Is there a way to prove that other minds exist?

  • Thread starter Thread starter CatholicHere_Hi
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
How about a vacuum and non vacuum.

Just prior to the Big Bang, there was potential but nothing surely.
 
Last edited:
STT said “AT LEAST ONE MORE MIND” - he is opening the gate to believing there is more than “just me thinking or just me knowing”.
 
By X I mean the state of affair of a system. X could be nothingness before the act of creation. Of course the universe is caused. Nothingness does not have capacity to cause.
 
You’re shouting.

No, the point was that there are only two minds, what has change got to do with that.

Change occurred at the Big Bang, a prior singularity, if God was responsible for this then only He existed at that point and then He created one other mind according to the OP.

The OP is saying that God created only one mind shared by all of us. Why would He attempt to convince us all separately of the need for salvation if were true? Secondly the Catechism states that we have only body and soul, which would mean that we all shared only one soul. Which is untrue according to our Church.

Catechism
364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit. 232

Man, though made of body and soul , is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233​

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body 234i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
 
Last edited:
STT said:
40.png
Lee1:
Changes don’t require mind. Changes don’t require an observer or awareness of changes.
Click to expand...
Change needs mind. I have an argument for that. Consider a change in a system, X to Y. X and Y cannot coexist therefore X must vanishes before Y emerges. We however have nothing once X vanishes and Y cannot emerge from nothing. Therefore there must be a mind how is aware of X and cause Y.
Click to expand...
Why can’t Y emerge from nothing? If “X must vanish before Y emrges,” another questionable condition, then Y must emerge from nothing.

Usually people say “X changes into Y” or “X becomes Y.” Why are you changing it to “X must vanish, Y must emerge from nothing.” That does not seem like a credible definition of change.
 
The OP is not saying there is “only God and Me” - the OP is wondering - trying to “sense” that others in the world are more than what is visible, trying to “sense” others thinking and knowing before they speak.
It is one thing to accept Catholic Dogma from Authority, and another to actually understand what you accept.
The OP could possibly say, “I accept Catholic teaching, yet I want to understand it - please explain more.” You are simply reiterating dogma, Church definitions, but you are not following the leadership of men like Thomas Aquinas who explain the workings of the doctrine.

TEACHING: All men and God and Angels have an individual ‘Mind’.
Now, explain to the OP how to experience the mind in others, so the OP says, “Oh, now I understand, now I know what the teaching is all about.”
 
Actually, what I said was the proof that other minds exist is found throughout the bible.

If other minds did not exist then why would God be concerned with plural souls as iterated throughout the bible.

His question was originally how can we prove that other minds exist?
I answer that by pointing to the word of God.

Then I said that if you don’t take that as proof because you want proof of Gods existence then you will need to either use Aquinas’ first cause argument for Gods existence or you won’t be able to prove it at all.

I thought my reasoning was simple. I like simple, I’m simple myself.
 
Last edited:
Lee1 said:
The OP is saying that God created only one mind shared by all of us.
Click to expand...
That’s not what I was saying.

I was saying that God has his own mind, he created me and gave me my own mind…and he also made everyone else…my question was how can we be sure he gave a mind to any of them.
 
You keep mentioning scripture and church dogma…I have learned these by people other than myself…the question is do those people who taught me that have their own minds?..if they dont, then they are just babbling nonsense and I mistake it for conscious communication
 
By knowing God exists, I am just talking about a conscious all powerful first cause, not the God of the bible. That God can only be proven through church dogma.
 
Last edited:
John_Martin said:
following the leadership of men like Thomas Aquinas who explain the workings of the doctrine.
Click to expand...
I’ve covered the question, but your point needs attention.

I quoted the Catechism purely because I stated the other day that we have mind, body and spirit, and we should take care of all three.

Someone took exception to this and posted the link to the section of the catechism which stated that we only had body and soul, no separate mind.

I’m quoting it because if we only have one body and soul each, according to the Church, then we don’t share one soul, and because it’s self evident that many people exist that it follows that many souls exist too.

Call them minds if you wish, but the Church is calling them souls. Therefore to prove that other minds exist I only need to quote our Catechism and nothing else.

Does that cover this? I wasn’t being dumb and dogmatic, I was trying to explain why many minds exist.
 
Last edited:
Do you exist as a truly separate entity?

If you don’t know perhaps trust in the Catechism is necessary.

So if everyone is unaware of being part of one fractured mind then we shall never know. Except, scripture was written by minds under the control of the one big mind, so why would the one big mind write in such a way that it implied that we are many minds? That to me doesn’t make sense at all.

Does it to you?
 
Lee1 said:
Do you exist as a truly separate entity?

Yes. I have a personality separate from God. Pantheism is illogical

So if everyone is unaware of being part of one fractured mind then we shall never know. Except, scripture was written by minds under the control of the one big mind, so why would the one big mind write in such a way that it implied that we are many minds? That to me doesn’t make sense at all.

They’re not under the control of an outside mind. They are separate from God as well, but they are not conscious. So any action they commit is not willful or trying to convey a message…kind of like AI

Does it to you?
Click to expand...
Here are my replies
 
CatholicHere_Hi said:
They’re not under the control of an outside mind. They are separate from God as well, but they are not conscious. So any action they commit is not willful or trying to convey a message…kind of like AI
Click to expand...
Ok, but do you have any evidence that this is the case?
 
How do you think that this might happen when we share extremely similar physiology?

Also how could we have invented the concept of consciousness without being conscious?

Sincerely. I understand how an autonomous intelligent system might become self aware.
If we imagine that we as biological creatures became self aware in a similar way to that of a synthetic artificial intelligence system might how would that alter anything? This bearing in mind that I know that God exists by the way. Since we are on a Catholic forum and I believe that we have souls which survive after death and which are also the essence of our intelligence.
 
Last edited:
Dovekin said:
Why can’t Y emerge from nothing?
Click to expand...
There are two reason for that:
  1. We always observe fantastic correlation between X and Y. Nothingness is indifferent. Therefore the chance for getting a specific Y which always has a correlation with X is logically impossible even if we accept that nothingness has a causal power. By correlation I mean that two state of affair are related, for example a moving ball at two close instants has different positions and these two positions are in close proximity.
  2. Nothingness does not have any causal power.
Dovekin said:
If “X must vanish before Y emrges,” another questionable condition, then Y must emerge from nothing.
Click to expand...
Because minds are aiming to reach to an end.
Dovekin said:
Usually people say “X changes into Y” or “X becomes Y.” Why are you changing it to “X must vanish, Y must emerge from nothing.” That does not seem like a credible definition of change.
Click to expand...
That is the classical way of looking at a change in a state of affair. In quantum regime changes are produced by annihilation and creation of the fields related to the particles.
 
Last edited:
A grain of sand does not describe the pyramids. Quantum levels don’t explain the macro universe. The uncertainty principle doesn’t explain the OPs question either.

But, how does what you’re saying explain the macro idea that we are not conscious, as the OP is now proposing?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top