What is the use of consciousness?

[Bahman]

I refer you again to the theory of hylemorphic dualism: body and soul are one substance, so disturbing one can disturb the other. The mind is not something wholly separate from the brain, but neither is it simply the brain.

I do understand hylemorphic dualism. My question is that we have two options for this marriage, namely substance dualism and property dualism. Lets work on the second option for a little. In simple word, matter, its form, and the property which emerges from the form complete what is needed. In reality, we have hylemorphic property pluralism which can explain all states matter, namely simple organs, vegetation, animals including us. Moreover, it could nicely explain what we experience in other daily life, namely any disturbance in form causes new property hence different outcome.

The main issue to former combination is that we mix soul/mind with body and consider them as one substance. The main question is that could any of these entities can exist as separate substances? Your answer is yes. If yes, why the only possibility for such separation is death? Why always disturbing one, namely body/matter cause an effect on whole? Why we have never experience otherwise? And other questions…

 

[inocente]

So now we’re being asked what is the usefulness of the soul !!! :bigyikes:

Has there ever been a more useless thread?

For info, there is a sticky:

• If you aren’t going to go into the discussion with the resolution that you could just possibly have your view broadened, you may as well not go into it.

 

[tonyrey]

It is simply cause and effect. Disturbing a brain functionality causes some disturbance in consciousness, emotions, etc, so please what I am missing?

The fact that consciousness, emotions, etc cannot be explained solely in terms of brain functions. Do you really and truly believe you are no more than a biological robot?

Consider soul on a seat, then remove every brick that seat is standing upon, such as emotion, intention, consciousness, thinking, etc, so what you are left with at the end? In another word, what is the functionality of soul?

The soul has no “seat” because it is not a physical object. Our intellect, our conscience, our free will and our capacity for love are functions of the soul not the body.

 

[empther]

Quote:
Originally Posted by empther View Post
So now we’re being asked what is the usefulness of the soul !!!

Has there ever been a more useless thread?

For info, there is a sticky:

If you aren’t going to go into the discussion with the resolution that you could just possibly have your view broadened, you may as well not go into it.

---

There is also this sticky:

For the foreseeable future, there shall be no discussion in the Philosophy Forum of evolution or atheism.

 

[prodigalson2011]

There is also this sticky:

For the foreseeable future, there shall be no discussion in the Philosophy Forum of evolution or atheism.

This thread is not about either of those things.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I do understand hylemorphic dualism. My question is that we have two options for this marriage, namely substance dualism and property dualism. Lets work on the second option for a little. In simple word, matter, its form, and the property which emerges from the form complete what is needed. In reality, we have hylemorphic property pluralism which can explain all states matter, namely simple organs, vegetation, animals including us. Moreover, it could nicely explain what we experience in other daily life, namely any disturbance in form causes new property hence different outcome.

The main issue to former combination is that we mix soul/mind with body and consider them as one substance. The main question is that could any of these entities can exist as separate substances? Your answer is yes. If yes, why the only possibility for such separation is death? Why always disturbing one, namely body/matter cause an effect on whole? Why we have never experience otherwise? And other questions…

I hope I’m not about to a) make an a** of myself and b) offend you, but I get the impression that English is not your first language? Some of your phrasing is hard to understand.

Regarding your first statement, the theories of substance dualism and property dualism are completely separate from hylemorphic dualism.

To answer the questions posed in the second paragraph: The reason the only possibility for the separation of body and soul is death is because that is the very definition of death: the soul is the animating principle of the body, and so to separate the soul from the body is, by definition, death. But, being one substance, the only way the soul becomes separated from the body is if the body becomes degraded to the point that it can no longer perform its necessary functions. In that case, the body becomes like a snake’s old skin. The skin (body) is shed, but the soul (snake) remains.

 

[Bahman]

The fact that consciousness, emotions, etc cannot be explained solely in terms of brain functions. Do you really and truly believe you are no more than a biological robot?

That could be called biological being which has emotions, thoughts, intuition, etc. What should be interested is to look for a theory which could explain the subject matter the best not the one which look more appealing. What is amazing, thought, is that this being with soul or without soul -unless otherwise is proved by close investigation of subject matter which proves that soul is crucial in this process- has the capacity to experience things, so called consciousness. The question which comes to mind is that what is the use of experience and how could affect casual laws? By this I mean, if we accept that experience could affect the causal laws in a way, knowing the fact that the experience itself is the result of casual laws then we are dealing with a paradox, namely how something like consciousness could exist and not be inert without messing with causal laws itself.

The soul has no “seat” because it is not a physical object. Our intellect, our conscience, our free will and our capacity for love are functions of the soul not the body.

First, it seems that you are still striving to substance dualism which has serious issues, namely, interaction problem and conservation of energy.

Moreover, once these properties is assigned to soul then the question comes to mind is that what is the functionality of the body?

 

[Bahman]

I hope I’m not about to a) make an a** of myself and b) offend you, but I get the impression that English is not your first language? Some of your phrasing is hard to understand.

Regarding your first statement, the theories of substance dualism and property dualism are completely separate from hylemorphic dualism.

To answer the questions posed in the second paragraph: The reason the only possibility for the separation of body and soul is death is because that is the very definition of death: the soul is the animating principle of the body, and so to separate the soul from the body is, by definition, death. But, being one substance, the only way the soul becomes separated from the body is if the body becomes degraded to the point that it can no longer perform its necessary functions. In that case, the body becomes like a snake’s old skin. The skin (body) is shed, but the soul (snake) remains.

Thank you very much for highlighting the problem with my English. As you highlighted, this is not my first language and I always have to pay more attention to phrase sentences properly. I owe everybody apologies and thanks for being kind with me.

I have questions for this theory namely: The new substance which is composite of two substances has the property to deal with thought, memory, emotion, etc. Upon on death, the old substance which was capable of those functions is gone and we are only left with soul which seems that is not capable of doing of former functions. This leads to three questions: 1) What is the new functioning of soul?, 2) if soul could perform those old functions then what was the use of matter?, 3) if the soul could not perform those old functions, like minimally memory, then how are going to resolve the problem of identity? I mean a soul without memory has no identity.

 

[tonyrey]

That could be called biological being which has emotions, thoughts, intuition, etc. What should be interested is to look for a theory which not the one which look more appealing. What is amazing, thought, is that this being with soul or without soul -unless otherwise is proved by close investigation of subject matter which proves that soul is crucial in this process- has the capacity to experience things, so called consciousness. The question which comes to mind is that what is the use of experience and how could affect casual laws? By this I mean, if we accept that experience could affect the causal laws in a way, knowing the fact that the experience itself is the result of casual laws then we are dealing with a paradox, namely how something like consciousness could exist and not be inert without messing with causal laws itself.

Materialism certainly doesn’t explain consciousness or the ability to accept and reject explanations. Why should all mental activity be subject to physical laws? Why should matter have priority over mind?

First, it seems that you are still striving to substance dualism which has serious issues, namely, interaction problem and conservation of energy.

Moreover, once these properties is assigned to soul then the question comes to mind is that what is the functionality of the body?

There are unanswered questions in every interpretation of reality but some are less important than others. What counts is that theism reflects the way we behave and is not self-destructive like materialism.

 

[Bahman]

Materialism certainly doesn’t explain consciousness or the ability to accept and reject explanations. Why should all mental activity be subject to physical laws? Why should matter have priority over mind?

I would be glad to see an argument which strongly support that materialism cannot explain consciousness.

There are unanswered questions in every interpretation of reality but some are less important than others. What counts is that theism reflects the way we behave and is not self-destructive like materialism.

So it is better to be open to alternative rather than accepting what exist as absolute truth, whether it is offered with materialism or something else. The very fact that all current theories of consciousness have anomalies is a good and bad sign. Good in a sense that we there are still more room to think about the problem and bad because we still cannot understand ourselves.

 

[tonyrey]

Materialism certainly doesn’t explain consciousness or the ability to accept and reject explanations. Why should all

So it is better to be open to alternative rather than accepting what exist as absolute truth, whether it is offered with materialism or something else. The very fact that all current theories of consciousness have anomalies is a good and bad sign. Good in a sense that we there are still more room to think about the problem and bad because we still cannot understand ourselves
What counts is that theism reflects the way we behave and is not self-destructive like materialism. Do you treat yourself and others as no more than material objects? If not why not?
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[Bahman]

My questions remain unanswered…

Here are the answers:

Materialism certainly doesn’t explain consciousness or the ability to accept and reject explanations.

Materialism hasn’t yet provided any explanation for consciousness and this doesn’t mean that we could not explain consciousness in this framework. We might be cognitively close to this problem. There are arguments in favour of it, please read Mysterianism.

Why should all mental activity be subject to physical laws?

Do you want to define mind as a black box that we could not understand the content of it? Mental either obeys psychological laws (physical laws+metaphysical laws) or not. We are cognitively open to understand mental in first case and closed in the second case.

Why should matter have priority over mind?

What is mind? Why mind cannot be defined as a property of matter?

What counts is that theism reflects the way we behave and is not self-destructive like materialism.

What do mean by self-destructive?

Do you treat yourself and others as no more than material objects? If not why not?

This is an ethical issues and beyond the scope of this thread. To be honest, I sometimes worry the way we treat vegetation, since I don’t know what they are.