Why we're immortal

[Sunflowers]

But showing that it is metaphysically possible for the mind to be material is not to challenge the idea that it is actually immaterial.

Actually, it does, by the Occam's Razor. All the things we have ever observed turned out to be material, and there is no reason to think mind should be different.

No, because Occam's razor could just as well be used to cut away material entities. Indeed, that would be a more parsimonious use of it, given that material entities don't really make sense.

There are countless of them.
David Hume made a relatively good one, which doesn't require knowledge of science to be evaluated, "The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned; their vigour in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death.".
And with the information about neuroscience we have today, the suggestion that mind is not (at least mostly) merely a product of the brain seems ridiculous. If there was a soul controlling the brain, how do you explain the alien hand syndrome? If you assume mind is merely a product of brain, the explanation seems obvious: the part of the brain that controls the hand isn't receiving the information from other parts of the brain.

Please explain how anything in what you've just said implies that minds are material rather than immaterial.

[brimstoneSalad]

I don't understand what you're contributing to this debate. I'm not appealing to authority - I have not said "this argument is sound because Descartes made it" or "this argument is sound because I have made it".

I was giving teo pointers, but beyond that I commented on another tangential argument that sprang up. In response to the claim that you don't know what you're talking about, you've made the argument that you do know what you're talking about because you're a philosophy professor. That argument (not the original one) contained an appeal to authority (your own) and lacked supporting empirical evidence.

Not to tell you how to conduct your own argument, but some options for responses to the claim that you don't know what you're talking about would be (order of maturity, from most mature to least):
1. Ignoring it and carrying on with the original argument because it doesn't matter what other people think and it's not relevant to the original argument.
2. Going on a brief a tangent in the discussion and demonstrating the fact of your knowledge with direct evidence -- such as citing your sources (which would involve a link that forum members can actually follow, and ideally a quote from the source presented here)
3. Saying "Your mom"
4. Making an appeal to authority of yourself while being completely unwilling to support it with empirical evidence, then going on a megalomaniacal tirade about your boundless knowledge.
5. Making death threats and then smearing feces on your computer screen.

You chose option 4. It was an interesting choice for an actual professional to make, not the worst choice but most definitely not the best. However, because you made it as an argument (even on a tangent) you now need to back up that claim -- or you can retract the argument.

Beyond the empirical matter of you being or not being a professor of philosophy, that appeal to authority is not valid because:

1. The claims had to do with very specific historical knowledge of very specific philosophers, which is a small niche within philosophy. It's not really something most philosophers would necessarily know or correctly remember. It would only be relevant to somebody with focused study in that area as his or her expertise (like you're the foremost scholar on Cartesian Metaphysics or something). It would have been more impressive if you had responded with that.

2. Even if you had the relevant specialization, the field you're claiming to have authority in so internally fragmented in belief and inconsistent in educational standards that it's effectively meaningless. It's like appeal to a naturopath's authority on medicine; they range from totally bonkers to very nearly the expertise of doctors who respect mainstream medicine.

3. Even if your field had a reasonable level of reliable credibility, you are a single person in that field. Even single physicists can be insane and advocate obviously false beliefs. However, as an aggregate in a credible field of study there is a body of knowledge represented by CONSENSUS that is very reliable. Consensus is even pretty reliable in an academic field with as many problems as philosophy, but you didn't reference consensus. Others did...

You made a bad argument. You didn't have to make an argument at all, but you chose to make a bad one. That's on you. You can retract the argument and go back to arguing your initial claims, or you can keep arguing about the argument that's not even relevant to the argument you actually want to argue.

It is others who are appealing to authority - or seem to be in the vicinity of doing so - by telling me (as if I didn't know) that most contemporary philosophers are not immaterialists about the mind, and also telling me that physicists seem to think that something can come out of nothing and something into nothing. How are those anything other than appeals to authority?

Yes, that's an appeal to authority -- a QUALIFIED authority, and one with evidence behind it.
It's consensus in physics that your third premise is empirically false. Ask ANY physicist at your university. This is very basic level stuff. You can choose to ignore it and pretend your argument is still sound, or you can learn more about why that is and either admit your argument is unsound or perhaps find a way to amend the wording of your argument such that it doesn't apparently contradict well established empirical facts of the universe.

I don't feel it's necessary to respond to the argument beyond that because the third premise is so obviously false. It might as well be a premise that states that the Earth is flat. I'm sorry you don't find an appeal to scientific authority convincing, but that's your problem. Any sensible person will stop to think about that and realize the argument is not correct once informed of that fact.

Your argument would actually become interesting to me if you were to find a way to modify the wording of the third premise that made it clear that it doesn't contradict basic physics. By all means, do that, but it will require you learning why the premise is a problem and you don't seem willing to do that because you've called any reference to quantum mechanics "nonsense".

[PhilRisk]

So if I understand correctly, what you are suggesting is that one way in which an object may cease to exist is that it may simply vanish.

I accept that 'if' that is a coherent possibility, then the above argument would not establish the immortality of the soul (though it would still establish the existence of the soul).

However, the possibility simply does not seem coherent. This is what I meant earlier when I mentioned magic - to block my argument you must insist that sometimes things just vanish. Literally, vanish. They have not been destroyed. They have just disappeared. Completely, and utterly and inexplicably.

The reverse would also have to be accepted, of course. That is, you would also have to accept that sometimes things just pop into existence out of nowhere. There is not currently a dinosaur in your garden, but any second one could pop into being and there be no cause of this, no explanation whatsoever. For on what possible grounds could you affirm one and not the other? That is, on what non-arbitrary grounds could you insist that something can become nothing, but nothing cannot become something?

Our reason is our one and only guide to reality. And our reason, or at least the reason of most of us, simply does not accept such possibilities.

So clearly and distinctly does our reason reject it that it has been elevated to the status of a basic principle of reality: the principle of sufficient reason.

And in everyday life you do not accept that something can just disappear, or that something can just spring into existence from nothing. If your wife did not come home one evening you would not accept as a possibility that she just vanished. And if you woke one morning to find a woman in your bed you would not accept that she just materialised there out of nowhere. I mean, try it. Put a woman in your bed and when your wife comes in and finds her there see if the explanation that 'she just appeared there out of nothing" flies. It won't. I think your wife will not accept that explanation - indeed, she'll be insulted by how utterly pathetic it is - because your wife accepts that something cannot come out of nothing, and something cannot become nothing. Your wife is quite right.

And consider complex things - such as a cake. Now, you do not think the cake just came into being and requires no explanation. You accept, surely, that this complex thing's existence is explained by its being composed of parts that have somehow been combined - the flour, the eggs, the sugar, and so forth. And those too have some explanation in terms of whatever it is that they are composed of.

Would there come a point where you would simply accept that the complex ingredients have simply sprung into being? If so, why seek to explain the cake at all - for it is a complex thing, so why not just say 'it sprang into being from nothing'?

But anyway, the simple fact is that of these two premises:

a) Something cannot become nothing
b) something can become nothing

'a' is orders of magnitude more prima facie plausible than 'b'. So to insist upon b's truth to block my conclusion is to allow a weaker premise to overrule a stronger one. And that, of course, is irrational.

So my argument is more reasonably considered sound than unsound. It should persuade a reasonable person. They, of course, are always in short supply, especially here!

All your examples use physical dividable entities. You even speak of materializing. These examples are irrelevant if you state that the soul is completely different than bodies. Therefore, your examples are not convincing.

Why should I apply physical conservation or analogous principles to minds, if they are so utterly different?

One further point, if I grant you a sort of conservation principle. Your physical examples only need physical conservation principles, which in a analogous form would only give rise to a very weak notion of immortality of the mind. The mind as a simple might still be there, but could loose or change all its content. This is a kind of immortality not worth talking about from the perspective of practical reason.

[teo123]

It has everything to do with whether something can become nothing.

Subatomic particles obviously can turn into energy (in other words, disappear) or turn into other subatomic particles (become something unrecognizable). Quantum physics predicts that as electrons get closer to the nucleus, their energy, that kept them farther away from the nucleus, under specific conditions, turns into a particle called photon. Similarly, if a photon enters an atom, it can, under specific conditions, turn into energy of an electron and make it go farther away from nucleus. And it's not just theoretical, LEDs are based on that.
Similarly, in radioactive decays, a neutron can turn into a pair of an electron and a proton. A neutron itself isn't made of a proton and a neutron, an electron being inside of a small particle such as neutron would contradict Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the basic principle of quantum mechanics.
Furthermore, as far as I understand it, the quantum field theory, which is accepted by most of the physicists today, predicts that subatomic particles can indeed come from nothing (not from energy, simply from nothing) and vanish (not turn into something else, simply vanish). I don't know ow much empirical evidence there is for that (I haven't studied physics too much), but it's clearly conceivable, there are not-obviously-wrong mathematical models that predict that.

I am not - and have not - argued that the mind is immaterial and immortal 'because Descartes said so'.

You implied your argument is more likely to be correct because Descartes supposedly used it. That is argument from authority.

Extended things - material substances - are divisible.

I'll repeat what I said earlier, some material substances are almost certainly indivisible. There being half a photon or half an electron would contradict much of what we think we know about physics.

Minds are indivisible.

I'll repeat what I said earlier, it's entirely conceivable that minds are divisible. It's conceivable that my mind "splits" and an independent part of it starts controlling my left hand. Not only is it conceivable, it happens, it's called alien hand syndrome.

And simple things are indestructible.

How did you figure out that information? Again, words are simple immaterial things and they are obviously destructible. Elementary particles (electrons, photons...) are simple material things and they are destructible.

Eh, to be fair, "murder should be legal" is about as ignorant of political science and the history of human government and civilization as Sunflowers is of physics.

I don't think it is. It's not at all obvious what political scientists think of anarchism. On the other hand, it's quite obvious what physicists think of "indivisible matter" or "indivisible things are indestructible", even if you don't study physics too much.

Weren't you even on about ghosts or souls not too long ago?

Well, using NDEs as arguments for soul is a lot less fallacious than this is.

[teo123]

No, because Occam's razor could just as well be used to cut away material entities. Indeed, that would be a more parsimonious use of it, given that material entities don't really make sense.

Hey, listen, obviously, it's conceivable that our bodies are an illusion and that the material world doesn't really exist. But all the evidence we have points to not only the material world existing (or else our senses would have to be deceiving us constantly), but also our minds being produced by that material world. And even if the material world isn't real, we still need to act as if it were real, since we are obviously a part of it.
Yeah, it's disturbing to think we can't know for certain who we really are. But that's the truth.

[Red]

Sunflowers, stop acting like you know anything about physics. Have you talked with a professional like I told you to?

[teo123]

Sunflowers, stop acting like you know anything about physics. Have you talked with a professional like I told you to?

The first stage of the Dunning-Kruger effect, when people know next to nothing, is denial that a skill is useful. That seems to be what's going on with Sunflowers. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of modern physics, so they denies that knowing that is useful. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of computer science, so they denies understanding computer science is useful. The truth is, to have an informed opinion about metaphysics, knowing those things is way more important than being familiar with history of philosophy. It's often hard to tell what's conceivable and what isn't, and being familiar with modern science helps you with that. What's easier to imagine isn't necessarily more likely. It's relatively easy to imagine your body and the entire physical world is an illusion, it's easier to imagine that than mind being divisible. Yet, mind being divisible is almost certainly true (alien hand syndrome...), and physical world being an illusion is very unlikely to be true.

[Red]

Sunflowers, stop acting like you know anything about physics. Have you talked with a professional like I told you to?

The first stage of the Dunning-Kruger effect, when people know next to nothing, is denial that a skill is useful. That seems to be what's going on with Sunflowers. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of modern physics, so they denies that knowing that is useful. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of computer science, so they denies understanding computer science is useful. The truth is, to have an informed opinion about metaphysics, knowing those things is way more important than being familiar with history of philosophy. It's often hard to tell what's conceivable and what isn't, and being familiar with modern science helps you with that. What's easier to imagine isn't necessarily more likely. It's relatively easy to imagine your body and the entire physical world is an illusion, it's easier to imagine that than mind being divisible. Yet, mind being divisible is almost certainly true (alien hand syndrome...), and physical world being an illusion is very unlikely to be true.

I think what makes Sunflowers' BS so amusing yet frustrating is that he/she masquerades around with extreme confidence and bravado. It's the fact that each idiotic, false, baseless assertion is juxtaposed with the prethought of 'Oh, you disagree with my "philosophy?" How dare you! You must be colossally retarded. Go back to failing school!' etc.

Sunflowers is the best manifestation of the Dunning Kruger effect I've ever seen.

[PhilRisk]

Do you have a PhD in philosophy?

As you are a philosopher and mentioned Descartes' position, I would appreciate a statement, how you would react to the criticism of Locke and Hume of Descartes' philosophy of mind.

Do you think you have to make some qualifications to your argument, because of these criticisms?

[teo123]

Sunflowers, stop acting like you know anything about physics. Have you talked with a professional like I told you to?

The first stage of the Dunning-Kruger effect, when people know next to nothing, is denial that a skill is useful. That seems to be what's going on with Sunflowers. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of modern physics, so they denies that knowing that is useful. They doesn't know the basics of the basics of computer science, so they denies understanding computer science is useful. The truth is, to have an informed opinion about metaphysics, knowing those things is way more important than being familiar with history of philosophy. It's often hard to tell what's conceivable and what isn't, and being familiar with modern science helps you with that. What's easier to imagine isn't necessarily more likely. It's relatively easy to imagine your body and the entire physical world is an illusion, it's easier to imagine that than mind being divisible. Yet, mind being divisible is almost certainly true (alien hand syndrome...), and physical world being an illusion is very unlikely to be true.

I think what makes Sunflowers' BS so amusing yet frustrating is that he/she masquerades around with extreme confidence and bravado. It's the fact that each idiotic, false, baseless assertion is juxtaposed with the prethought of 'Oh, you disagree with my "philosophy?" How dare you! You must be colossally retarded. Go back to failing school!' etc.

Sunflowers is the best manifestation of the Dunning Kruger effect I've ever seen.

What are the degrees in philosophy supposed to mean? In computer science, some college graduates obviously can't even keep an entry-level job. The CEOs can rightly say stuff like: "I don't care about your degree, I don't care about the effort you've put. What I care about are the results, and the results are lacking.". The universities are supposed to teach you to do your job. If you don't appear to be doing your job well, the university has failed you. And bragging about how great you are for finishing the university probably proves that university isn't teaching well.
Furthermore, I like how my high-school logic and philosophy professor told us: "A lot of people think philosophy and logic are related. They aren't too much. Most of the philosophy isn't logical at all.".