Argument from First Cause

[Rubee]

If so how do you explain near death experiences when supposedly the soul leaves the body and yet perceives things around it. Even without NDE, at death, supposing that the soul has left the body, how would the soul perceive or sense anything in the real physical world if it does not have physical eyes or ears or some relation with matter.

I honestly find it strange that you look upon NDEs as proof of consciousness coming from the body when its proof of the literal opposite: that consciousness transcends/is independent of the body.

By your own account you recognize that in NDEs, the soul displays the ability to be conscious (perceive) when the body has ceased to function and yet, strangely in my opinion, you make this an argument that the soul comes from the body. I’ll ask you to explain your reasoning here because I cannot make heads or tails out of it.

Edit to add: Just read it again. Why do you think its impossible to perceive the world of matter without physical organs? Do you think God and the angels are blind to the world? I don’t understand what informs the premise of this question.

 

[AlNg]

Why do you think its impossible to perceive the world of matter without physical organs?

Because the eye is a physical organ which enables it to see physical objects as photons from the object perceived as the photons impinge upon the eye. I don’t see the mechanism which enables a pure spirit to perceive a physical object. Material reality BTW has photons of all different wavelengths out there, but the human eye detects photon wavelengths in a small range of about 380 to 720 nanometers, i.e., the visible spectrum. i don’t see the mechanism which enables a pure spirit to limit its perception to those physical wavelengths. Otherwise, since there is no specific limit for the wavelength of a photon, as it can vary from near zero to near infinite, if the spirit does not have a mechanism to limit its visual spectrum, then it would be observing a chaotic jumble of photons of all kinds of wavelengths. Still what is it that enables a pure spirit to observe a material object since the spirit does not have eyes or ears. Without an eye, what would limit the pure spirit to perceive the visible spectrum but not all the other wavelengths?

 

[Rubee]

Still what is it that enables a pure spirit to observe a material object since the spirit does not have eyes or ears. Without an eye, what would limit the pure spirit to perceive the visible spectrum but not all the other wavelengths?

I don’t know. But I dont see anything in your comment that says “A spirit can’t.” Only: “This is how the body does it.” I see not one reason to then LEAP from “the body does it this way” to “This is the ONLY way it must happen since its the only one we know.” This assumption is what Im requiring a logical explanation for. As with the othet debate on God’s timelessness, things for you seem to boil down to: This is MY experience therefore it must be the only way reality is.

You did not answer my question: Do you think God sees with physical organs? Or the angels? Your entire argument is that its the only way to perceive physical forms and Im missing the reason for holding this premise besides “Its how our eyes see.”

And, again, the very evidence you cited, NDESs disproves the notion that physical organs are needed for perception. NDE accounts in fact describe an EXPANSION of perception once “out of the body” not a reduction, indicating the physical body/biology LIMITS rather than enables perception. You cant cite evidence of perception with a dead organ as proof of the necessity of the dead organ for perception. Thats plainly illogical. The logical conclusion from that evidence is that perception is indepent of the body and thus operates on a different mechanism than has been proposed. That we dont know what that mechanism is doesnt change that. We do know its transphysical and that’s what matters.

 

[AlNg]

NDESs disproves the notion that physical organs are needed for perception.

I don’t believe in NDE except that they are similar to dreams. They are the dreams of a person near death. My reference was to an example often cited, but I don’t believe it is what it is often claimed to be.

The logical conclusion from that evidence is that perception is indepent of the body and thus operates on a different mechanism than has been proposed.

I don’t think so. Take a blind person. His eyes are damaged and yet he has a pure spirit. His pure spirit cannot see anything. If the sense organs are not necessary for a pure spirit to perceive reality, or a pure spirit can perceive reality without sense organs, why then cannot the pure spirit of a blind man see anything?

 

[Beryllos]

I think that we sometimes have experiences beyond what we can physically sense, but rarely does it force someone to believe in the supernatural.

For example, when I was a teenager, I amused myself one morning by rolling a die and “seeing” the number with my eyes closed. Several times in a row, I just knew what the number was, then opened my eyes and saw the number. When I tried to demonstrate it to my father, I could no longer do it, nor ever since. I have wondered if this was a little miracle, a teaser from God, to strengthen my faith.

So I think it’s possible that some out-of-body experiences may be true. On the other hand, from what I’ve read, many other NDEs are exactly like psychedelic/hallucinogenic drug experiences, which suggests that they are of strictly biological origin.

We’ve really gone off-topic with this, but that’s what the Philosophy category is for, right?

 

[Rubee]

I don’t think so. Take a blind person. His eyes are damaged and yet he has a pure spirit. His pure spirit cannot see anything. If the sense organs are not necessary for a pure spirit to perceive reality, or a pure spirit can perceive reality without sense organs, why then cannot the pure spirit of a blind man see anything?

Your example of course is of a soul still connected to its body. There are NDEs of people born blind who suddenly perceive vividly upon death of the body.

And I don’t understand how being near death could possibly allow anyone to perceive things even their physical organs, were they functioning, wouldnt be able to, like events in a different part of the hospital or what was happening to them during suggery and the people involved (that came in while their body or brain was “dead”) with exquisite detail. I’d like to see drugs allow people to perceive verified happenings beyond their eyes in a different room or a hospital rooftop while their body was dying on a different floor. And if drugs DO do that, its only FURTHER indication/evidence of consciousness transcending the body, not BY ANY MEANS a rebuttal. Only it happens in certain conditions not yet understood.

Still, your citing of NDEs as some kind of proof of the body producing consciousness when it indicates the literal opposite remains perplexing. Even more so now that your claim is they are not even real. I’ll ask again what the logic was supposed to be here. Who cites evidence they disbelieve? Please explain what you’re attempting to do here.

So far, all I’ve gathered is: I know how the eye works in perception and I’m just gonna assume it’s the only way perception CAN work. Again, “reality must be limited to my experience” isn’t exactly an argument for anything besides what you’re personally open to or closed to.

 

[Mmarco]

Mmarco:

because consciousness is not a product of the physical reality.

In my opinion, Catholics need to be more careful about using this argument, because most, if not all, aspects of consciousness have been shown to be susceptible to impairment by drugs, disease, and brain injury.

I disagree; I see no reason why catholics should be more careful to tell the truth.
The fact that cosnciousness is irreducible to the laws of physics is well known by every honest physicist; this is the reason why materialists refer to consciousness as an emergent property. However , it can be easily proved that all emergent properties are subjective, which is sufficient to prove that consciousness (a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of subjectivity) cannot be an emergent property.
I think that catholics should have no hesitation in telling this truth.

This has been discussed here at CAF in many threads which ask what exactly the soul does, if perception, memory, personality, and even reason are so strongly dependent on biology.

There is no doubt that consciousness interacts with cerebral processes but this does not mean that consciousness is generated by cerebral processes; there are solid scientific and rational arguments proving that such assumption is false.

 

[Freddy]

There is no doubt that consciousness interacts with cerebral processes but this does not mean that consciousness is generated by cerebral processes; there are solid scientific and rational arguments proving that such assumption is false.

So it was ‘turned on’ at some point. You still haven’t confirmed if this is your view.

 

[Mmarco]

Mmarco:

There is no doubt that consciousness interacts with cerebral processes but this does not mean that consciousness is generated by cerebral processes; there are solid scientific and rational arguments proving that such assumption is false.

So it was ‘turned on’ at some point. You still haven’t confirmed if this is your view.

I think I have repeatedly explained my view; consciousness has not a physical/biological origin; therefore, consciounsess is not a product of biological evolution. Consciousness exist in humans only because humans have a soul and the soul is created directly by God.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Mmarco:

There is no doubt that consciousness interacts with cerebral processes but this does not mean that consciousness is generated by cerebral processes; there are solid scientific and rational arguments proving that such assumption is false.

So it was ‘turned on’ at some point. You still haven’t confirmed if this is your view.

I think I have repeatedly explained my view; consciousness has not a physical/biological origin; therefore, consciounsess is not a product of biological evolution. Consciousness exist in humans only because humans have a soul and the soul is created directly by God.

Then it’s a waste of time mentioning any scientific evidence. It wouldn’t be valid to support or deny that proposal. Why bring it up?

 

[MPat]

Prior to Darwin (as I said) I would suggest that hardly anyone had even considered us animals (note the ‘hardly’).

Can you actually support that with some argument, or is that just a guess?

For now, all presented evidence goes the other way.

Not to mention that you don’t even have a use for this silly false claim, for what you really want from it is this:

Most people, at least most Christians, held to the view that we were created separately.

Now that’s a very different claim.

By itself, there is no contradiction in, let’s say, believing that cats and dogs have no common ancestor, and believing that both cats and dogs are animals.

So we have two options. Either consciousness/intelligence/intellect was given to us (Homo sapien) at a specific time OR it evolved.

Which is your preference?

Wrong question.

The right question is “Is it boolean or continuous?”.

And when it comes to exactly when consciousness arose, it generally slides over into intelligence and then intellect. Which is invariably correlated with the soul.

Um, it is only you who want to introduce “intelligence”, which is what leads to discussion about rationality.

And it is easy to see why you want to substitute intelligence for consciousness or rationality.

“Intelligence” is continuous (or “conitinuousish”). “Consciousness” and “Rationality” are boolean.

For intelligence you can point to number of neurons or something. You can even claim that some dolphin, chimp, dog or horse is more intelligent than you, and act in the way that would get us to agree.

But for consciousness or rationality you can only repeat the magic word “emergence”.

With an empty hope that we will just trust you. But that’s silly: it is very clear that there is no good reason to just trust you on this.

Even you have no good reason to trust yourself on this.

 

[Freddy]

“Intelligence” is continuous (or “conitinuousish”). “Consciousness” and “Rationality” are boolean…

It would have saved you a lot of typing if you’d just said consciousness and rationality were given to us by God. I’m not sure why you spent so much time not saying that.

 

[AlNg]

There are NDEs of people born blind who suddenly perceive vividly upon death of the body.

Do you have a reference for a blind person who was able to see upon death? If the person is dead, how would you know that he was able to see?

Your example of course is of a soul still connected to its body.

So if the soul is connected to the body of a blind man, it cannot see. But after death, when the soul of the blind person leaves the body, would it be the case that it can then see? Is there any evidence of this?

 

[MPat]

It would have saved you a lot of typing if you’d just said consciousness and rationality were given to us by God. I’m not sure why you spent so much time not saying that.

And…?

You explicitly substituted something I did not say.

So, if you did not respond to anything I said, shouldn’t you at least respond to that substitute?

Or do you have no answer to it either? Other than implicitly pretending that this position is “obviously stupid”, “evolution denial”?

Not even some nonsense like “There is no evidence!” - right after refusing to read (and respond to) the post where I might have been getting to it…?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

It would have saved you a lot of typing if you’d just said consciousness and rationality were given to us by God. I’m not sure why you spent so much time not saying that.

And…?

You explicitly substituted something I did not say.

Please feel free to confirm your position at your convenience.

 

[PickyPicky]

To revert to the question of First Cause, I stand with Bertrand Russell:

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

 

[MPat]

Please feel free to confirm your position at your convenience.

Is there any reason why I should do so…?

To revert to the question of First Cause, I stand with Bertrand Russell:

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

That’s a silly answer.

Let’s check its form with a different field (brackets indicate substitution):

“If every [set] must have [an element], then [an empty set] must have [an element]. If there can be any [set] without [an element], it may just as well be [set of natural numbers] as [an empty set], so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.”

Here all instances of “God” were replaced by “an empty set”, all instances of “thing” were replaced by “set”, all instances of “a cause” were replaced by “an element”, all instances of “world” were replaced by “a set of natural numbers”.

The argument already looks silly, but let’s put it into steps:

1. If [an empty set] must have [an element], existence of [empty set] is doubtful. (premise)
2. If [set of natural numbers] can be a [set] without [an element], existence of [empty set] is doubtful. (premise)
3. If not every [set] must have [an element], it might be that a [set of natural numbers] is without [an element]. (premise)
4. Either every [set] must have [an element] or not every [set] must have [an element]. (Law of Excluded Middle)
5. Every [set] must have [an element]. (Temporary assumption)
6. [An empty set] must have [an element]. (from 5)
7. Existence of [empty set] is doubtful. (from 1, 6)
   (Temporary assumption 4 is no longer in play)
8. Not every [set] must have [an element]. (Temporary assumption)
9. It might be that a [set of natural numbers] is without [an element]. (from 3, 8)
10. Existence of [empty set] is doubtful. (from 2, 9)
    (Temporary assumption 8 is no longer in play)
11. Existence of [empty set] is doubtful. (from 4, 7, 10)

The argument is valid (you can check Natural Deduction with “((-e => d) & (n => d) & (e => n)) => d”), premise 1 and premise 2 are both true (by “if false, then anything”). But the conclusion is obviously absurd.

And premise 3 is clearly unjustified, unreasonable. Finally, since there is a valid argument with a false conclusion, where this premise is the only one which is not known to be true, this argument can be trivially made into a proof that premise 3 is false (it can be seen using “(-d & (-e => d) & (n => d)) => -(e => n)” in the prover I linked).

And if we undo the substitution, we’ll see that “If not every [thing] must have [a cause], it might be that a [world] is without [cause].” is likewise unjustified and unreasonable.

And thus we can see how Russell’s sophism fails.

 

[PickyPicky]

Poor old Russell, eh?

You will I hope forgive my plodding through your post.

Whence did you obtain the first two premises, and why is premise 3 unjustified and unreasonable?

 

[MPat]

Whence did you obtain the first two premises

The process is rather simple.

One has to try to put the argument into steps.

Then it will be clear that some steps do not really follow from anything before them.

And that’s when one has to fill them in by new steps, new conclusions, or new premises.

It is easy to notice that Russell’s argument was meant to take two possibilities of Law of Excluded Middle (“everything must have a cause” or “not everything must have a cause”) and to apply the rule called “disjunction elimination” in Natural deduction. That’s the step 4.

Now in “disjunction elimination” one has to derive the same conclusion from both possibilities. Russell does not give that conclusion explicitly, only “there cannot be any validity in that argument” in one branch, so I replace it with “existence of [God/empty set] is doubtful”, which is equivalent and avoids ambiguous “that argument”.

Now he does not have any explicit premises that connect the propositions he starts with with “existence of [God/empty set] is doubtful”. But it is clear that conclusion is going to be reached using “Implication elimination”. So, to connect them we need premises with implication. The ones like “If [God/an empty set] must have [a cause/an element], existence of [God/empty set] is doubtful.” and “If [world/set of natural numbers] can be a [thing/set] without [a cause/an element], existence of [God/empty set] is doubtful.”.

and why is premise 3 unjustified and unreasonable?

It is unjustified, because it is not given any justification.

Russell just proclaims: “If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God”, he does not argue for this claim.

For first two premises one could make a justification using “if false, then anything” (or “Contradiction elimination” in Natural deduction).

For this one no justification can be seen.

And, of course, it is easy to see that there will be no good justification, because we can’t justfy false propositions.

And in case of “empty set” we can easily see that premise 3 is a false proposition, because if we add it to true premises 1 and 2, it is possible to construct this same proof of absurd (and thus false) conclusion “Existence of [empty set] is doubtful.”.

So, we can see that premise 3 is not going to be true just because of its form. And thus it needs a justification. The one which was not given.

We can also see that premise 3 is unreasonable by directly looking at it: “If not every [set] must have [an element], it might be that a [set of natural numbers] is without [an element].”. Well, why “[set of natural numbers]”? We already know various things about it. And one of them is that it has infinitely many elements. So, it can’t possibly have no elements.

And likewise, we already know various things about the world. For example, that it does change, come into existence. And, since we know that each change and coming into existence needs a cause, thus we already know that it needs a cause. Merely claiming “But what if it is!” is not a sufficient justification.

 

[STT]

To revert to the question of First Cause, I stand with Bertrand Russell:

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

I would argue that principle of causality just applies to material and not nothing. So nothing to something is possible.