attack on the "science is everything" theory by arguing that science is merely an attempt to understand the process which followed the big bang. Also, our knowledge of the "matter" which resulted from this is very limited. Furthermore, we think in time and space, yet both these concepts would seem to be paradoxical. Human beings behave, habitually, in ways which science is unable to explain by their expressions of intentional behaviour. There is a further problem inasmuch as science proceeds by testing its own theories to destruction and is, therefore, always based on uncertain knowledge. Finally, the implication of the entirely materialistic world is determinism.

My post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:46 am:

Hi Gareth. Thanks for seeing the funny side of it but get serious now, we must.The data you refer to is a theory about process, that's all. It is an attempt to make sense of an expanding universe. The theory struggles to take account of dark matter which, it seems, accounts for some 80% of the stuff of which the universe is made and about which we know very little. It also requires us to believe that our theory requires the concepts of space and time both of which have to be made to disappear up their own black holes in order to avoid a double infinite regress. If space measures limited distance then what lies beyond the furthest point? If time began with the big bang then where did the matter in the big bang originate? I can see that science is making progress within the confines of how stuff works within our world and universe of worlds but I don't see it getting close to the big issues of how the process first began and for that matter why. Nor do I see how mere matter leads to human will and action. How do we come to have intentions? Matter can't do that. You say nothing lives outside science. I say we human beings live outside science - all the time. Almost everything we get up to is outside science. We need to get our lives back. You say the remit of science is to explain everything. I say the ultimate remit of science is to explain the process of matter, just like a builder constructs a house. He knows everything about it in process terms but the truth is he is following someone elses plan - another issue entirely. But there is a further problem with science. The way in which science proceeds is to posit a theory and test it to destruction. The well known phenomenon then takes place - the scientific revolution - followed by a new theory which is then, itself, tested to destruction. Fine for the scientists, useless for epistemologists because the inevitable conclusion is that science, by definition, is always wrong. Worse still, even if you suceed in doing away with everything except matter then how do you avoid living in a deterministic world in which everything has already been decided by the mother of all explosions?

Peter Rayner

I then replied to Tim, agreeing with his right to pose the moral universe proposition.

My post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:58 am:

Hi Tim. I love your line of thinking. This is so far removed from the hard materialism of your opponent that it simply cannot be consumed by science. Why not pose the question "What if we live in a moral universe?" Does that not so clearly point out the limitations of science which has to exclude it, not because it's wrong, but because it's not scientific. A perfectly valid question, nevertheless.

Peter Rayner

Tim then decides to look at the utilitarian argument and asks what if it turns out that society works better if people believe in an afterlife. On utilitarian grounds we would have to believe in it, even if it were not true.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 06:24 am.

Gareth's reply was to re-assert his view that science can and will, one day, explain everything. He also indicated that a further big bang along exactly the same lines would produce the same results and that would not make the world deterministic although he offers no explanation for this statement.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 06:28 am.

Gareth made 6 more posts, starting with a reply to Tim's moral argument but all his replies are basically a denial of anything outside his view that science has all the answers.

The discussion then returned to the analogy of the chinese room...

Tags: afterlife science God soul rationalism exploding dot intentions inductive deductive logic infinite regression data dogma moral argument structure utilitarian process big bang matter determinism

An Afterlife? - Soul Searching

Before continuing with the exchanges with Richard, I want to make a brief diversion. At this point in the proceedings I answered a number of other posts, most of which are not worth repeating. One writer, however, did pose a worthwhile question by stating "Until someone offers a good summary of a soul, I cannot even begin to answer the original question." My reply follows. You can find the original posts in full here. There has not, so far, been an answer from the person who wrote the original post (a common occurence on this site, I'm afraid.)

The original post was made on 10 Jun 2008 at 08:10 pm. The first of my replies was made on 11 Jun 2008 at 03:30 pm:

I find your response to be very interesting and absolutely on the mark. I would like to take up your challenge of defining the idea of the soul. There are, I believe 2 enormous obstacles to overcome. In the first place there is a huge historical backcloth to the idea of the soul, going back many hundreds, if not thousands, of years and covering many different religions. The ways in which our ancestors understood the world was very very different from the ways modern thinkers tackle the issues. Having said that some of your own references bear an uncanny similarity to the Aristotelian tradition so sometimes old ideas do stand the test of time even if the context is different. So, obstacle number one is that there is too much material to easily summarise since there have been so many points of view.

Obstacle number 2 is that the context has changed. Throughout much of our history the idea of the soul was set in a context in which people believed in God and saw him actively intervening in their lives on a day to day basis. There was a huge sense that the world was under the direct control of God. Nowadays, we have a different obsession. Most people believe primarily in science as the discipline which explains how the world works and see God as a discredited part of the superstitious nonsense of history. There seems to be a prevailing view that a better understanding of the physical world precludes the idea that there can be anything more to it than that. So the modern challenge is to describe the idea of the soul in a way which is in sympathy with the material world.

I am going to give the matter some thought and post another reply to you when I am ready to offer you a fair summary of the idea of the soul which is relevant to today and accurate historically. Unless, of course, someone beats me to it!

My second reply was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 11:10 am:

I promised I would post again in response to your asking for a summary of what the term "soul" has meant historically. For the benefit of others reading this post you should have a look at my earlier reply to Kevin to see what problems I anticipated.

The idea of the soul as a psychological phenomenon is entirely absent in the ancient world. It was real. Indeed it might best be described as the breath of life, quite literally, capable of entering the body through a wound or the mouth. The ancients thought of a body as having life breathed into it by the soul which then inhabited it but might also leave it to become a free spirit. All ancient ideas, as far as I know, gave the soul attributes. Socrates, for example, describes a 3 part soul, comprising of logos (intellect), emotion and desire and he sees it as the essence of being. Aristotle, in contrast describes the soul as the core essence of a person but without a separate existence and without immortality, although the intellect, which is part of his 4 part soul, is immortal.

There is, as you rightly say, much emphasis in the ancient world on various places which are thought to exist and which become available to souls which are no longer inhabiting a body. Although these places change with the onset of Christianity, the principle survives in the idea of souls being saved and rewarded in Heaven in the after life. Less fortunate ones, of course, go to Hell! Both are immortal.

It is, of course, quite easy to dismiss these historical ideas from a modern perspective and certainly fewer and fewer believe in a world abundant in spirits and a God actively intervening in the world. The Western World, at any rate, is no longer dominated by the Church, as it once was.

However, the story does not end there. The philosophers Avicenna and Descartes looked at the idea of self-awareness, the essence of the self, as a primary given. This is an idea in logic in which an argument is either inductive or deductive. The latter contains nothing new whereas an inductive argument proceeds from some "given" starting point or premise. Both of them argued that the one thing you could not have doubts about was your own existence. This put epistemology (what it is possible to know for certain) into the forefront of philosophical thinking and for that alone it is immensely important, even if you reject everything else about Avicenna and Descartes. For Descartes this was a deductive argument and formed the basis of his belief that reason rather than perception formed the basis of knowledge.
The idea of the soul, at this point, has no attributes. It is a "ghost in the machine" which controls the body.

Whilst the Cartesian notion of a mind/body dualism is rarely argued today the issues which it raised live on. After all, each of us still has a unique point of view and can never be a different person seeing things as that person. So the idea of describing the self as first person and everyone else as inferred rather than known in the same way continues to attract. Also, there does appear to be some merit in noting that human beings have desires and intentions and purposes in contrast to machines or matter. Finally, it is difficult to conclude that all there is is the processing of matter because this does not explain why we have a universe or, indeed, how, since matter cannot of itself be the first thing at the beginning of everything which starts it all off, can it? If it is like that then there would seem to be no room for any kind of choice. Each of us is following a pre-determined pathway dictated by the exact rules of matter and what we think of as free will is, in fact, an illusion.

So, as you can see, the context has shifted. The modern argument is about the concept of the self rather than the soul and it is set in the context of the philosophy of science rather than religion. The issues, though, are remarkably enduring.

I hope this helps.

Tags: afterlife soul history religion Aristotle God science material world psychological phenomenon breath of life free spirit Socrates intellect emotion desire essence immortality Christianity Heaven Hell Avicenna Descartes inductive deductive existence epistemology reason perception ghost in the machine dualism intentions free will

Peter Rayner

An Afterlife? - Peter's 1st Post - Do Computers Think?

At this point I joined the Facebook discussion with a reply to Richard's contributions. I discuss apparent differences between the way in which a computer can be said to think and human thought. The issues of process, in contrast to experience, consciousness, and emotion are considered. I refer, also, to the limitations of physical science in explaining the full meaning of time and space.

My post was made on 10 May 2008 at 07:43 am:

Hi everybody. I have recently joined Facebook and found this site. I have read your various contributions with interest because I specialised in the philosophy of mind many years ago and am still as fascinated with it as ever. All of you make some kind of reference to experience or consciousness which does seem to be crucial in coming to some kind of conclusion. I remember, long before the rise of microsoft, being asked to consider the question"Do computers think?". The question is appropriate because a computer can perform many sophisticated tasks and even have some sort of memory of what it does. If we run a computer program can we say that the computer has had an experience? Can we also say that it has awareness of what it is doing? What also do we make of the issues used to date the beginnings of human identity, namely the production of art. Of course a computer could produce art but could it do it for pleasure? Could it experience emotion? I am suggesting that the ability to build sophisticated physical structures does not take us very far at all toward an understanding of what it means to be human. Therefore we need some other means of addressing these clear features which physical science is unable to describe. Consider, again, our ability as physicists to describe the structure of the physical cosmos so precisely that we can describe the process of physical evolution all the way back to the dawn of the known cosmos - the big bang. If the cosmos began then does time begin also, and space. Can we imagine what preceded time, and space. What sense is there in saying "In the beginning was nothing - and then it exploded"?

These are just some of the issues which have haunted me over the years. I do not pretend to have the answers and I am probably further away from answers than when I started - but I am inclined to continue the quest.

Best wishes to you all. I hope you find my small contribution of interest and that you will reply to it.

Tags: afterlife computer thought process experience consciousness emotion science time space philosophy of mind big bang

Peter Rayner

An Encounter With Facebook

It has been quite some time since I started this blog and posted the beginnings of what I hope will be an epic journey into the realms of the philosophy of science. I have been away, but not idle. My natural, in fact abnormal, curiosity has led me to explore many other treasures around the web and, before I knew it, many months had gone by. Along the way I found myself caught up with one of those many phenomena which the web throws up (good choice of words there) in the form of Facebook. The addiction which followed was akin to an illness but, happily, one from which I am now cured. Apart from a slight twitch in my right eye, I promise you, I am my "normal" (bad choice of words there) self.

Along the way I found a philosophy site called The Philosophy Pages which, I think, had been hacked and fled to Facebook to seek refuge. This is, basically, a forum for anyone to express ideas and raise topics on any aspect of philosophy. The main site still exists but from what I discovered by writing to the manager no longer receives the attention it deserves since the manager has too many other responsibilities. I am sorry to say that most of what I read in the forums was complete rubbish, high on opinion and mostly totally lacking in argument or anything that might pass for proof. There was the odd exception and I was lucky enough to find it in the person of an esteemed gentleman called Richard Debnam. I replied to his first few posts and from then entered into what turned out to be quite a fascinating exchange.

I have, now, decided to leave Facebook, to all intents and purposes, but felt I should rescue this philosophical discussion, so I am transporting it over to this weblog. It may take a little while because I will need to edit it item by item but I hope it will prove worthwhile.

Since all of it is relevant to my original purpose it does not really detract from that, other than to say that the tidy and systematic account I had planned will now be untidy and unsystematic. That's Life (note the capital!)

Pierre

Tags: philosophy of science Facebook The Philosophy Pages forums Richard Debnam