Souls

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by NoCapo

The question becomes "Do abstract ideas exists as part or reality in the same way as conctrete things?" I don't like the platonic forms solution, I don't buy that there exists an ideal avatar of triangle-yness that is independently real but transcends space and time.

I share your dislike of platonic forms, which is partly why I felt my previous post going off the rails and gave up on it. I was aiming more towards using Platonic realism as part of an analogy, rather than as actual component of my ontology, but I think that whole approach was unwieldy and confusing, so I'm trying to think of another way to explain the fundamental nature of qualia.

Since you have now read Zuboff's essay, it might help to know that what I have in mind is that qualia are Aristotelian universals, not Platonic universals.

Werner Heisenberg adopted Aristotle's notion of potentia when he tried to explain the way in which possible paths of an electron have to be considered in order to account for the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. The basic idea is that possibilities are real, even though not actualized. This distinction between real and actual became a centerpiece of Ruth Kastner's interpretation of quantum mechanics, which she calls the "Possibilist Transactional Interpretation" (PTI). Her basic point is that possibilities are still real even if they are not actualized in our world. (You can contrast this with the "Many World Interpretation" which says that every possibility is actualized in some alternate reality.)

I see Kastner's notion of "the reality of possibilities" as a way to recast the notion of "universals". This doesn't bring us all the way back to Platonic universals, but I think it does provide an interesting Aristotelian way to think about abstract things like "triangle-ness," apart from actual instantiations of triangular objects. The possibility of triangularity is inherent in concrete reality, even if, at a particular time, there happens to be no concrete triangles in existence. (Note the subtle Aristotelian spin: Possibilities are inherent in the concrete actualized world; they are not purely abstract ideas in a Platonic heaven.) If Kastner's PTI is correct, the possibility of triangles inherent in the concrete world is real, which is to say, the possibility of trianglenss can impact the actual world, even if, as a contingent matter of fact, there happens to be no actual trinangular objects.

I have taken it upon myself to extend Kastner's PTI one step further. If possibilities are real and can thus impact the actual world, then presumably qualitative possibilities are also real, and can impact the actual world. So presumably there was some point in the evolution of the universe when no sentient beings existed, and thus there was no qualitative experiences of blue. If qualia are Aristotelian universals, then the potential for blue was inherent in the concrete nature of the universe at that point, despite the lack of any actual experiences of blue. Then according to Aristotle/Heisenberg/Kaster/me, the potential for blue could (and presumably did) play some role in the evolution of the physical universe. In short, the possibility of blue was impacting the evolution of physical states prior to the existence of sentient life, and thus prior to any actual experiences of blue.

This is why I don't think we need to posit the actuality of a Cosmic Mind in order to explain how Reality-as-a-whole might evolve to a point where it starts to experience blue via the perspectives of sentient creatures. The possibility of "what it is like to see blue" (the feeling of the "raw feel", so to speak) was inherent in actualized Reality-as-a-whole even prior to the actualization of any sentient beings, so sentient beings don't "produce" or "generate" the blue qualia, and the feeling of what-it-is-like to see blue is not located "in" the brain of a sentient being. A sentient being is the way (or one of the ways) that Reality-as-a-whole actualizes the qualitative potential of "what-it-is-like-to-see-blue."

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by SoCalAngel2009

Oh, good. That was a lot of a bunch of not much... here's the truth about what is a soul.

1. We each have one.

2. It's inside of our physical body.

3. It's encased in a spirit body and without a soul, we wouldn't exist.

4. A soul isn't in nature... it isn't in animals... only people.

There's more....

The Truth About the Soul

Anything that is real has mass and occupies Space/Time.

All I see here is the standard "People are 'Special'" claim.

Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144

I'm going to talk today about souls.

And before anyone tries to tell me "I don't believe in souls" which they inevitably will, despite everything I say here, let me clear up some things here.

The only thing I'm seeing here is the standard christocentric arguments renamed with esoteric terms.

Originally Posted by TroutDude

Some deluded people think that because human animals have evolved to become the apex predators on the planet they have also somehow become more worthy of an afterlife.

Comes from too much holy book and not enough truth.

Indeed.

[TheWiseWino]

I believe in souls; James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye... how could I not?

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Anything that is real has mass and occupies Space/Time.

I think this is a bad way to think of the notion of "real." It could turn out to be true but, as it stands, it is simply a metaphysical speculation that people often confuse with "science" (as if science demands it). The scientific method does not require that something has to have mass or occupy spacetime in order to be "real".

I think the best definition of real pins it to the notion of "able to cause empirically detectable change, and/or necessary in order to explain such change." Most real things, so far as we know, are able to cause change because they do have mass and/or occupy spacetime (or we explain their ability to cause change in terms of their mass and location), but insisting that real things must have these properties is unwisely restrictive, especially in light of quantum non-locality.

I think that abstractions (e.g., numbers, rules, etc.) are real, but I don't see any plausible way to say that they have mass or occupy spacetime. I also favor Heisenberg's interpretation of QM, in which he draws a distinction between "real" and "actual." In quantum math, most possibilities are not actualized, but they must nevertheless be taken into account if you want your predictions to be correct. The "Many Worlds" folks interpret this aspect of the quantum math as meaning that every possibility is actualized in parallel worlds; Heisenberg takes a different route. He says these alternative possibilities should be understood as real, even though they are not actualized. John Cramer turned a notion of Wheeler and Feynman into an interpretation he called the "Transactional Interpretation" in which the future is real, even though it is not yet actualized. Ruth Kasnter tweaked Cramer's idea to emphasize that it is not necessarily "the future" that is real, but possibilities that are real (which, of course, which is essentially what Heisenberg was saying).

To say that possibilities are real, even though they are not actualized, is essentially to say that they cannot be discounted from a full description of reality. In other words, our ontological list of "things that must be taken into account" must include possibilities - even those possibilities that never get actualized. You might think that this interpretation of QM is farfetched, but the important point I want to make is that it is fully compatible with scientific data, and it is implausible to say that possibilities have mass or occupy spacetime. The Heisenberg/Kastner approach is no less scientific than any of the other interpretations of QM. As I said in the beginning, the scientific method does not require that "real" things must have mass or occupy spacetime. Logic does not require it either. Someday, perhaps, we will discover some good logical and/or empirical reason to believe that all real things have mass or occupy spacetime, but as of today this idea is just one of many examples of metaphysical speculation.

[Snowball7]

the body is just what we see with our bodies.
one would expect like to only see like.