Neuroscience and the Soul

[polytropos]

Here’s a question for dualists: If computer science gets to the point where we can get fully sentient AI on the level depicted on Bladerunner or Battlestar Galactica, could it be said that those AI have souls?

(For those unaware, the movie Bladerunner and the series Battlestar Galactica involve humanlike robots that are virtually indistinguishable from humans both in appearance and how they behave. The have, or appear to have, the full range of human emotions and thoughts.)

For reasons I gave in my first post in this thread, no. We cannot create a machine the physical facts about which determine that it is thinking.

 

[thomas_yo]

An excellent introduction to the mind-body problem, for the non-specialist, is Intellect: Mind Over Matter, by Mortimer J. Adler.

Adler was not only a leading 20th century philosopher and educator, but he also taught courses in neuroscience. This enlightening book should answer most questions.

 

[orang]

I wouldn’t expect anything more from these folks then a sophisticated pop up toaster.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Here’s a question for dualists: If computer science gets to the point where we can get fully sentient AI on the level depicted on Bladerunner or Battlestar Galactica, could it be said that those AI have souls?

I tend not to use science fiction movies as proof of anything.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That’s not what I’m talking about. Read some Asimov or something.

Just what we need, more science fiction.

By the way, I heard Asimov give a commencement speech at our college. He said nothing to the students about them. All he could seem to talk about was himself and his achievements … truly an insufferable egotist and bore.

May he rest in peace.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t get the reluctance of Catholics on this forum to deal directly with questions.

It’s my impression that it’s the materialists who rarely deal directly with questions.

Deal directly with this question.

What proof have you that the existence of spirit is an illusion?

And please try to avoid citing science fiction to make your point.

 

[polytropos]

What proof have you that the existence of spirit is an illusion?

While I think ngill is wrong on several counts, I have to ask: why do you set him up like this? He is a materialist, and his argument has been that any sort of immaterial spirit would be extraneous given the findings of neuroscience. I don’t think he claims to have “proof,” but would rather say that a spirit is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Or, he might also say that what we call a spirit is not “an illusion” but can be reduced to material factors.

I reject all of that, for reasons I’ve spelled out in this thread. But his observation that many Catholics on this forum respond to materialists by treating them as eliminativists who claim to have “proven” that there is no soul, no God, etc. seems to be true. Many Catholics on this forum are more likely to respond by saying “Prove this wrong!” rather than “Here is my argument for my position,” which is what we should do given that we are the ones making positive claims. And the attitude does not appear to be very constructive; it invites charges of straw men, it gives the impression that a theistic metaphysics must reject the findings of science, it allows for the response that naturalism is “simpler” even if not demonstrated to be true, etc., none of which is necessary or helpful.

This thread is a perfect case in point. There have been a handful of thoughtful replies, particularly on the first couple pages, but ngill has responded to those whose knee-jerk reactions have been to deny that science can teach us anything about the mind.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I reject all of that, for reasons I’ve spelled out in this thread. But his observation that many Catholics on this forum respond to materialists by treating them as eliminativists who claim to have “proven” that there is no soul, no God, etc. seems to be true. Many Catholics on this forum are more likely to respond by saying “Prove this wrong!” rather than “Here is my argument for my position,” which is what we should do given that we are the ones making positive claims.

The materialist has to prove there is no spirit, and this because the materialist claims that matter is all there is. Doesn’t he have to prove a positive assertion, as much as the spiritualist has to prove there is spirit? The argument for spirit is that it is the common sense of human kind, that it makes sense, and that it is certainly useful to believe that we have a God and a purpose for our being.

There is no argument that proves materialism, not even the common sense of mankind. Materialism is useless. Science was advancing for thousands of years without materialism. Atheism is the foundation for materialism. Atheism (again not provable) is also useless. No atheist has ever presented a case for how useful it is. It certainly deflates the human spirit by depriving it of the hope to rise above itself. It tells children they are ultimately no more than fodder for earthworms. How useful is that?

 

[polytropos]

The materialist has to prove there is no spirit, and this because the materialist claims that matter is all there is.

Unless the materialist claims that even if there is a spirit, we can’t know about it and science is explanatorily sufficient. In which case he doesn’t have to disprove there being a spirit.

Then there is the added problem that, just as there are dozens of varieties of materialism, there are dozens of varieties of non-materialism. What does it mean to prove there is no spirit? ngill started out the thread by basically assuming that anyone interested in defending that there is a human “spirit” would be defending Cartesian substance dualism, which is false. But if we don’t present him with arguments for our position on what the spirit is (in contrast to competing theories), then how can we expect him to respond?

Doesn’t he have to prove a positive assertion, as much as the spiritualist has to prove there is spirit?

Not if he makes more modest claim that we don’t need to believe in a spirit with any strong ontological correlate, whether or not a spirit exists. That is why someone defending “spirit” should spell out why materialism is not sufficient and why certain aspects of the human person cannot in principle be explained physically.

The argument for spirit is that it is the common sense of human kind, that it makes sense, and that it is certainly useful to believe that we have a God and a purpose for our being.

Common sense has a lot of value. It is defeasible, though, and in philosophical discussions we should probably share the burden of proof and defend our contentions with more than common sense.

There is no argument that proves materialism, not even the common sense of mankind. Materialism is useless. Science was advancing for thousands of years without materialism. Atheism is the foundation for materialism. Atheism (again not provable) is also useless. No atheist has ever presented a case for how useful it is. It certainly deflates the human spirit by depriving it of the hope to rise above itself. It tells children they are ultimately no more than fodder for earthworms. How useful is that?

Again, one does not have to “prove” materialism or atheism to argue for them. The fact that they can’t strictly be proven does not mean that a theist has no responsibility of providing arguments for his positions.

With regards to the implications of materialism, that’s an area for debate, but they also don’t themselves imply the falsity of materialism.

This is a philosophy forum. We shouldn’t be satisfied with telling other people to do the work.

 

[edwest2]

While I think ngill is wrong on several counts, I have to ask: why do you set him up like this? He is a materialist, and his argument has been that any sort of immaterial spirit would be extraneous given the findings of neuroscience. I don’t think he claims to have “proof,” but would rather say that a spirit is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Or, he might also say that what we call a spirit is not “an illusion” but can be reduced to material factors.

I reject all of that, for reasons I’ve spelled out in this thread. But his observation that many Catholics on this forum respond to materialists by treating them as eliminativists who claim to have “proven” that there is no soul, no God, etc. seems to be true. Many Catholics on this forum are more likely to respond by saying “Prove this wrong!” rather than “Here is my argument for my position,” which is what we should do given that we are the ones making positive claims. And the attitude does not appear to be very constructive; it invites charges of straw men, it gives the impression that a theistic metaphysics must reject the findings of science, it allows for the response that naturalism is “simpler” even if not demonstrated to be true, etc., none of which is necessary or helpful.

This thread is a perfect case in point. There have been a handful of thoughtful replies, particularly on the first couple pages, but ngill has responded to those whose knee-jerk reactions have been to deny that science can teach us anything about the mind.

Threads like this will appear indefinitely, not because people deny science, but because science cannot make any comments about invisible things like the soul.

Peace,
Ed

 

[polytropos]

Threads like this will appear indefinitely, not because people deny science, but because science cannot make any comments about invisible things like the soul.

I would argue that the claim “science cannot make any comments about invisible things like the soul” is inconsistent with hylemorphism, which is probably the most significant anthropology in the Catholic Church’s intellectual history (invoked, for instance, in Veritatis splendor). The soul is not some immaterial substance that acts through the body. The soul is the form of the body, its principle of unity, operation, and identity (as the forms of all natural substances are principles of unity, operation, and identity). While human intellective acts are immaterial (or at least as I’ve argued, they are), and so the operation of the soul is essentially immaterial, the soul is still the form of a human animal, a bodily being which is subject to the observable laws of nature to that extent. Human intellective acts cannot be physically reduced; that is true. But it doesn’t follow that science has nothing to say about the soul, as the soul has a number of material operations as well as its immaterial intellective operations.

So science can investigate how the human body works, and by extension can investigate some aspects of the soul (since, on hylemorphism, there is not a neat mind-body distinction, since a human body is a human body precisely because it has a human substantial form). Science will have to presuppose the formal and final causes of the human body, ie. that there are discoverable, observable regularities rooted in what the human body is, but it must do that for all sources of investigation. And then it can still help us know more about them.

That is my other beef with the knee-jerk reactions against science. Not only are they unnecessary and unphilosophical, but they seem to betray hylemorphism for some sort of mysterian Cartesianism that drives a wedge between spirit and body.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

. . .
Hylemorphists do argue that the mind/soul is essentially non-physical, but those are very specific arguments that refer to a very specific subset of mental activity. Consequently, gestures towards neuroscience are irrelevant, unless they were to engage the specific arguments.

Still the conclusion of hylemorphists is that the soul (of which the intellect and free will are faculties and involve consciousness) is immaterial. Their arguments point to the overall reality and nature of the soul, the immateriality of which is also grasped intuitively and is the status quo conviction of the vast majority of the human race and certainly the West through out history. As a result, IMO, any engagement of the hylemorphic view of the soul with neuroscience and/or eliminative reductionism involving it is relevant.

 

[polytropos]

Still the conclusion of hylemorphists is that the soul (of which the intellect and free will are faculties and involve consciousness) is immaterial. Their arguments point to the overall reality and nature of the soul, the immateriality of which is also grasped intuitively and is the status quo conviction of the vast majority of the human race and certainly the West through out history. As a result, IMO, any engagement of the hylemorphic view of the soul with neuroscience and/or eliminative reductionism involving it is relevant.

Hmm, for the human soul to have an essentially immaterial act is to have an essentially immaterial act of existence. So the soul’s “overall reality and nature” are immaterial, yes. And I’d agree that that can be and has been grasped intuitively (if not indefeasibly).

But the soul’s material acts are still possible to investigate scientifically just as much as the souls of non-rational animals can be investigated scientifically. (I am somewhat agnostic on what the fruits of a scientific investigation of consciousness will be. Sentience, as I said earlier in the thread, does not strike me as peculiarly transcendent. Perhaps there are ways to make sense of it, given its material underpinning, using neuroscience, or perhaps it is not a task that naturalism will be capable of.)

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

Hmm, for the human soul to have an essentially immaterial act is to have an essentially immaterial act of existence.

That’s the way the valid arguments usually go, and I agree with them.

So the soul’s “overall reality and nature” are immaterial, yes.

I agree too.

And I’d agree that that can be and has been grasped intuitively (if not indefeasibly).

Cool.

But the soul’s material acts are still possible to investigate scientifically just as much as the souls of non-rational animals can be investigated scientifically.

True, the brain’s acts, as part of the informed matter of the human body, can be investigated scientifically. I have also agreed with this. But this needs to be correlated with first-person data to make sense fully and produce clinical applications.

(I am somewhat agnostic on what the fruits of a scientific investigation of consciousness will be. Sentience, as I said earlier in the thread, does not strike me as peculiarly transcendent. Perhaps there are ways to make sense of it, given its material underpinning, using neuroscience, or perhaps it is not a task that naturalism will be capable of.)

I have been arguing that there are several propositions regarding neuroscience and the conscious mind that do comport with hylemorphism:

(1) In the concrete, there is a unity of brain and mind as there is a unity of form and matter in the concrete individual.

(2) There is also a distinction between them capable of being grasped by the intellect.

(3) Causality between brain and mind is bi-directional.

(4) Correlations bi-directionally between brain and mind are ascertainable where each sheds light on the other with practical clinical implications and applications.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

With regards to the implications of materialism, that’s an area for debate, but they also don’t themselves imply the falsity of materialism.

This is a philosophy forum. We shouldn’t be satisfied with telling other people to do the work.

I never said they implcations of materialism prove the falsity of materialism. What I meant to say, and you seem to be rather obtuse on the matter, is that if materialists have no proof for materialism beyond what has been so far offered, then they shouldn’t be complaining that there is no demonstrable proof for the spirit.

That IS a philosophical position!

Where there is no demonstrable proof on either side, the implications for both sides loom gigantic.

And if you’ve seen the movie “God’s Not Dead,” you get my drift.

Any day I will take the implication of God over the implications of Nogod.

 

[polytropos]

I never said they implcations of materialism prove the falsity of materialism. What I meant to say, and you seem to be rather obtuse on the matter, is that if materialists have no proof for materialism beyond what has been so far offered, then they shouldn’t be complaining that there is no demonstrable proof for the spirit.

The issue is when the materialist claims to be able to account for the same phenomena with neuroscience alone, and then argues from simplicity that the soul should not be posited. This isn’t a “proof” but it is a valid use of Occam’s razor. (I would not concede that the two theories are explanatorily equivalent, and that is the argument you would have to make if you want to block the appeal to simplicity.)

Then there is also the fact that there are a handful of good arguments for the soul that don’t consist in saying that neither its existence or its nonexistence is provable.

 

[tonyrey]

My opinion is that a person is conscious, sentient, sapient being. Humans, and other animals to some extent, have these qualities because they are social animals with advanced cognitive abilities that allow for empathy and recognition of self and others as conscious. The ultimate cause of this could be a God, or it could just be natural evolution. I don’t have to suppose that humans have some magical aspect to recognize and appreciate the depth, breadth, and beauty of the human experience.

Why, unlike animals, are persons held responsible for their behaviour?

 

[Aloysium]

. . . There have been a handful of thoughtful replies, particularly on the first couple pages, but ngill has responded to those whose knee-jerk reactions have been to deny that science can teach us anything about the mind.

If you are making the claim that neuroscience (which is the OP, as opposed to psychology, which does study mental functioning)
has taught us much about the mind, it would be important to support this with evidence that can be discussed.

 

[edwest2]

Why, unlike animals, are persons held responsible for their behaviour?

Exactly.

Peace,
Ed

 

[ngill09]

Why, unlike animals, are persons held responsible for their behaviour?

Animals are held responsible for their behavior. Just not to all the same standards humans are.

Have you people ever actually interacted with animals?