Questions For People Who Believe in Souls

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Yes, I did, but I changed my mind. I am allowed to do that you know.



Whatever.



Yes, and I explained why.



No. Whatever gave you that idea? It's a separate issue entirely!



Again, no. Tell me something 'Pepe', do you accept the following notions: 1) the reality of the past, 2) the existence of objective reality, and 3) the existence of other minds? If you do, can you give clear, precise reasons why? Can you demonstrate that we do not all just accept these concepts "on faith" because we cannot prove any of them?



Holy crap you are misinformed. For "millennia"? Try just a few decades! The so-called "war" between 'science' and 'religion' didn't actually gather any steam until well into the late 19th century, and then only in the West. There never was any "war" between what you loosely term science and religion, and don't come back with the silly retort that "oh, but Galileo was burned at the stake by the Church because he didn't believe the Earth to be flat", or some other such silliness! Do some goddamned research on the matter. The very word 'science' wasn't even coined until the early 19th century, and up until then and well afterwards it was referred to as - wait for it! - 'natural philosophy'.

'Religion'. What is 'religion' anyway? Can you define it for me? What qualifies as being one, and what does not?

<sigh>
If you weren't so focused on trying to drag me down, you could/would appreciate my humour...

BTW:

Of course not...
You are simply misguided...
Don't ask me why but I respect you even though you engage emotionalistic philosophies...

Okay, sorry It's really hard for me to detect humour/sarcasm in text. I thought you were being serious. It's one of my weaknesses.

This is kind of why I decided to take the piss out of you earlier.

There really isn't a witty way to say 'I have all of the answers', especially when its in reference to burning hay bales and quite sincerely claiming victory on an issue. Rest assured I'm not apt to make fun of people I really dislike, or at least I tend a lot more dry/condescending in those cases, but I do think it's fair to say that if you're looking for elevated conversation and sense-making in this thread the current strategy of alternating between rashness and evasive humor isn't likely to elevate the dialog.

Really useful interview with Dean Radin on his new book. It's an hour but I think it's a good round-about intro not just on the topic but also the state of the scientific studies into these waters:

My signature indicates my attitude:
"Autistic/Scout motto: Give me a better argument and I will listen..."
If I am misinformed or my reasoning is incorrect I want to know about it so I can learn from it...

All experiences will be assimilated...
Resistance is futile...
It is not in my nature to be evasive...

Overwhelmingly, when I am engaging in humour it is creative dressing on a legitimate truth as I see it...
I can't think of a single example where I was "evasive"...

My MO is to try and stay on topic, (not the easiest thing to do for most autistics...) while introducing humour as a garnish...
Overwhelmingly, a straight out joke is by default a prelude or a postlude to a relevant comment...

If you have the energy, please copy and paste (from this thread) where I don't follow this principle...
I promise you I won't be evasive...

BTW,
Q: Why do autistic Irishmen wear two condoms?
A: To be sure, to be sure...
And to satisfy their perseverative impulses...

You could drive a bus through the space in that.

Define 'better argument'. Define 'listen'.

It also offers no coverage for cases where someone's definition of better argument is 'a further-enhanced version of what I already believe'.

If I understand your approach correctly you're consistently telling people that neurological development proves that neurons are all consciousness is (if I have you wrong on that feel free to clarify), you're either convinced that it's 100% clinched or that the promissory notes of future neuroscience discoveries are assured enough to be bank notes, and that any beliefs to the contrary are either vestigial historical/anthropological constructs or philosophies based on emotional need.

If a person's only looked at things from the sidewalk and history books that's a real easy impression to come away with. When you look at it a lot closer most of that, especially the anthropological basis for dismissal, falls down. I think a lot of what propels people to hold onto these outlooks is they're so certain that any non-materialism as such is a product of ignorance or motivated reasoning that they can't hear any other sound or see any other landmarks over the loudness of that assumption. There's also a certain form of credulity that I tend to see in the naive materialist camp which is a belief in either the infinite or near-infinite variety of hallucinations the brain can have, which is a strange outlook if we're purely meat machines and its a set of goalposts that can be moved absolutely anywhere if the definition of hallucination is perception of anything that doesn't fit materialism. I'm not presenting that last sentence as evidence but I'm presenting it as the level of thought quality that most often gets brought to conversations of this type, along with something akin at times to a conspiracy theory of the faithful or the Scared-of-Death Illuminati that pulls the strings on all things outside of paradigm in the world. When I see that much self-protection, and mockery added over top of it, it doesn't look like the group in question or any individual in that group is particularly interested in testing their own assumptions. It's not unusual behavior in any shape or form, in fact it's cookie cutter for almost any other dogmatic group and there's hardly anything more human than dogmatism.

I'd really encourage you, if you're interested at all in this topic, to do your homework and understand what the best cases for it are and aren't. Otherwise if you have no interest in the topic just say you have no interest in the topic, or if you like what you already believe enough that your preference is to put on a football helmet and charge onto the field with the political team but know if you get rash enough you'll start getting yellow flags from the people who are trying to assert sense in the thread. If you have no interest but hate it for sociological reasons it's better then to just talk about the pernicious things believers do in the name of their beliefs that make the world a worse place and we could talk about those behaviors without trying to grapple with whether or not what they believe is true if no one's interested in that particular aspect. Once we start grappling with the question of why people believe what they believe we either have to get serious about discussing it or abandon it immediately for shallow waters, which means leaving the why or whether assumptions at the door unless someone actually wants to comb through the contents of that.

As far as debate, especially on topics considered abstract or contentious, its nearly impossible to even elevate something to that level unless both parties actually know what they're talking about. I think that's where I'd have to reiterate that if you want to have contesting dialog with people who believe things, or would claim it's past belief as I would, you won't be well equipped for it unless you do your homework. I also have no reason to believe that anything I'd say will get you to change your mind, that's true of two people disagreeing on anything, just that I'd at least like it - if you're going to wade this deep into it - if you could at least be semi-literate on the topic. If we're just talking about people being wedded to ignorance, custom, and barbarous superstition it's the sound of the thread getting continually pulled downhill.

A rather useful 11 minute cut of Jonathan Haidt talking about the sacralization of reason from 2013 that PhilosophyInsights just threw up that comes to bear on the issue of ideology. It's something that has happened at WP:PPR a lot over the course of its history, a bit less so now in degree or quantity but as always it's worth addressing particularly for either those who can't identify it when they see it or those who might be doing it and not realize that it's what they're doing.