Souls

[john_doran]

buffalo:

Wouldn’t a soul need free will and ability to love?

i would say that anything capable of making free choices would need a soul to ground that ability.

and i think that love, in its purest sense, has something to do with free choice.

so, yes - if i understand you correctly, then i would agree.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

john doran:

yes. because there’s no physical evidence that could be presented that there isn’t a non-corporeal principle of intellection present…

This is the case…

…a principle required by reasons for which i currently lack any defeating reasons.

…but I’m not so sure about this one. Again, I’ll grant that in your own case, you’ve got compelling reasons for believing that you have a soul. But I’m trying to say that it’s probably possible for an entirely material thing to indistinguishably mimic the behavior of an ensouled thing (Admittedly, God could and, you seem to say, would put a soul in such a thing, but I imagine it’s also possible that God could not).

well, i’m neither a dualist nor an idealist, either. and i may believe in the robust theology of the “soul” as a result of my catholicism, but i believe in a non-physical component of intellection purely from the “light of natural reason”.

You’re not a dualist - yet you’re arguing for the existence of an immaterial thing which is our mind? Are you a property dualist instead of a substance dualist?

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

…but I’m not so sure about this one. Again, I’ll grant that in your own case, you’ve got compelling reasons for believing that you have a soul. But I’m trying to say that it’s probably possible for an entirely material thing to indistinguishably mimic the behavior of an ensouled thing (Admittedly, God could and, you seem to say, would put a soul in such a thing, but I imagine it’s also possible that God could not).

i know you’re trying to argue that. and i’m saying that anything without access to things like propositional content will only be able to act in ways that are clearly distinguishable from things acquainted with abstracta.

i’m saying that a syntactic macine will always be (ultimately) distinguishable from a semantic machine.

EnterTheBowser:

You’re not a dualist - yet you’re arguing for the existence of an immaterial thing which is our mind? Are you a property dualist instead of a substance dualist?

false dichotomy. i’m an aristotelian/thomistic dualist, if you need to invoke the word “dualism”.

property dualism is too weak, substance dualism too strong.