False Arguments #31 & #32: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, IV
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In light of recent discussion at SI’s, now seems like the perfect time to continue addressing Ebonmuse’s oft-trumpeted essay A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM) along with similar claims from SI’s. Before continuing, it might be helpful to briefly summarize my responses thus far.
In Pt. I, I argued that AGITM attempts to discredit soul / spirit by challenging Cartesian dualism, when something more like tripartism accurately reflects the human condition as described in the Bible. Juxtaposed against the concept of the trinity, this is internally consistent with Genesis’ idea that man was created in God’s image, both exhibiting a tripartite nature of existence. I felt AGITM‘s argument from mind-brain duality failed to persuade, and attempted to explain why via use of a simple lightbulb analogy. I also argued that misinterpretations of clear and accessible biblical teaching about the soul and salvation nullify many if not all of the value judgments inherent in Ebonmuse’s moral dilemmas.1
In Pt. II, I essentially belabored the opening points, attempting to solidify the case that strawman interpretation of biblical concepts further lessened AGITM‘s relevance to biblical theism. Although less relevant to AGITM‘s main thesis (the argument against soul / spirit), this line of argument was directly relevant to the moral dilemmas Ebonmuse raised concerning the eternal future of those in the fourteen case studies along with other hypotheticals. Many and possibly all of the dilemmas raised fall apart when salvation is delineated compatibly with scripture. For it is only in a misunderstood context of biblical concepts like salvation and soul contrasted against the rewards-and-punishments system can such questions such as these arise at all.
In Pt. III, I noted that from a scientific point of view, one of AGITM‘s primary claims is an unfalsifiable negative, completely immune to proof. Continuing with the lightbulb analogy, I discuss whether or not AGITM successfully argues that consciousness is a mere product of neural transactions. I argued that localized mental functions and predictable reactions to cerebral stimuli posed absolutely zero threat to even the most rudimentary soul / spirit hypotheses, and are actually what we might reasonably expect were something like tripartism correct. I also demonstrated that AGITM contains more strawmen.2
Here in Pt. IV, I’d like to direct the focus to scientific data, and challenge AGITM‘s claims that there is no evidence for soul / spirit, and strong positive evidence against it.
In the closing paragraph of Part One, Ebonmuse summarizes his claims as advanced in AGITM:
…not only is there no evidence for the existence of the soul, but that there is strong positive evidence against the existence of the soul, deploying an argument I have styled the argument from mind-brain unity.
In another sub-argument that could be considered a supporting argument for AGITM, Question #5 in Ebonmuse’s Ten Questions To Ask Your Pastor reads:
Why do Christians believe in the soul when neurology has found clear evidence that the sense of identity and personality can be altered by physical changes to the brain?
Lastly, in a comment to Maria made September 6, 2008, 1:20 pm, Ebonmuse wrote:
The knowledge that the mind is a physical phenomenon strikes directly at religious belief, far more so than evolution or heliocentrism do.
I believe these arguments fail to persuade because each commits the fallacy of the false dilemma: that our sense of identity and personality can be altered by physical changes to the brain is no argument against the soul / spirit. Granted, I agree with Ebonmuse that such is exactly what we would expect if our sense of identity and personality were completely generated by neural transactions within our brain. Problem is, this also happens to be something we might reasonably expect if there were a ghost in the machine, and this brings us back to the lightbulb analogy: (light / soul) requires both a physical scaffolding (bulb / body) and a power source (electricity / spirit) to function, and both scaffolding and source must retain integrity in order for (light / soul) to do the same.
Continuing with the analogy, is every aspect of light “entirely dependent on” and “completely determined by” the bulb, as Ebonmuse claims of consciousness and the brain? Of course not. However, if you break the bulb, damage or otherwise alter the scaffolding, say, by applying a red filter to it, it should be expected that the light emitted will have corresponding changes. Yet, couldn’t we also induce change by interrupting or altering the flow of electricity, perhaps by introducing an intermittent pulsing pattern that produces flashing light?
Clearly, it follows that in such systems, damage or modifications on either end affect the middle. I believe it is entirely within reason that tripartism represents such a system. The analogy is simplified as follows: that light changes when we alter the bulb does not entail that light is “entirely dependent on” and “completely determined by” the bulb. This is tantamount to saying, “Because the light appears to stop when I break the bulb and filament, the light must be caused by the bulb and filament,” but the conclusion does not follow from the premise, and we’re left with rough induction at best.
As stated before, I also found Ebonmuse’s confidence in an unfalsifiable negative a bit peculiar: while it’s certainly difficult if not impossible to prove AGITM‘s claim that there is not a ghost in the machine, what’s less difficult and also theoretically possible is proving or at least supporting tripartism or some alternative hypothesis that consciousness can exist outside physical bodies (cf. immaterial consciousness hypothesis). To successfully support this claim is to successfully challenge AGITM‘s claim that there is no evidence for the existence of the soul / spirit. Especially in religious or philosophical discussions, all writers should attempt to explain what they mean when using the word consciousness, and how it relates to soul / spirit.
While I hesitate to speculate on what consciousness is, I feel fairly confident in asserting what consciousness does, or what its characteristics are: consciousness affords the abilities to feel, to know, to create, to express intent and to choose. Consciousness also affords the ability to manipulate objective matter via choice. Something elemental, like wind, can certainly manipulate objective matter, yet it presumably does so independent of any choice or consciousness. For what it’s worth, I’m currently unsure to what extent I’d claim that consciousness is analogous to soul / spirit, but I believe that regardless of the distinction, any demonstration that consciousness is anything else besides a mere product of neural transactions has AGITM dead in the water.
So let’s return to Ebonmuse’s primary claims as delineated in AGITM: is there is strong positive evidence against the existence of soul / spirit, and is it accurate to say that there is no evidence for the existence of soul / spirit? I believe the answer to both questions is a definitive no, and that both claims as presented constitute bona fide false arguments.
In the thread of Ten Questions To Ask Your Pastor, Ebonmuse echoes his claims as made in AGITM:
My point was not in reference to the fact that individual neurons are material objects, but that the mind as a whole demonstrably arises from their collective functioning. By inflicting certain, specific types of brain damage on a person, you can cause predictable changes to their identity and personality. By altering the physical structure of the brain, you can change a person’s beliefs, desires, or preferences. You can provoke a person to change their religious beliefs, or lose them altogether; you can destroy the sense of self-control, of judgment, of social consciousness, or of the ability to tell right from wrong.
This is just what we would expect on the hypothesis that the mind is a purely physical phenomenon. It is inexplicable on the hypothesis that the mind is, in whole or in part, a supernatural phenomenon not dependent on the brain. And this, in turn, undermines one of the most central tenets of most religions: the claim that human beings have a soul that survives the death of the body. It also removes any reason we might possibly have for believing that a mind can exist without a body, which is a conclusion that bears directly on the hypothesis of God’s existence.
-Ebonmuse, September 17, 2008, 7:29 pm
Again, I agree with Ebonmuse that we can poke and prod the brain with drastic and predictable results, and that this is what we would reasonably expect on the hypothesis that the mind is a purely physical phenomenon. Yet, that we can poke and prod the brain with drastic and predictable results doesn’t mean consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon, or that it cannot survive death, or that it cannot also exist in non-embodied states. Neither is the fact that we can poke and prod the brain with drastic and predictable results “inexplicable on the hypothesis” that soul / spirit occupy fundamental aspects of human consciousness. That is quite literally a fallacious argument from personal incredulity: just because Ebonmuse can’t get his head around something doesn’t make it inexplicable, and I disagree that his so-called argument from mind-brain unity constitutes strong positive evidence against the existence of soul / spirit.
What about AGITM‘s claim that there is no evidence for the existence of soul / spirit? SI similarly claims that “none [of the evidence] points to continuation [of consciousness after death]” but in my opinion, those claims rival the intellectual fascism with which the Catholic Church approached the question of Earth’s place in the cosmos: by simply dismissing mountains of anomalous data in order to preserve their own selective interpretation of the evidence.
The claim that consciousness can exist outside a physical body has thousands of years of cross-cultural testimony behind it. From the prophets of old to the indigenous shaman to today’s psychics and clairvoyants, literally untold numbers of people have testified and demonstrated that consciousness can exist outside a physical body and in other non-traditional states. This constitutes a well-established preponderance of anecdotal evidence, and if we are to be rational it must be factored into our assessments, not simply dismissed out-of-hand.
Anthropological field research has also suggested that consciousness can exist outside of a physical body. In the early 1980’s, Marianne George spent two years intermittently living and working amongst Papua New Guinea’s Barok tribe, where the local shaman visited her early in the expedition. The elderly shaman was the “big woman” of the village, and had sons. At one point, George experienced a dream where the shaman spoke to her, and the next morning was surprised to find that before leaving her hut or speaking with anybody outside her hut, the shaman’s sons had already arrived to ask if George understood what their mother had been saying. The shaman also provided George with information that was later confirmed by inquiry, and she continued to appear to George in dreams after she died. Still, the sons seemed to somehow know when their mother spoke to George, even after she died. The Barok refer to this strange form of transpersonal dreaming as griman.
Experimental studies conducted by van Lommel, Fenwick, Farnia and Greyson et al. also provide evidence suggesting that consciousness may be more than neural transaction, and van Lommel’s subsequent reply to Shermer’s ‘Demon-Haunted Brain’ (Scientific American, page 25, March 2003) is quite pertinent:
…in our prospective study of patients that have been clinically dead (VF on the ECG) no electric activity of the cortex of the brain (flat EEG) must have been possible, but also the abolition of brain stem activity like the loss of the corneareflex, fixed dilated pupils and the loss of the gag reflex is a clinical finding in those patients. However, patients with an NDE can report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, and memory from early childhood was possible, as well as perception from a position out and above their “dead” body. Because of the sometimes reported and verifiable out-of-body experiences, like the case of the dentures reported in our study, we know that the NDE must happen during the period of unconsciousness…
So we have to conclude that NDE in our study was experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem. It is important to mention that there is a well documented report of a patient with constant registration of the EEG during cerebral surgery for an gigantic cerebral aneurysm at the base of the brain, operated with a body temperature between 10 and 15 degrees, she was put on the heart-lung machine, with VF, with all blood drained from her head, with a flat line EEG, with clicking devices in both ears, with eyes taped shut, and this patient experienced an NDE with an out-of-body experience, and all details she perceived and heard could later be verified.
-Pim van Lommel, A Reply to Shermer: Medical Evidence for NDE’s
Now, I fully expect a discussion on when dead is really dead, and I certainly have some reservations with van Lommel’s paper, but among other anomalies that need accounting for, that consciousness can seemingly persist with a flat line EEG directly challenges the materialist hypothesis, and is also consistent with what we might reasonably expect if some form of soul / spirit exists. Yet, despite these facts and many others not mentioned for the sake of brevity, Ebonmuse, SI and countless other atheists, skeptics and so-called freethinkers would have us believe that there is zero evidence for the existence of soul / spirit.
Do my counter-arguments prove the existence of soul / spirit, or disprove the materialist hypothesis? Not by any means. But they do disprove the inflated claims that there is strong positive evidence against the existence of soul / spirit, and that there no evidence for the existence of soul / spirit. Although future discovery may vindicate these claims, and if that happens I’ll gladly amend or retract my arguments, until then I believe I’m justified to say the aforementioned premises from AGITM constitute bona fide false arguments.
(To be continued…)
1 By value judgments, I mean those areas where Ebonmuse uses strawmen to cast negative value judgments on biblical concepts. For example,
One must ask whether these people’s disabilities will affect their eternal fate. Would a Christian, Jew or Muslim who lost their automatic speech be held accountable by God for failing to say the prayers he has demanded of them, through no fault of their own?
First off, the strawman is that at least as far as the Bible is concerned, it doesn’t support the claim that sudden infliction of disability endangers salvation. Secondly, there’s a false dichotomy: note that sudden loss of ability to verbally utter one’s prayers does not preclude one from conducting the spiritual act of prayer, which is purported to occur internally.
2 As another example,
All the evidence we currently possess suggests that there is nothing inside our skulls that does not obey the ordinary laws of physics.
The strawman is that nothing about the idea of soul / spirit must necessarily be proffered to disobey the laws of physics.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...You’re jumping around with the spirit/soul bit. If spirit is considered an animating force, similar to electricity in your light bulb analogy, and soul is the metaphysical reality of a body(brain) being animated by the spirit (the light of a lightbulb powered by electricity), this is is contrary to the argument that consciousness can exist independent of a brain (it’s like saying you can still have light w/out a light bulb).
This is a classic conundrum that Christians have been grappling with for as long as there has been belief in the trinity. God as a nature vs. God as a person. Look back over your own argument, you’ll notice you’ve made the same mix up that so many other theologians have before you, conflating spirit as a nature and soul as a person. Spirit != soul. You need the scaffolding, dude. With NDE’s and other psychic or clairvoyant phenomenon, there’s still a brain in play (even if there’s more at work then just the brain). The only piece of evidence you provided that suggests independent existence of a consciousness is the story of the shaman continuing to communicate after death. But if you want to run with this, you’re actually arguing against tripartism (which requires a body as a part of the 3).
Which then leads one into the awkward realm of why brains exist in the first place if they’re unnecessary.
cl
says...Dominic,
You can have light without a light bulb.
I do not claim that spirit = soul. Have I understood your complaint correctly?
In order to have a functioning human being, of course, but I have not heard a successful argument that proves consciousness must have a physical body, and there is evidence which suggests it does not always need one.
How does arguing that a once-tripartite woman has now become a bodyless consciousness constitute an argument against tripartism?
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Because you juxtapose your idea of tripartism against the Christian concept of the Trinity. Mind, body, and spirit. Where Mind = Body + Spirit. Or are we on different pages about the Trinity here?
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Because you juxtapose your idea of tripartism against the Christian concept of the Trinity. Mind, body, and spirit. Where Mind = Body + Spirit. Or are we on different pages about the Trinity here?
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Oh, and I suppose I should have said you can’t have light without a light source, or some sort of scaffolding, as you put it. Otherwise you’re back to calling Spirit and Soul the same thing.
cl
says...Actually, the idea I’m tossing around here is that soul = body + spirit, where soul and mind aren’t necessarily synonymous.
<blockquote..you can't have light without a light source, or some sort of scaffolding, as you put it.
The analogy I was getting at was sunlight. The Trinity analogy is really just the same thing as the concept of phases, for example, water can express as solid, liquid or vapor. So, yes – as embodied consciousness, we need a dense or physical scaffolding to express our consciousness, but that’s not to argue that all expressions of consciousness must necessarily be embodied.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Ok, so by ’embodied’, you’re saying ‘made out of atoms’, and not more broadly ‘made out of something’.
I’ve noticed that there are two big sects in the theist camp that secular debaters tend to lump together and treat as one, to everyone’s detriment.
The first sect are those who insist on Plato’s realm of ideas (Platonic idealism) as the true reality, and that thoughts and consciousness are self-existent, that ideas don’t have to be made out of anything, they are real and eternal, material universe or no. Namely, they’re not made out of anything, they are themselves, the bedrock of reality.
The second (which it looks like you’re in) distinguishes between physical bodies and spiritual bodies. Both are arrangements of stuff, of some kind, upon which the pattern that you call a soul is imprinted. So God, and angels, and you, when resurrected to live forever, are made out of eternal spiritual bodies.
Needless to say, I’m more sympathetic to the second view, since ultimately, its a materialist viewpoint, whether its adherents want to admit it or not.
In this case, it looks like the AGITM argument is specifically aimed at the first sect outlined above, and doesn’t apply at all to the second. Since the second, should it be true, means it is just as possible to have your soul uploaded to a computer as it is to be resurrected into a spiritual body.
Remember a while back when I pointed out how debaters often talk past each other rather than addressing the actual position of the person they are debating? It looks that this may be the case here, as well.
cl
says...Yes, you could say I side more with the second camp you described, but not that I necessarily reject all of Plato’s concepts on ideas, either.
In what sense?
I agree, and that’s why I spent a big part of the first three responses agruing that although persuasive, AGITM is a rather well-written strawman.
In theory, perhaps, but such assumes that the computer in question is capable of processing whatever the “ultimate reality” is made of.
That’s what I thought early on, when it felt like I was talking past you re soul / spirit. This stuff happens all the time, as you note. What I especially like about you is that when it happens, I’m not automatically labeled a troll, sophist, prick, liar, etc. Cheers Saltarelli; by all means, stick around.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Belief in a spiritual body is materialism because it accepts that a being, a person, must have a body to be considered to exist. Body = material. That material doesn’t have to be conventional matter as we know it. Remember, even physicists have no problem postulating ‘Dark Matter’ to make their models fit. Hence, it’s materialism. Postulating that spirit and spiritual bodies are unthinking forces obeying something besides E=mc^2 and entropy, and that souls and minds (the things that do the thinking) are consequential of the existence of said bodies, is straightforward materialism. People deny it by saying spirit is just…just…just, so super different.
Bah… It’s materialism. If the brain is animated by spirit energy, being itself naught but an arrangement of lowly atoms, then so can a similarly designed, artificially built computer. And spirit energy is just that, energy, no more mysterious (or you could say, just as mysterious) as gravity and electromagnetism.
Just, you know, different.
cl
says...True, and I would expect that it wouldn’t be. To me, something like information / waveforms fits the evidence.
Well, you seem to have a pretty loose definition of materialism, but yeah, the way you define it, I guess we can say the concept of spirit is “materialistic.” Mind you, I don’t say that spirits are necessarily unthinking whereas our minds are thinking, but I get the gist of what you’re saying.
Maybe, I don’t know. Still, that the brain is “but an arrangement of lowly atoms” is exactly the argument I’m contesting here. I think there is a chasm between biology and computer technology that hasn’t quite been bridged yet. I think that our brains and bodies have the ability to detect subtler forms of energy than computers.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Now we’re getting somewhere. I’d like to see you elaborate on the information/waveform bit, heavily. That looks like your strongest argument.
cl
says...Hey thanks, I appreciate the encouragement; believe me, I’m working on it.
cl
says...Hey thanks, I appreciate the encouragement; believe me, I’m working on it.
dguller
says...cl:
Not much time now, but here’s something to think about.
The Invisible Hand of the Market is a real pattern that emerges when selfish individuals interact in a market-based economy. Does it follow that the Invisible Hand is a separate ontological entity, or is it entirely a byproduct of the interactions of selfish individuals?
dguller
says...>> Continuing with the analogy, is every aspect of light “entirely dependent on” and “completely determined by” the bulb, as Ebonmuse claims of consciousness and the brain? Of course not.
Sorry, but why not? The lightbulb produces light by heating up a filament, which releases electromagnetic radiation in the form of visible light. There is nothing outside this system necessary to explain this natural phenomenon.
>> However, if you break the bulb, damage or otherwise alter the scaffolding, say, by applying a red filter to it, it should be expected that the light emitted will have corresponding changes. Yet, couldn’t we also induce change by interrupting or altering the flow of electricity, perhaps by introducing an intermittent pulsing pattern that produces flashing light?
Right, but this is ALL part of a physical system with natural properties.
>> Clearly, it follows that in such systems, damage or modifications on either end affect the middle.
What “either end”? There is the power source (electricity) supplying the lightbulb, which generates light. The causal sequence only makes sense in one direction: electricity lightbulb light. Your example only shows that by changing the electrical input or lightbulb itself would change the byproduct (light). This does not support your analogy that consciousness is like light.
>> I believe it is entirely within reason that tripartism represents such a system. The analogy is simplified as follows: that light changes when we alter the bulb does not entail that light is ”entirely dependent on” and “completely determined by” the bulb. This is tantamount to saying, “Because the light appears to stop when I break the bulb and filament, the light must be caused by the bulb and filament,” but the conclusion does not follow from the premise, and we’re left with rough induction at best.
You have given no reason to doubt that light is completely determined by the lightbulb, except by invoking the logical possibility always present when using induction that there is something else going on. What that something else is, and what the evidence is of that something else is not provided.
>> I argued that localized mental functions and predictable reactions to cerebral stimuli posed absolutely zero threat to even the most rudimentary soul / spirit hypotheses, and are actually what we might reasonably expect were something like tripartism correct.
Sure, it would also be what you would expect if there were invisible unicorns galloping through the brain and their harmonic singing generates conscious awareness by an unknown mechanism.
I mean, I can make up any theory to fit the data, but do the extra bits of information actually add anything to explain the phenomenon in question? With your soul and spirit, I fail to see how they add anything to the matter. They certainly matter if one wants to believe that there is life beyond death, because then they are the indestructible carriers of our selves and can carry us beyond death, but other than that there is nothing about them that cannot more usefully be subsumed under consciousness and mind.
I think it is far more useful to see the mind as a byproduct of the brain-body-environment interaction, and as part of the physical system itself can generate feedback back into the system and alter the brain, body and environment.