My Kindle Notes on "The Soul Fallacy"

Notes and highlights for

The Soul Fallacy

Musolino, Julien

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Yellow -- Disparaging or misleading language employed. Red -- He's simply wrong. Blue -- His definitions. Orange -- The actual positive arguments for the no-soul thesis.

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Chapter 1: Lifting the Veil

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Dawkins pointed out that the word soul has different senses. One is the traditional idea that there is something incorporeal about us, that the body is spiritualized by a mysterious substance. In this view, the soul is the nonphysical principle that allows us to tell right from wrong, gives us our ability to reason and have feelings, makes us conscious, and gives us free will.

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Note that the phrase "mysterious substance" refers to the commonsenical conception of the self. I am not identical to my thoughts, rather I am the thinker. I am not identical to my experiences, nor am I the sum of all my experiences. Rather I am the experiencer.

Is it correct to call such a self mysterious? In my experience, people do not understand what the word "substance" means. They appear to think it is a type of stuff. In which case, the adjective "mysterious" is rendered understandable. But a substance is that which has properties. The thinker or experiencer is the substance. Thinking, or more generally experiences, are properties.

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The soul is a scientific hypothesis about the design and functioning of human beings (the stuff of biology, psychology, and neuroscience),

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The soul is that which makes us conscious. The design and functioning of human beings can largely be considered apart from consciousness, and a fortiori the soul.

Chapter 2: The Spirit of the Age

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Dualistic hypothesis: Human beings are composed of a physical body and an immaterial, psychologically potent, and immortal soul (the soul we defined earlier). Body and soul are distinct entities and the soul can continue to exist and function independently from the body after we die.

Materialistic hypothesis: The mind, the domain of the soul, cannot function separately from the body for the simple reason that our mental experiences are caused by physical activity in our brains. What we call mind is nothing but a description of the functioning of the brain at a certain level of abstraction. Body and mind are therefore two sides of the same coin.

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It is a contentious issue that it follows from the idea that we are substantial selves that such selves survive the death of our bodies, least of all are immortal. So, even if it were established that an afterlife is implausible, this doesn't entail materialism is true.

Which brings me to another point. Materialism doesn't mean that the brain causes consciousness! Materialism means that reality contains nothing but material things and processes. Thoughts and experiences do not have mass, frequency, charge, momentum nor any other physical property, not even a location. It also follows, therefore, that they cannot be reduced to material processes. Hence, the very nature of consciousness we arguably should label as being immaterial. Hence, materialism seems to be false. However, that doesn't mean that the brain could not somehow produce such a non-material consciousness.

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Returning to the distinction between methodological and metaphysical naturalism, we can see now that the notion of detachability, which differentiates the dualistic and materialistic hypotheses, is a methodological claim— not a metaphysical one. By that I mean that the question of detachability is a perfectly well-defined empirical hypothesis that could be tested and settled using the scientific method (as Bertrand Russell explained back in 1935 and as we saw with the example of Aunt Emma).

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No, the notion that the self can exist apart from its body is a metaphysical position. Of course, there can be evidence for such a notion. OBEs, NDEs and so on -- essentially all the evidence for an afterlife. Also the soul or immaterial consciousness has an impact on the physical world, so this amounts to a denial of causal closure. In principle one could detect such a violation. Having said that, the impact of consciousness on the brain might be absolutely minute, but which, via physical chains of causes and effects, cascades to larger and larger effects.

Chapter 3: The First Principle

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Given what you now know about Douglas Biklen's technique, imagine that one of your friends— let's call him Wayne— was to praise the merits of FC and recommend its use to families of autistic children. If you asked Wayne to tell you how he knows that FC works, he would gleefully point to the messages emerging from the letter boards. He might even tell you that he personally knows families who use FC with their children and that the technique does work. But we all know that Wayne would be fooling himself. What he regards as “evidence” in this situation is what scientists would call anecdotal evidence, a weak form of evidence that doesn't count as real evidence because it isn't decisive.

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The "facilitated communication" is an example of both people believing because they want it to be true and also believing something because everyone else does and due to others personal experiences. Also, note that this propensity equally applies to scientists. They are no more immune to this than anyone else.

But, first of all, there's a distinction between, on the one hand, asserting that anecdotes are totally reliable (which I doubt that anyone claims), and, on the other, asserting they constitute no evidence whatsoever. We require a more nuanced approach.

In the case of FC, people were trusting what those in authority asserted; namely that it works. And those in authority were trusting others in authority. This trust shapes and moulds peoples interpretation of their own experience of FC when they try it for themselves.

But what about reports of certain characteristic phenomena that have been reported across virtually all cultures and throughout human history? Also, consider that many accounts of a specific phenomenon in question might be more or less ignorant of all these other accounts of that phenomenon. In which case, we should surely conclude that there is something of interest that people are seeing. That is, most such accounts are highly unlikely to be simply fabrications or mistakes.

For example, consider what are referred to as crisis apparitions. This is when someone, let's call him A, undergoes some type of crisis, quite often death. Another person, let's call him B, who is usually a friend or relative, has a visual experience of A around about the same time. Often B is not aware he is seeing an apparition and believes that A is physically present. It is only when the apparition of A disappears that he realises his mistake.

This phenomenon, so far as I am aware, is universal. And people on occasions have reported such experiences without being aware that this is a universal phenomenon. So I think it's reasonable to surmise that at least something interesting is happening here, even though the interpretation of what the phenomenon actually is and means can be disputed. It also seems to be reasonable to suppose there is some external component to the phenomenon, the experience is not entirely internally generated i.e it's not a pathological hallucination.

So, "anecdotes" can be highly unreliable, but they can also be highly evidential. The details of the anecdotes are crucial. We cannot just simply say, anecdotes never constitute any evidence.

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As we learned in the previous chapter, the claim that human beings are ensouled is a scientific one.

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This is simply incorrect if we're talking about physical science. Physical science deals exclusively with the quantifiable aspects of reality. So souls, selves, consciousness, and indeed colours, sounds, odours, reside outside its ambit.

Of course, consciousness, and hence selves or souls, do have an impact on one's body. So the physical world is not closed. And this interaction should be able to be mathematically described. But essentially, physical science deals with the material world only.

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Consequently, it is up to professional scientists to decide whether there is evidence supporting such a claim.

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It's not really a question of the evidence since whether a soul exists or not is essentially a philosophical issue. If the physical world is closed -- as the vast majority of scientists believe -- we don't even have any evidence for the existence of embodied consciousness, least of all a disembodied consciousness, aka a soul.

One could only have evidence of embodied consciousness should it be identical to some physical thing or process or function, or in other words, if reductive materialism is true. But then, of course, one would be required to argue that materialism is a reasonable position, which takes us into philosophy.

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Since the publication of “Feeling the Future,” detailed critiques of Bem's general methodology, the design of his experiments, and his use of statistics have been published in peer-reviewed journals and in popular scientific magazines. 7

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Evidence for anomalous phenomena will inevitably be ferociously attacked. They are motivated to try and pick holes in the evidence, to ridicule it. And there's also been critiques of the critiques.

The scientific community will not be convinced of psi since accepting it entails that the whole modern metaphysical view of the world, the current Weltanschauung, would be blown apart. Hence, it is guaranteed that any evidence for psi will attract detailed critiques. But whether such detailed critiques have sufficient merit is another question entirely.

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In summary, precognition is ruled out by Newtonian physics. The iron rule of cause and effect is never violated. In the quantum theory, new states of matter are possible, such as antimatter, which corresponds to matter going backward in time, but causality is not violated. In fact, in quantum theory, antimatter is essential to restoring causality. Tachyons at first seem to violate causality, but physicists believe that their true purpose was to set off the big bang and hence they are not observable anymore. Therefore precognition seems to be ruled out for the foreseeable future, making it a class III impossibility. It would set off a major shake-up in the very foundations of modern physics if precognition was ever proved in reproducible experiments. 9 To anyone who owns a cell phone, one of the countless demonstrations of the success of modern physics, Kaku's comments should serve as a sobering reminder regarding the utter implausibility of Bem's fantastical claims.

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I think the problem here is Kaku's implicit metaphysical assumptions e.g. that the future actual exists (eternalism). That precognition would be this actual existing future causally influencing the past. That causality refers to real innate forces existing in the world. Maybe other assumptions too.

Causality, in my opinion, simply refers to the characteristic patterns we find in the material world. And it seems to me that precognition might simply be an implicit awareness, similar to telepathy, of how present events will play out should no preventative action be taken. There is no tension here with science that I can ascertain.

And we're scarcely in a position to deny that consciousness has this ability since physical science wholly leaves out consciousness in its description of reality. (unless, of course, one is a materialist, but this would be transparent question begging, and I have argued extensively elsewhere that modern reductive materialism is simply not compatible with the existence of consciousness at all).

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In the case of ESP, the consensus remains that there is no credible evidence that the phenomenon is real.

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Which is entirely uninteresting since the evidence is not likely to overturn scientists metaphysical presuppositions that materialism is correct. Merely reading about research that contradicts one's entrenched beliefs, regardless of the topic, will rarely convince people. Especially when that research is already voraciously attacked by others. In the case of phenomena contradicting materialism, it will most likely require a personal experience.

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The soul hypothesis is a scientific claim about the detachability of mind and body and the existence of a mysterious substance powering our mental lives. It follows that anyone claiming that souls exist bears a burden of proof.

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As I hitherto explained, the soul hypothesis is not a scientific claim.

And what he says is not correct. One side should not win by default.

The burden of proof only applies to those asserting something exists that we wouldn't expect by an appropriate extrapolation of physical laws as they are currently known. In short, if someone asserts that x exists, but x would be unexpected given our understanding of physical laws, then the burden of proof ought to be on the one making the assertion.

But this can only apply to that which physical laws actually describe. Or in other words, any putative material thing that exists within the physical Universe.

But neither an appropriate metamind -- as in a creator of everything -- nor souls, are generally held to be material. In order to be material, God and souls would have to have at least some physical properties such as mass, charge, momentum, spin, location, frequency etc.

The idea that consciousness is a result of material processes on the one hand, or is a property of substantial selves on the other (or souls if they can exist independent of the body), are both hypotheses. If the author is holding that the former is more likely, then he needs to advance arguments for this. Not just sit back, fold his arms, and say, “prove me wrong, otherwise I’m right”.

But, to reiterate, I agree that if someone were to claim there’s a material something or other that has never been seen, and which one wouldn’t expect from current physical laws, then of course the burden of proof rests on that person. But, unless one supposes souls are material, they do not fit into this criterion.

I would also add that if those who think it's likely that our essence is a soul have the burden of proof, it also follows that people have the burden of proof to show that consciousness exists. That would be difficult if scientists are correct and the physical world is closed. For then, the entirety of peoples behaviour is simply a consequence of the interactions of material particles. The hypothesis of consciousness would then be superfluous (instead, we should all be "philosophical zombies" or "p-zombies").

Of course, those who reject a soul will undoubtedly assert consciousness is literally identical to what the brain does. But this would be to assume reductive materialism. So, effectively, the author would be saying any non-materialist position has the burden of proof! Which is ridiculous, and not only because materialism cannot be reconciled with consciousness, and not only because science doesn't suggest materialism any more than any other metaphysical positions on the mind-body issue, but also because we are all instinctively interactive dualists.

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The split-brain experiments also lead to another astonishing conclusion, especially for those who believe in an indivisible, immaterial mind. Split the brain and you'll cut the mind in half, as Sperry and Gazzaniga's experiments so elegantly demonstrate.

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If they had demonstrated this, then split brain patients would feel very different. After all, post the procedure, a person would only have half the mind they used to have! Yet, not only do they feel perfectly normal, but they also appear to others to be perfectly normal. It is only in highly contrived settings in a lab that certain peculiarities are revealed.

Anyway, there has been additional research on split-brain patients that contradicts the former research. In brief, this new research suggests that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, there still is only one conscious perceiver in split-brain patients. The relevant paper is here.

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On the materialistic hypothesis, this conclusion makes perfect sense, since the mind is the brain described at a more abstract level.

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Does it really make sense under materialism for split brain patients to feel and appear to others to be perfectly normal? Does it make sense under materialism for half a person's brain to be completely removed (either half) and for them to appear to be more or less normal? I don't think so, although it makes perfect sense if we are souls.

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In order to understand how the mind really works, we need the third-person perspective offered by science.

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The third person perspective cannot see the mind, it sees the brain. Of course, there are unconscious processes, but these could be as a result of the mind although circumscribed and mediated by brain processes. Indeed, just as conscious processes are.

The conscious mind might only represent the tip of an iceberg of the total mind. The respective contributions of the brain and the unconscious mind might well be a very convoluted and complex one.

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as we discovered in this chapter, the soul hypothesis, a bona fide scientific claim, cannot simply be accepted by default. Like any other factual claim, it has to earn its respectability.

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I don't think the soul should be accepted by default. The issue of whether we survive the death of our bodies is an open question. However, I do think the idea that we are immaterial substantial selves ought to be the default position. It is what we all instinctively believe, and to say such a self is an illusion, as many scientists do, is an extraordinary claim.

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Nothing short of decisive evidence should make us revise our initial skepticism with respect to soul-claims. This is simply the way rational inquiry proceeds in any other sphere of human endeavor.

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The initial skepticism needs to be justified. Why is it unlikely that our essence is a soul? Reductive materialism is untenable. Other forms of materialism suffer arguably unassailable problems. Substance dualism, or idealism/immaterialism all allow the existence of the soul and they do not face the problems of any variety of materialism. So I’m not in agreement that we should be initially skeptical.

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Because the soul hypothesis represents a series of claims about physics, biology, psychology, and neuroscience,

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I wish the author would spell out what these claims are. The only claim is that the physical world isn't closed. But the initial impact of the mental is likely minute. I subscribe to the notion that our essence is a soul, but I am not making any further claims apart from this.

Chapter 4: Dualism on Trial

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I want to consider the strongest possible evidence for the existence of the soul and show you that even that is utterly unconvincing.

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The philosophical issues are more important than the evidence. If, for example, we have excellent reasons for supposing some variant of materialism is correct, and we concluded that the obvious alternatives of dualism and idealism are fatally problematic, then the notion of the soul becomes rather unlikely. Hence the evidence that our essence is a soul would need to be extremely compelling indeed. To coin a phrase, the evidence would need to be extraordinary.

Contrariwise, if all forms of materialism are fatally problematic in one way or the other, but some forms of substance and idealism make eminent sense, then much less evidence that we survive in some form will be required.

So the author, first of all, before considering the evidence, needs to try and establish that materialism is reasonable, and that the alternatives of dualism and idealism are not.

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As many soul advocates point out, common sense delivers the powerful intuition that our body and mind are not cut from the same cloth.

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I do not think it is correct to label this a mere “intuition”, rather it necessarily follows from the *very meaning* of the word “material”.

Back in the 17th Century, Galileo divided the world into two parts. All the qualitative properties of the external world -- most notably colours, sounds and odours -- were placed into the mind, leaving the external material world quantitative in its entirety. So then, the outside material world was then measurable in all its aspects, namely having size, shape, location, motion and nothing else. Colours, sounds and smells were no longer treat as being part of the material world at all but rather something the mind created when perceiving the material world. Nowadays, the material world includes physical properties like mass and charge and so on, but it still remains the case that the material world is regarded as being wholly quantitative.

Incidentally, note that this conception of the material world was not something that was discovered. Rather, Galileo realised that the qualitative aspects of the material world, such as, for example, the bitterness of the taste of lemons, could not be captured in a mathematical description of the world. So it was useful to divide the world up into two parts in this manner in order to enable the mathematical description of the material world.

However, note that defining the “material world” in this way entails that dualism straightforwardly follows. There are minds with all their experiences in the broadest sense, on the one hand. So, for example, pains, emotions, thoughts, the experience of colours and smells and so on. Then there is the “material” world on the other hand, which is wholly exhausted by its quantitative aspects. No “intuition “ here, rather a necessary consequence of the way that reality was compartmentalised!

So, in order for dualism to be false and materialism to be true, we have to either deny the existence of qualia (in its broadest sense), or, alternatively, tinker with the definition of what the word “materialism” means.

Edited to add: Having read further into the book, he seems to try and justify that mind and body are indeed cut from the same cloth by pointing out that introspection doesn't give us transparent access to our minds and how they work. That we need the application of third person science. But, I don't see how this provides any reason to doubt dualism, unless he is denying the very existence of consciousness?

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Does this entail that the mind really is separate from the body?

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What does the word “separate” mean here? I’ve never heard a dualist use the word separate in this context, only ever those that attack dualism.

Dualism merely holds that minds or consciousness are not literally identical to any type of material process or function, even though minds or consciousness might arise or be produced by such physical processes.

So why not ask, “Does this entail that the mind really is not literally the very same thing as some physical process”? I suggest it’s because the word “separate” is being employed as a weasel word. Non-dualists are trying to convey that materialism is a reasonable position, so they try to make materialism more palatable by insinuating dualists are saying something much more radical than they actually are.

But, if materialism is so reasonable, if the existence of souls is so unreasonable, why resort to such dishonest tactics?

I don’t think this author is being unusual here, it’s pretty much a universal tactic on any topic of discussion. But, are we interested in discovering the actual truth about the world on whatever topic, or are we simply trying to persuade others regardless of the tactics in order to achieve this end?

Edited to Add: It seems from reading the book much further on that he means by "separate" that the mind can exist independently of the brain. Of course the mind being fundamentally different from the body doesn't entail this!

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The third family of claims rests on an appeal to recalcitrant phenomena that elude our current scientific understanding (free will and consciousness, to name the usual suspects). Since science cannot explain these phenomena, the argument goes, they must be otherworldly and support the existence of the immaterial soul.

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"Otherworldly"? I also keep hearing materialists say that if consciousness isn't material, then it is "mysterious", "magical" and even often "supernatural".

Again, materialists employ these terms exclusively, and they do so in order to soften up their audience into thinking that consciousness, properly conceived -- i.e real consciousness, not a physical process -- is somehow implausible and unreasonable. And they often forgo doing the actual legwork to show how consciousness and free will are unreasonable (or at least, never in a way I find remotely satisfactory).

Just because consciousness lacks physical properties, why on earth does that make it otherworldly? Or even mysterious? And when it is labelled "magical" or "supernatural", it is clear these words are not being used in their standard sense.

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So for Goetz and Taliaferro, common sense convinces us in advance of any kind of scientific investigation that dualism must be true. If it feels true, then it must be true.

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They didn't say that common sense convinces them of the truth of dualism. They said what they said, and nothing else.

They said first person experience (not common sense or feeling something to be true) is the basis for a belief in dualism.

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“If our common-sense view of a human being is correct,” Goetz explains, “I, as a soul, cause events to occur in the physical world by making a choice to write this essay for a purpose.” 3 But this line of reasoning is utterly fallacious. Just because something feels right, we certainly wouldn't want to conclude that it must therefore be right. Consider, for example, the earth's orbit around the sun. Consult

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Goetz said if our common sense is correct. If it is, then what he says follows. And I don't think anyone would challenge our commonsensical notions here. Of course, Musolino can maintain that common sense is incorrect here. But if would be useful if he were to explain why it's incorrect

Mentioning the movement of the Earth is insufficient. For this isn't comparable to the direct immediate apprehension of the causal efficacy of our own consciousness. The movement of the Earth is a hypothesis that best explains certain observations. It is not something immediately experienced. Indeed, this idea that the Earth moves is embedded in a whole series of metaphysical assumptions. For example, if the entire Universe were a simulation, would it still be correct to say the Earth moves in a literal sense? Or if Berkeley's immaterialism is correct?

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If you have a vivid dream that there is a monster under your bed, also a powerful subjective experience, would you want to conclude that there really is a monster under your bed? The strength of your intuitive conviction, however sincere it may be, is unrelated to the truth of a claim.

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So the direct apprehension of ourselves as causal agents is being compared to the conviction there is a monster under your bed. But in no shape or form is it commonsensical to be convinced there's a monster hiding beneath your bed. The comparison is simply preposterous, and the author is surely not being serious. Why does he feel the need to be flippant rather than engage seriously with the arguments?

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As philosopher Paul Churchland explains, “The red surface of an apple does not look like a matrix of molecules reflecting photons at certain critical wave lengths, but that is what it is. The sound of a flute does not sound like a sinusoidal compression wave train in the atmosphere, but that is what it is. The warmth of the summer air does not feel like the mean kinetic energy of millions of tiny molecules, but that is what it is.” 5 Churchland concludes that “if one's pains and hopes and beliefs do not introspectively seem like electrochemical states in a neural network, that may be only because our faculty of introspection, like our other senses, is not sufficiently penetrating to reveal such hidden details.”

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Personally, I find it preposterous to suppose that colours, sounds and odours do not exist out there in the material world. It's all very well for Paul Churchland to make all these assertions, but they are all wholly unsubstantiated. For, "a", there's no scientific evidence to suppose this, and "b" it's meaningless anyway.

a) There is no scientific evidence to suppose what he says is true. It was Galileo who stipulated (not discovered) that the external world was composed only of the primary qualities relegating the secondary qualities -- colours, sounds and odours -- to the mind. It was just useful for science to make the external material world wholly quantifiable and hence measurable. But, stipulating something is the case does not make something true

b) And these claims are of the same character as saying consciousness is literally the same as brain processes, which is precisely Churchland's point. But, unlike him, I think both type of alleged identities are equally empty. X and Y cannot be one and the very same thing or process unless all properties are shared. They certainly cannot be one and the very same if they share no properties whatsoever.

It seems to me that there's an inconsistency in supposing, for example, that the collective movement of molecules simply just is the feeling of warmth, and at the same time stating that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes. So, I'm partially in agreement with Churchland and the author.

But wouldn't people generally say that such motion of molecules cause the feeling of warmth? Not is the feeling of warmth? The motion of molecules obviously occurs in the absence of conscious creatures, so cannot be warmth as we experience it. At most they have the power to cause warmth.

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Goetz's first-person argument for the existence of the soul has it exactly backward. If dualism and what we called the detachability of mind and body is the scientific hypothesis under investigation, we cannot proceed by simply asserting that we are convinced of the conclusion that dualism is true in advance of any serious investigation just because it feels obvious.

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It seemed to me from what was quoted that Goetz was arguing for the causal efficacy of consciousness rather than dualism, but let’s leave that aside.

I agree that Dualism is not rendered true because we feel it is true, so if Goetz did effectively say this, then he is wrong. Rather, it’s true because it reflects the way things are. So, on the one hand, there is the material world that is exhausted by all of its physical properties, on the other hand, we have conscious experiences construed in their broadest sense. And the latter both exist and cannot be reduced to the former. So, if we accept the existence of the material world, then dualism necessarily follows. Feelings just don't come into it (although, I'm not saying feelings are thereby irrelevant).

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My first objection to arguments for the existence of the soul based on introspection is that this line of reasoning tells us absolutely nothing about the relationship between mind and body.

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This is self evidently false. For one thing, introspection gives us immediate and unmediated knowledge of the existence of consciousness, the existence of which is simply not commensurate with modern reductive materialism. Introspection also tells us that our consciousness must necessarily be casually efficacious in and of its own right. See this blog post of mine.

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Relying on introspection to deduce that we have souls

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Who has ever relied upon introspection to deduce our essence is a soul? This seems to be a straw man. Introspection provides us with the certainty of our own consciousness, which rules out reductive and eliminative materialism. But there are many other positions in the mind-body issue where souls don't exist.

In brief, souls are reasonable because:

a) Any flavour of materialism seems to be incommensurate either with the very existence of consciousness or that consciousness is causally efficacious. So that leaves the possibility of some type of dualism or idealism being true.

b) There's a great deal of evidence suggesting that our essence survives the death of our bodies eg NDE's, recollections of a previous life etc.

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Using the example of split-brain patients, and also the more mundane facts of everyday cognition, I showed you that the conscious mind is clueless about what goes on under the hood. Only science, and its reliance on the third-person perspective, can tell us what the mind is and how it really works.

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Science can’t tell us what the mind is as science only deals with the quantifiable and hence measurable. Science can tell us about behaviour and thereby we might infer what’s happening in the mind.

But we all have immediate access to our own minds. Yes, we often confabulate the reason why we do something. But, I think this is kind of a trivial point. Someone might do something on "autopilot", and so if asked they might not readily know and hence confabulate a reason. How should they respond? Say they don’t know really? There’s a lot happening in our subconscious minds we’re not directly aware of. But that, of course, doesn’t mean our minds are not aware of anything. The most obvious example being that we are all immediately aware of our own consciousness. And this is enough to defeat eliminative materialism and also, I would argue, reductive materialism.

Also, as already explained, I do not believe we are usually deceived in our perceptions. Nor do I think we mistaken in thinking colours, sounds and smells exist out there.

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So instead of assuming that introspection reveals the world to us as it really is,

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Introspection could only tell us things about our own minds , not the world! Does he mean our perceptions of the external world?

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We now have very good reasons to reject any soul claim based on first-person impressions.

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But who is arguing that we can derive that our essence is a soul from first-person impressions? Possibly we can get the impression that we are (immaterial) substantial selves, but that needn't mean that such a self survives death. In addition, for our essence to be a substantial self/soul, we need arguments and evidence.

And, to reiterate, our immediate access to our own consciousness and the implicit awareness we are causal agents, does render the good majority of materialist positions as being unviable.

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This should finish convincing you that a person who can inspect the content of his own mind through introspection is in no better position to understand how his mind works than a scientist studying the same mind from the third-person perspective.

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I'm mystified how this failure to know how the mind works through introspection somehow supports the no-soul hypothesis.

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On October 15, 2012, Newsweek proudly announced on its front cover that heaven was real.

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Proudly? What would have been different if it wasn't proud?

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However, as we just established, first-person experiences alone cannot tell us how the mind works and whether it can operate independently from the body. So,

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Not knowing "how the mind" works cuts both ways. We don't know if it can be produced by the body either.

Highlight (pink) - Page 110 · Location 1704

In 1994, researchers Hayden Ebbern and Sean Mulligan headed to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center where Maria's story took place. After reviewing the details of Clark's report, interviewing Clark herself, and inspecting the hospital and its surroundings, Ebbern and Mulligan were much less impressed by Maria's story. In 1996, they published a piece in The Skeptical Inquirer demonstrating that Clark's report had been embellished and that Maria could easily have spotted the shoe without “leaving” her body. 13

Note - Page 111 · Location 1708

These, I believe, were two students. What expertise did they possess? And from what I recollect, they set out to debunk Maria's case and made speculations about how the shoe might have been perceived etc. I certainly cannot recollect that they demonstrated anything. We need to be leery of people who have vested interests in certain outcomes. Especially where a specific outcome results in any accolade and backslapping from others.

Highlight (yellow) - Page 111 · Location 1709

However, these cases either involve outright fabrication, as in the case of physician Larry Dossey, 14 or they have been found to be no more convincing than the story of Maria. 15

Note - Page 111 · Location 1711

The author needs to argue for himself instead of offloading it to other books. Although it will certainly be the case that we can find cases where deception has been involved, this is scarcely likely to hold for all cases.

Highlight (blue) - Page 111 · Location 1712

Other books, such as anesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee's Mortal Minds: The Biology of Near Death Experiences and Mark Fox's Religion, Spirituality, and the Near-Death Experience, present detailed arguments demonstrating that NDEs do not provide evidence for the existence of the soul or the afterlife.

Note - Page 111 · Location 1714

Imagine two Universes, A and B.

In Universe A, no-one has ever had a NDE nor experienced any of the other "end of life" phenomena. Their consciousness just diminishes until reaching zero at death.

In Universe B, everyone that reaches the threshold of death has either deathbed visions if they go on to die, or an NDE near the threshold of death, if they recover.

Now, is it really being claimed that in Universe B there is no more evidence for an afterlife than in Universe A? Or, conversely, there is no more evidence for extinction in Universe A then in Universe B? Clearly that is preposterous.

Also, there's a double standard applied here in that skeptics tend to deny that NDEs constitute any evidence for an afterlife, but it seems when people don't experience anything near death, they loudly trumpet this fact implying that this provides evidence for their thesis that we simply cease to exist when we die

Highlight (pink) - Page 111 · Location 1717

If you want to determine whether people's souls really leave their bodies during an NDE, one way to find out is to place laptop computers or pictures in locations that only a floating soul could reach, like the top of a closet. When the soul reenters the body, patients should in principle be able to describe what their souls “saw” while floating about in the room. Of the five studies that Holden believes were conducted with the proper controls, she concludes that not a single one of them has been able to demonstrate extraordinary perception of the soul-floating-in-the-room type.

Note - Page 111 · Location 1721

To imagine people are likely to see these pictures and other signs displays a ignorance and a naivety about how perception actually works. We do not just passively perceive what is out there. Our attention is very selective, indeed to such an extent that we may even fail to see what's there right in front of our eyes and in the centre of our vision. This short video illustrates this nicely. On first viewing this, I for one failed to see the gorilla!

Now, imagine if you're on the threshold of death. Imagine you find yourself floating above your body. Maybe people saying that you've gone and nothing can be done to resuscitate you. Imagine your emotions, the profound shock, the horror, the disbelief. Would you really notice, take in, some picture on top of a closet? If many of us fail to see the gorilla when we are relaxed and in front of our monitors, think how vastly less likely we would notice things that are not involved with our apparent dead body below us. As an aside, I raised precisely this point about 20 years ago in a paranormal skeptic board (the James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF, although it is called something else now. But I have been banned from it for many years).

Anyway, of course, after a while the NDEr might accept his situation and start exploring around. Then there is a chance of seeing pictures or other signs. But longer NDEs will be comparably less frequent than short NDEs. Also, people don't just float around in the Earthly environment forevermore, they ascend and enter into some other reality.

Highlight (pink) - Page 112 · Location 1735

In a 2011 review article titled “There Is Nothing Paranormal about Near-Death Experiences,” published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science, Dean Mobbs and Caroline Watt explain that the frequently reported feeling of being dead is not unique to NDEs but can also be found in a fascinating syndrome called Cotard's Syndrome, or “walking corpse” syndrome, which has been associated with disturbances in the parietal and prefrontal cortex (more on this in chapter 6). In a similar vein, out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are frequently reported by people experiencing sleep paralysis and hypnagogia (vivid dreamlike hallucinations). Moreover, OBEs can be induced by electrically stimulating certain areas of the brain, as the work of Swiss cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke demonstrates. 16

Note - Page 112 · Location 1738

This is silly. The word “dead” is being used in 2 very different senses. In Cotard Syndrome, people have the feeling that they do not exist. In NDE’s, people use the word “dead” to mean they’ve entered another reality. And indeed, they often report feeling more conscious, more alive, than they have ever felt.

Note - Page 112 · Location 1740

Continuing on from the previous highlighted part about "OBEs" artificially elicited. It's unclear whether we are talking about the same phenomenon, especially the electrically induced "OBEs". We would need people who have experienced both natural and electrically induced OBEs and for them to judge whether we are talking about the same phenomenon here. Also, how does the author know that these other artificially induced "OBEs" are not ones where one has a perspective from outside the body? Clearly, it must be the body, and especially the brain, that can trigger or inhibit OBEs. Appropriate electrical stimulation of the brain may enable one to leave one's body, or even obtain a glimpse of otherworldly realities.

Highlight (pink) - Page 112 · Location 1740

Mobbs and Watt also explain how tunnel vision, meeting with deceased people, and positive emotions have been associated with known pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, and that there are perfectly plausible neurological explanations for these phenomena.

Note - Page 113 · Location 1742

There couldn't be neurological explanations unless the thesis that the brain produces consciousness is correct. But this thesis that the brain produces consciousness is the very point that is at issue.

Moreover, something like Alzheimer's disease may alter the brain in such a manner that one is able to perceive that which is normally filtered from our senses by the brain.

So having an NDE type of experience whilst suffering from a disease in no way shows these experiences are pathological hallucinations.

Highlight (pink) - Page 113 · Location 1743

The third reason to be skeptical of supernatural interpretations of NDEs is that the phenomenon isn't restricted to brushes with impending death. In their article, Mobbs and Watt mention the case of a diabetic patient who, after an episode of hypoglycemia, reported many of the symptoms typically associated with an NDE. Likewise, combat pilots, when subjected to strong acceleration, can experience a phenomenon known as hypotensive syncope, which leads to the kind of tunnel-like vision reported in NDEs.

Note - Page 113 · Location 1746

I don't think these examples have anything like the same phenomenology as NDEs. But leaving that aside, why can't people get a glimpse of the afterlife realm when they are not near death?

Highlight (yellow) - Page 113 · Location 1746

The fourth reason to doubt the paranormal interpretation of NDEs is that there is overwhelming evidence that conscious experience arises from physical activity in the brain, as we will discover in chapter 6. Absent a scientifically credible body of work establishing the reality of veridical NDE perception, there are therefore no grounds for concluding that the unusual experiences accompanying NDEs are anything other than brain-based experiences, however perplexing they may be.

Note - Page 113 · Location 1746

What evidence is this? At a minimum we need some conceivable causal mechanism, which we lack.

Incidentally, this fourth reason doesn't say anything about the evidence supplied by NDEs. It's rather a positive argument that souls don't exist and has nothing to do with picking holes on the evidence for a soul, least of all NDEs.

Edited to add: This evidence is presented in chapter 6. I comment on it later on.

Note - Page 113 · Location 1749

Continuing with the last highlight. There are so many grounds I would scarcely know where to begin. For one thing, no modern materialist position appears to be viable. Indeed, even the broader position that the brain produces consciousness has arguably irreconcilable difficulties.

Then there's all the evidence for an afterlife. And incidentally, I do not regard NDEs as the best evidence (spontaneous recollections of previous lives as told by children would be). And even here, as I've explained, none of the objections to NDEs have much merit.

Highlight (pink) - Page 114 · Location 1758

As for the claim that his brain had completely “shut down” during his experience— inviting the conclusion that his NDE wasn't brain-based— it is equally implausible. What about the rich memories Alexander describes in his book? Where did they come from? The minute you say that Alexander's memories are brain-based, his entire account falls apart— which is why he insists that his brain had completely shut down and that his experience cannot have been brain-based.

Note - Page 114 · Location 1761

This is Eben Alexander he's referring to. I don't understand the author's point here. Memories are a property of the self or soul. A believer in an afterlife would not agree that memories are stored by the brain. And, as I have argued elsewhere, such a notion appears to me to be incoherent.

Highlight (yellow) - Page 114 · Location 1761

Even if we were to grant Alexander the supremely implausible conclusion that his brain had completely shut down during his coma,

Note - Page 114 · Location 1762

Why is it implausible?

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The fallacy then, is to automatically assume that if something challenges our current scientific understanding, or the limited grasp of science on the part of the person making the claim, a supernatural explanation wins by default. As the physicist Jean Bricmont explains, the god-of-the-gaps argument merely amounts to giving our ignorance a name— God, the soul, ancient aliens, and so on

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Another fallacy is to imagine that science gives a competing explanation to God or souls. In regards to physical science, it doesn't actually explain anything in any ultimate sense. Science merely describes the world. It might be, for example, that what we call physical laws, are simply a description of God's behaviour in the world.

Indeed, even materialism wouldn't be incompatible with a God. If we are conscious and our choices can ultimately be described by the interactions of matter within our brains, then so too could an infinite mind be described by all the interactions of matter, but on a cosmic scale.

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if you want to make a case for God, the soul, or ancient aliens (who supposedly helped the Egyptians build the pyramids), you need to provide positive evidence for the existence of these ideas in accordance with the logic of the burden of proof.

Note - Page 115 · Location 1786

This is incorrect that a believer in the idea that our essence is a soul has the burden of proof. See my earlier comment.

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This is because there is no positive evidence that would force a rational person to conclude that souls exist.

Note - Page 120 · Location 1872

Skeptics have an all-consuming obsession with evidence. Does reason never have any influence on their thoughts?

Both need to be employed, a combination of reason (philosophical thought) and evidence (our empirical investigations of the world).

Highlight (yellow) - Page 123 · Location 1918

If psi were real, then why don't we have comparable evidence? Why don't people who can allegedly “see” the future bankrupt all the casinos on the planet or use their skills to beat the stock market? The reason this never happens is that nobody can “see” the future, because precognition is ruled out by everything we know about modern physics, as we saw in chapter 3.

Note - Page 123 · Location 1920

I already discussed this in a previous comment. Also, a relevant blog post by me that covers this argument.

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Victor J. Stenger wrote several books showing that quantum mechanics does not prove the existence of God, paranormal phenomena, or the independence of mind and body.

Note - Page 124 · Location 1941

I wonder who it is that makes such claims. No one so far as I am aware. What people do say is that where as classical physics is incompatible with psi and certain other types of anomalous phenomena, certain interpretations of QM can accommodate them.

Highlight (yellow) - Page 124 · Location 1941

These books include Physics and Psychics, The Unconscious Quantum, and Quantum Gods. I've looked at five prominent books by New Dualists in which the authors claim to demonstrate the existence of the soul.

Note - Page 124 · Location 1942

The author spends a great deal of time bashing what he calls "new dualists". I'm not really interested in all this. For one thing, I'm not aware of their arguments. What I'm interested in are his positive arguments for the non-existence of the soul

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This may be so in D’Souza's own universe, but in the real world, physicist Victor J. Stenger tells us that “Modern physics, including quantum mechanics, remains completely materialistic and reductionistic while being consistent with all scientific observations.” 39

Note - Page 124 · Location 1949

Stenger is simply not correct. Modern physics in no shape nor form insinuates materialism. If anything, quantum mechanics actually undermines materialism and the most parsimonious interpretation is a type of idealism. But do give his argument...

Chapter 5: Requiem for the Soul

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one of the reasons mainstream science has abandoned the soul is that the claim is extraordinary but the evidence is not.

Note - Page 127 · Location 1988

The author has not established that it's an extraordinary claim.

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These correspond to ideas that do violate the laws of physics, and so discovering that such ideas are indeed true would entail a major overhaul of the foundations of science. For Kaku, perpetual-motion machines and precognition count as class III impossibilities.

Note - Page 128 · Location 1996

I've covered this in my earlier comments about precognition, and I linked to a relevant blog post of mine.

In addition, we need to bear in mind that precognition is an ability of consciousness. However, physical science wholly leaves out consciousness in its description of reality. So how on Earth can it be claimed that precognition contravenes science? If science cannot accommodate the very existence of x, it is scarcely in a position to make proclamations about the properties of x.

Highlight (yellow) - Page 128 · Location 1997

We saw in chapter 4 that there is no scientifically credible evidence for the detachability of body and mind.

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It's a question of definitions, not of science.

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As the philosopher Paul Churchland explains, “The standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process.” 3 Given this account of our origins, Churchland continues, “There seems neither need, nor room, to fit any nonphysical substances or properties into our theoretical account of ourselves. We are creatures of matter.”

Note - Page 129 · Location 2016

I have the same quote from Paul Churchland in one of my blog posts. So I'll just paste in what I said there.

The evolution story is supposed to explain the origin of our bodies and why our bodies have the characteristics they do. It only accounts for the arrival of consciousness should one assume that consciousness is literally part of the body, or in other words, if one assumes materialism upfront. But, as I have argued elsewhere, materialism is fatally problematic. Apart from that, we have yet again, a clear case of question begging.

Indeed, in order for evolution to account for consciousness, consciousness has to actually do something. But the mainstream view is that the physical world is closed, hence our consciousness is causally superfluous.

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I beseech you tell me how the soul of man (since it is but a thinking substance) can determine the spirits of the body to produce voluntary actions. For it seems every determination of movement happens from an impulsion of the thing moved, according to the manner in which it is pushed by that which moves it, or else, depends on the qualification and figure of the superficies of this latter. Contact is required for the first two conditions, and extension for the third. You entirely exclude extension from your notion of the soul, and contact seems to me incompatible with an immaterial thing. 5

Note - Page 131 · Location 2037

This is a quote from Elizabeth of Bohemia, the eldest daughter of Frederick V, who corresponded with Descartes for several years on matters of common intellectual interest.

Anyway, I suggest that the people who voice this objection have a certain view of reality where only certain types of regularity are permitted; namely a mechanistic view of reality where all changes are captured by such contiguous physical chains of causes and effects. Essentially, they hold the view that A influences B because there is some innate power in the world that travels from A to B and necessitates change in B.

But, why must reality be limited to such regularities? Why must causes be contiguous? What permits us to a priori rule out a reality that admits influences from consciousness, or indeed even mystical principles, or magic and so on? Note that in saying causes may not need to be contiguous, we are not contradicting any physical laws. Rather, we are contradicting the mechanistic view of reality, which at best is a presupposition of science, or at least it was a presupposition of science back in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Physics simply tries to model reality based on observations in the past to predict events in the future. We call these regularities physical laws. I do not believe we can impose a priori constraints on the patterns we find there, that is we cannot say reality must conform to contiguous causes. Empirical investigation should guide our beliefs rather than a priori presuppositions. Should we dismiss the phenomenon of entanglement because it contravenes such assumptions? And, if we don't, then the alleged universality of contiguous physical causes and effects is refuted. Where one exception is found, we can surely not be surprised if we find others.

Highlight (pink) - Page 131 · Location 2041

Think of Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost. He faced the same problem when he tried to move physical objects around him. Try as he might, his ghostly foot would go right through the can he was trying to kick. Our friendly ghost Patrick fared no better when he tried to push a quarter with his translucent finger.

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Our friendly ghost needs to utilize psychokinesis.

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In his book Physicalism or Something Near Enough, philosopher Jaegwon Kim puts some flesh on the interaction problem's bones. Kim begins by observing that among philosophers, the interaction problem is widely recognized as dualism's Achilles’ heel— an insurmountable problem that single-handedly led to the demise of the Cartesian doctrine.

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As I just explained, not only do I not agree that it's an unsurmountable problem, I don't regard it as a problem at all. It's just a brute fact of reality that our consciousness impacts upon the physical world. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to type these letters out now. Mental changing the physical is ultimately no more mysterious than the physical changing the physical; namely it's just the way reality is.

Basically, people who voice this objection have these unexamined metaphysical presuppositions about the world. That reality changes due to innate forces. That such forces govern all that happens. But someone who denies physical causal closure denies this in that they think that consciousness also has a causal impact. Saying how does it do this makes no more sense than asking how electrons have the charge they do etc.

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It may seem to us, introspectively at least, that conscious and apparently immaterial “thinking” can cause our body to do the things that it does, but this is only because our faculty of introspection is not penetrating enough to reveal to us that our conscious actions— and in fact our conscious thoughts themselves— are the result of physical activity in the brain, as I will show you in chapter 6.

Note - Page 135 · Location 2104

It's not accurate to say it's introspection. I will something, and my body moves in an appropriate manner to that will. In other words, the casual efficacy of our own consciousness is something that we directly and immediately experience.

Indeed, I would argue we have much better grounds for believing in mental causation than we do physical causation. For we project our immediate sense of causal agency out into the material world in order to try and make sense of change within it.

Highlight (pink) - Page 135 · Location 2104

We will also discover that when cognitive psychologists tell us that certain mental states cause our actions, they are merely using terms like thinking to describe the physical activity of the brain at a certain level of abstraction. This means that all the actual causal work takes place between purely physical entities. Only

Note - Page 135 · Location 2106

If we strip physics of its metaphysical assumptions and hold that physics merely describes changes in material reality that utilizes mathematical equations, we can see how silly this is. For, when we get right down to it, we are effectively saying that the patterns we observe in the subatomic realm serve to negate our immediate and direct experience of our own causal agency.

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The moral of the story is that we can understand causal interactions in the physical world, like bullets hitting targets, because we have the framework of space (space-time in fact). But there is no known equivalent to the framework of space in the nonphysical, or immaterial, domain of souls, and so there is no way to even conceive of a possible mechanism for causal interaction between body and soul.

Note - Page 136 · Location 2111

What does "understand" mean in this context? The world is just given. It has certain patterns that we can describe. And we project the concept of forces out into the world so we can utilize the appropriate mathematical equations. But it is no more understandable than mental causation, indeed arguably less so.

Anyway, he just keeps saying the same stuff in slightly differing ways, and I'm keep giving the same responses in slightly differing ways!

Highlight (pink) - Page 136 · Location 2114

Dualism, by contrast, is one giant gap. It allows us to understand absolutely nothing, and souls are as mysterious today as they were when Plato wrote about them more than two thousand years ago. The scientific revolution took place and materialistic science got off the ground because it proved enormously useful as a method through which we could understand the world.

Note - Page 136 · Location 2117

Dualism is not trying to get us to understand anything as such. It's just a label to denote the fact there are apparently two radically differing types of existent, the material and mental. The same goes for materialism and idealism. The author is again confusing materialism with science. In no shape or form does science and its success imply materialism. See this blog post of mine,

Highlight (pink) - Page 136 · Location 2117

Dualism, on the other hand, never got off the ground. There is no evidence for the detachability of body and mind,

Note - Page 136 · Location 2117

It's not a question of evidence, as I said it's the fact that the physical and mental have no properties in common, hence it's vacuous to declare that consciousness is one and the very same thing as material processes (I assume "detachable" means a denial of this. Edited to add: Apparently not as I discover later on in the book).

Highlight (pink) - Page 137 · Location 2135

Where does the energy necessary to bring about a change in the brain come from?

Note - Page 137 · Location 2135

He's referring to how the soul can cause change in one's body.

From food at a wild guess?

I might sound flippant, but I honestly don't understand why the energy can't just come from food.

It will be useful here to simply repeat what I've said elsewhere:

We need to remind ourselves that current science wholly leaves out consciousness in its description of reality. I think, though, that this will eventually be remedied and a theory will be dreamt up that will reveal consciousness to be non-reducible. However, this will be a radical break from existing theories since we are admitting into the domain of science that which is very different from the structure and function that it currently describes and investigates.

The important point is this: any such theory will have consciousness having an impact on the world. Will such a theory, therefore, entail an ever spiralling increase in total energy? Let's consider what is being said here. Essentially, they're saying, we have no idea how consciousness exists and what possible theory will accommodate it, but whatever that theory might transpire to be, a causally efficacious consciousness will result in an increase in the total amount of energy in the world. But, since we have no idea what form such a theory will take, how on earth can they know this? Why on earth can consciousness not use up energy that is matched by a corresponding depletion of energy elsewhere? I submit no-one is in any position to claim that this cannot happen. Certainly, at the very least, they must provide a justification for their allegation rather than simply stating it.

Highlight (pink) - Page 140 · Location 2181

“Mind-body dualism thus is in direct contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics.” 11

Note - Page 140 · Location 2182

He's talking about a conclusion of an article by someone called Morowitz.

It's no good simply stating his conclusion. It has to be argued for. Perhaps Morowitz does, but the argument needs to appear in this book.

Of course, physical closure has to be contravened, but I see no reason why this contravening would necessarily contravene the 2nd law of thermodynamics rather than some other physical laws.

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But we saw that the notion of an immaterial substance, the core concept underlying the dualistic doctrine, flies in the face of what we know about modern science.

Note - Page 141 · Location 2187

I never saw any such thing. Physical science deals with the quantifiable only, and so could neither rule out mental substances nor the existence of (immaterial) consciousness i.e commonsensical consciousness that is not literally identical to a physical process, even though it may be elicited by such processes.

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Besides, the claim that the human mind will never be understood in purely physical terms, because it is “nonphysical,” is another instance of the argument from ignorance. How could anyone possibly know what will and will not be understood by science fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years from now?

Note - Page 142 · Location 2215

The author doesn't understand the issue. It follows by definition (see above) that minds are immaterial, and the immaterial is not within the ambit of physical science. That can't mysteriously change in 1000 years time.

Highlight (blue) - Page 144 · Location 2249

We have considered three ways to define the core notion underlying the dualistic doctrine, the idea that the mind is immaterial (or nonphysical).

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The author hasn't mentioned the obvious one. Namely, that to say the self is immaterial is to say we are mental substances. That is, the commonsensical conception of selves that we all instinctively believe unless or until we're "educated" out of it. See my blog post

Highlight (pink) - Page 147 · Location 2303

Remember, dualists do not tell us what the soul is; they tell us what the soul isn't.

Note - Page 147 · Location 2303

I have certainly said what the soul is. See this essay.

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Without a clear definition of what immaterial or nonphysical means, the New Dualists are left with a doctrine that cannot even be coherently formulated.

Note - Page 149 · Location 2338

The immaterial is only typically talked about in the context of consciousness and selves (mental substance). Consciousness is all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc. And thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc do not have mass, electric charge, location or any other material property, hence consciousness is necessarily immaterial. The self/mental substance is the thinker and the experiencer, that is to say which is the owner of various conscious episodes.

Chapter 6: La Mettrie's Revenge

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First, because the brain is material and thus divisible into parts, the mind should be divisible as well, at least in principle.

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Why doesn't this also apply to anything else? So why isn't it the case that if we cut a computer into 2, then we get 2 computers? Or if we cut in into a 100 parts, then we get 100 computers?

I would have thought that the the brain has to operate as a collective whole to produce a mind. So this just seems false to me.

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Second, if consciousness can remain fully operational after the brain has turned into mulch, as believers in the afterlife contend, then only partial damage to the brain should have no effect on consciousness. By contrast, if consciousness is caused by the operation of the brain, then damaging the brain should also impact consciousness. Let's call this the fragility of the mind.

Note - Page 152 · Location 2380

Partial damage to the lenses in eyeglasses impair our vision, even though we may have 20/20 vision when we take the eyeglasses off. See a blog post of mine. So again, what he says seems to be incorrect.

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Third, if what gives rise to the mind and voluntary behavior is triggered by an influx of soul substance, then it should not be possible to generate conscious experience or behavior by simply poking at the brain. If, on the other hand, the activity of the brain is what causes the mind, then we should be able to push the mind around by directly stimulating the brain. Let's call this mind control.

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Influx of soul substance is how he labels the commonsensical conception of the self. I suspect he's attempting to make the concept of a soul as implausible as possible. If it's so obvious the soul doesn't exist, what's the point of these cheap underhand methods?

Anyway, this is not an argument for materialism as such, but rather the weaker thesis that brains must produce minds. He's supposed to be arguing for materialism, but let's settle for this weaker thesis.

With what justification do we have for supposing that poking the brain generates consciousness? Indeed, isn't this what those who believe in a soul would precisely deny?

It is, of course, possible that poking the brain leads to a conscious experience. But it might be that, hitherto, the brain was suppressing conscious experiences. Going back to our eyeglasses, if the lenses were completely fogged up so I could not visually perceive my environment, the fact I can clean the lenses and see again doesn't entail either the eyeglasses as a whole, nor the lenses within them, generate my visual experiences.

But what about affecting behaviour? It is certainly true that it is surprising that brain processes can affect our mental states. So drinking alcohol makes me feel more gregarious, for example. But, the question here is whether it presents a difficulty for dualism.

It depends. If we cash out personal identity in terms of psychological states, then it does. But that would be to beg the question since such a conception of personal identity is what materialists would subscribe to, not those who believe our essence is a soul.

But what if we are substance dualists or idealists? In this case, if psychological states are a property of the soul or self rather than part of the substance of a self, then it doesn't. Here, the changing of one's psychological states, like one's moods, is akin to the fact that although a table acquires scratches and looks the worse for wear as it ages, it nevertheless is still the very same table. In other words, it's properties, like scratches etc can change, but it still remains the very same table. In a similar manner, our moods, interests, memories, even intelligence are properties of the self rather than part of our substances. Hence, these can all change without the self literally becoming another self.

And, in fact, this is simply the commonsensical conception of the self. We all feel we are precisely the same individuals as we were when we were children despite all the changes in our interests, intelligence and so on. Thus, unlike any materialist position, substance dualism accords with commonsense. All materialist positions are obliged to hold there is no persisting self, it is illusionary.

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Fourth, if our mental world is the result of an invisible soul substance, then it should not be possible to “read” people's minds by simply looking at their brain. Let's call this mind reading.

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I don't think we can. I doubt someone could read off my thoughts merely by looking at my brain.

But anyway, if there is a one to one correlation between peoples thoughts and specific brain activity, then it could be done in principle.

It could be, for example, that certain thoughts elicit certain characteristic brain activity. The author clearly thinks the causal process runs the other way; namely brain activity elicit specific thoughts. But even assuming such a one to one correlation, how is it justified dismissing the possibility that it is thoughts eliciting appropriate brain activity rather than the other way round?

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Finally, if our abilities to think, reason, make decisions, and display insight and creativity cannot come from the properties of physical matter alone, then it should not be possible to build physical devices that display these mindlike properties. Let's call those intelligent machines.

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It would be the contention that what cannot come from physical matter alone would be conscious experience or sentience. Of course, we can create devices and program them to execute rules that obtain the same results as that reached from a process of thinking and reasoning. I see no reason why this should be impossible.

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Their combined weight thus lends powerful support to the conclusion that the mind and the brain are two sides of the same coin.

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Even if they were successful, they would give weight to the thesis that brains produce minds, not materialism.

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If damage to only parts of the brain can make you lose your ability to see, think, or feel, then how can all these abilities remain intact when your whole brain is completely kaput?

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The answer to this is simple. The brain cannot affect the soul when the soul is no longer embodied. It's similar to damaging the lenses in your eyeglasses. It doesn't matter how damaged they get and how impaired your vision becomes. Your vision will still be restored when you whip the eyeglasses off.

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And so naturally, since dualism has nothing to show for itself, soul advocates criticize materialism instead.

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So.. since he is aware of this, why does he and other skeptics never make any attempt to defend materialism against the criticisms?

Non-materialists criticise materialism since it is isn't viable, and it was the adoption of materialism that precipitated widespread disbelief in souls. So even if dualism also has irreconcilable difficulties (something that certainly doesn't appear to be the case), this could do nothing to justify materialism. Maybe we would therefore opt for idealism (which also can allow for substantial selves as much as dualism).

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By contrast, materialistic mind science has progressed by leaps and bounds since the seventeenth century— an important fact that dualists are very happy to sweep under the rug. Materialism is what philosophers of science call a progressive research program.

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Again, this demonstrates that the author simply doesn't understand what materialism means. Regardless of whether materialism, dualism or idealism is right, it remains the fact that the external world exhibits patterns that can be captured by mathematical equations. It is for this reason why science is successful, not because of any metaphysical hypothesis such as materialism.

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The sense of conscious will that D’Souza assures us is utterly magical is in fact anchored in the physical brain. Damage a patch of brain tissue, and you'll pierce a hole right though the soul. Consciousness is fragile.

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Here the conscious will is not affected, but rather its control on one part of the body ( a hand) that we are normally able to control. Voluntary movement of our bodies is dependent on a functional brain and body.

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In a recent overview of the syndrome, the authors report on two cases from their own hospital. 13 The first involved an eighty-eight-year-old man who was admitted for treatment after a severe bout of depression. The poor fellow was convinced he was dead, and he even fretted over the fact that he was not yet buried!

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Granted a dysfunctional brain can give us delusional thoughts and can have a profound effect on our mental states. But the fact that brains effect minds, sometimes profoundly so, doesn't entail that brains create minds.

If a man is in a house, his view of the sky from a window will be profoundly affected by the state of the window. It can be sufficiently dirty that his view of the sky is very much compromised. Or, indeed, his view of the sky can be completely extinguished if the curtains are drawn. Nevertheless, his vision of the sky is unimpeded, nay...enhanced, when he ventures out of the house.

Of course, one might argue that the brain-soul relationship ought to be different, that brain processes ought not to be able to precipitate delusional thoughts. And, this leads to the issue of personal identity. Can I have delusional thoughts, yet still be the same self? It seems yes, since a substantial self is not identical to his thoughts, he is, rather, the thinker of his thoughts and more generally the experiencer of his experiences. Hence the very having of delusional thoughts in and of itself would not be inconsistent with the notion of a commonsensical or substantial self.

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This shows that despite the inherently subjective nature of conscious experience— which philosophers call qualia— such experiences are also under the control of our physical brain.

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He's talking about pain. Damage to the brain can make us cease to experience pain. But I'm unclear what the relevance here is. A dualist accepts that the body impacts upon mental states. Damage to the body can trigger the mind to register pain (incidentally, it needn't be the body itself causing the pain, rather it might be a response by the mind). Now, if the body is damaged in a specific manner, that might prevent the appropriate signal being sent, hence one will not experience pain.

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Neuroscience offers a detailed explanation based on a precise set of well-understood mechanisms, fully compatible with everything else we know about science. (Remember consilience?)

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Obviously, the existence of pain is no more explained by neuroscience than any other conscious experience.

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Now how does the story work for a dualist? How can a physical substance like novocaine act on the immaterial soul? What is the mechanism here? The answer is that nobody has the faintest idea. There is no soul-based explanation that even comes close to matching the details of the materialistic account.

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Is this a more pressing problem than the fact that an object I touch acts on my immaterial soul by giving me a certain tactile sensation? Anyway, this is just the alleged interaction problem again that I've already addressed.

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Your memory, your ability to talk, and your personality can be wiped out by brain damage. People who suffer from asomatognosia will assure you that part of their body, say their left arm, does not belong to them. In anosognosia, patients are convinced that a paralyzed limb is perfectly functional. The Capgras delusion is a condition in which patients sincerely believe that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors. Individuals who suffer from Fregoli syndrome hold the delusional belief that they are persecuted by a person who can take the appearance of different people. All these conditions result from damage to different areas of the brain. The allegedly indestructible soul is very fragile indeed. In light of such evidence, how can anyone believe that the mind will continue to function when the entire brain has given up?

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Granted a dysfunctional brain can give us delusional thoughts and can have a profound effect on our mental states. But the fact that brains effect minds, sometimes profoundly so, doesn't entail that brains create minds. Nor does it entail there is no substantial self or soul.

Consider this. If a man is in a house, his view of the sky from a window will be profoundly effected by the state of the window. The window can be sufficiently dirty that his view of the sky is very much compromised. Or, indeed, his view of the sky can be completely extinguished if the curtains are drawn. Nevertheless, his vision of the sky is unimpeded, nay... enhanced, when he ventures out of the house.

So, the fact his vision is compromised in no shape nor form has implications for his capacity to see. It remains innate to the man.

So we need to deny that the soul's relation to its body and brain is of a similar nature in order for Julien Musolino's (the author of "the soul fallacy") objection to work. So how does he justify this?

In short, he doesn't. Indeed, he thinks his objection that I quoted is sufficient in itself to reject a soul. But, what he might have argued is that the brain-soul relationship ought to be different, that brain processes ought not to be able to precipitate delusional thoughts. And, this leads to the issue of personal identity. Can I have delusional thoughts, yet still be the same self?

It seems yes, since a substantial self is not identical to his thoughts, he is, rather, the thinker of his thoughts and more generally the experiencer of his experiences. Hence, the very having of delusional thoughts in and of itself would not be inconsistent with the notion of a commonsensical or substantial self.

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In 2009, a group of French neuroscientists published a study in the journal Science that directly refutes Goetz's interpretation. The team of researchers showed that it is possible to evoke “intentions” by electrically stimulating the posterior parietal cortex of their patients. The patients themselves reported a “desire” or a “will” to move and said things like “I felt a desire to lick my lips” or “[ I experienced a] will to move.” Crucially, however, these intentions were not followed by actual actions, nor were they accompanied by activity in the relevant muscles. As the authors themselves explain, they were able to evoke “pure intentions.” When the surgeons increased the intensity of the electrical stimulation to the same regions, patients not only reported an intention to move, but they were also convinced that they had performed a movement that in reality never took place! By stimulating the premotor cortex, the team was also able to trigger complex movements that the patients themselves were not able to consciously detect. In their article, the authors explicitly introduce their findings by observing that they fly in the face of dualism. 18

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We need to bear in mind that bodily processes can invoke intentions eg the intention to eat or drink if starving or parched. Interactionist dualists think the mind influences the body, but also the body influences the mind.

It would be different if instead of evoking an intention to lick one's lips or some other trivial action, it invoked an intention in me to study, say, popular culture rather than philosophy. If I am really just my brain, or if the brain is responsible for everything I am, then it should, at least in principle, be possible to alter the brain somehow so that I no longer have any interest in philosophy, but rather an interest in celebrities.

I do, however, acknowledge that this is the most powerful evidence that the author has presented so far.

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In a first experiment, healthy participants received TMS to the RTPJ for twenty-five minutes before being asked to judge scenarios like the one you just read. TMS was also applied to a control area of the brain not known to be involved in mental-state attribution. Amazingly, RTPJ stimulation led participants to judge actions like Grace putting a substance she believed to be toxic in her friend's coffee as more morally permissible compared to judgments by the same individuals in the control condition or by participants who received no TMS at all.

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I think this conclusion that their morality had actually changed is an extraordinary claim. My suspicion here would be that it was their ability to think and reason about moral matters that was compromised rather than that their morality was actually changed.

An important question is what did they say after the effect had died down?

To rule out an impaired ability to reason in moral matters rather than an actual change in morality, we need to know what their moral judgement is for attempted harms that actually succeeded.

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The manufacturing-plant view of the brain, to use D’Souza's analogy, wins the day because it is supported by everything we know about science. The brain-as-receptor-of-cosmic-soul-signal hypothesis might enjoy some initial plausibility, but a few moment's reflection reveal so many dead-ends, contradictions, and nonsensical implications that it will make your head spin. For starters, the receptor view of the brain doesn't even begin to respond to the challenge posed for dualism by what we called the fragility of the mind. If damaging only parts of the brain can annihilate just about every aspect of our mind, then by what miracle would the complete destruction of our brain following death leave us with all our mental faculties intact so that we can recognize Uncle Fred in heaven? If the soul needs a functioning brain to be able to think, see, and feel, then how could it perform these functions without a brain at all? And if it could, then why do we need a body and a brain in the first place? Why aren't we just blobs of ethereal soul stuff? At least we wouldn't have to worry about back pains, hemorrhoids, and lung cancer.

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First of all I would prefer a simpler analogy to radios or TV sets. The same idea can be conveyed using the idea of a man in a house, or eyeglasses.

So the whole purpose of the analogy is to convey the idea that the soul doesn't need a functioning brain to think, see, and feel. If the lenses in my eyeglasses get dirtier and dirtier as time goes by, this can have no implications for my unaided vision when I take my spectacles off. He needs to argue that this analogy is false or inappropriate. Instead, he seems to have completely missed its point.

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Does the all-or-nothing radio-brain view entail that the soul signal gives rise to my entire mental life? Are the languages I speak, the memories I have, the skills I possess all the product of something beamed into my brain from above? My suspicion is that the reason I speak French and English is because I grew up in France and then moved to the United States. I am also convinced that my memories have to do with the people I've met and the places I've visited in this world. If certain aspects of my mind are the obvious consequence of my dealings with the denizens of the physical world, then what exactly is the soul signal supposed to do? Does it just make me conscious?

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One's memories and acquired skills are clearly not part of the mental substance, they are, rather, acquired properties. Also, it should be noted that the self or soul doesn't make one conscious any more than a table makes its colour or shape etc. That is to say, a substance doesn't make its properties, a substance is the prerequisite requirement for the very existence of any properties.

It seems to me that Julien Musolino doesn't appear to have any understanding of what he's attacking. And he essentially says nothing else regarding the analogy. So much for the aforementioned "dead-ends, contradictions, and nonsensical implications that it will make your head spin".

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When your dentist gives you a shot of novocaine, she is not relying on a mere correlation between brain states and mental states in hopes that the chemicals will induce the desired numbness in your jaw so you won't bite off her fingers when the drilling begins. Indeed, the injection is what causes your conscious perception of pain to temporally fade. Besides, notice that the “it's-only-a-correlation” argument can be applied to just about anything under the sun— which goes to show that such claims are completely toothless (to continue with my dentistry analogy).

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First of all, let's clarify what those who advocate a soul actually believe, or at least what they ought to believe. They contend that brain events do not create the self or soul (the mental substance) nor do they create consciousness. But, nevertheless, they do not dispute that brain activity can affect consciousness. Nor do they dispute that there is accompanying activity in the brain and body that occurs alongside all of our conscious experiences. This is regardless of whether these experiences are in the form of thoughts, perceptual experiences, pains, or whatever.

Pains and perceptual experiences can be grouped together here in that they both involve there being something in the external material world that precipitate these type of characteristic experiences. Let’s consider a tree that is in front of me. The material tree, via a chain of material causes and effects, results in my experience of the tree. The story goes that light of various wavelengths are reflected from the tree, this light then enters my eyes, which in turn precipitates a series of brain processes, then I finally see the tree. Note that the colours of the tree that are actually experienced, that is the colour qualia, are not commonly held to exist within the material world, nor even in the brain. Rather they are somehow a creation by the mind crafted from the signals it receives (or, at least, that’s why many non-materialists hold). Similarly, a pain does not exist out there in the material world. The pain is ultimately caused by some damage to one’s body, but the pain quale itself is a creation by the mind crafted from the brain signals it receives.

If I’m interpreting Musolino correctly, I do not think he seriously believes that people deny that pain can be made to temporarily fade when given a shot of novocaine. I think he's trying to make the following point. Namely, that if soul advocates agree that objects in the outside world and damage to my body actually cause my perceptual experiences and pains, and indeed the immediate causes are the processes within my brain, then why consider all other conscious experiences, such as thinking, to be merely correlated with brain activity? It is arguably reasonable to suppose that all of one’s conscious experiences are caused by the material world, and indeed with the immediate cause being the brain. And if this is so, then nothing can survive death. Or in other words, there is no soul. Voila!

Here is the problem with that argument. Musolino is assuming that what we are, the self, is merely the sum of all our conscious experiences, the word experience here being construed in its broadest sense. But both soul advocates and plain common sense reject this interpretation. For as well as all my experiences and thoughts, it seems there is an experiencer of all these experiences and a thinker of all my thoughts. If I were to be the mere sum of all my experiences or mental states, then when I look at a tree and then I close my eyes, part of my self would quite literally be chipped away. For I would then lack a conscious experience, and if I am merely the sum of all conscious experiences, this then entails I am less of a self than I was before closing my eyes. Or imagine someone experiencing agonizing cramp in the calf muscle of his left leg. But, all of a sudden, the pain vanishes. Would he be any less of a self at that point? I don’t think so.

So when I experience a pain, this is not the brain creating an aspect of consciousness ex nihilo, as it would be if there were no experiencing subject (or self/soul, or mental substance). Rather it's a modification or an alteration of an already existing subject's mental states.

An experiencer or thinker is what is known as a substantial self or a mental substance, and it’s not my intention to argue for its reality here (I have done so elsewhere). The point here is that the material world, and indeed the brain, can cause me to have specific experiences without having implications for the very existence of such a non-material experiencer or self.

Furthermore, there needs to be a distinction drawn between experiences that, on the one hand, clearly have some external origin, and, on the other, are internally generated. Those that have an external origin include objects in the external world, and damage to one’s body. Internally generated mental states are exemplified by, for example, a chain of thought or reasoning. With the former, we do not have control over what we experience. So I see a tree in front of me, but I cannot change what I see.

Contrariwise, it seems that I do have control over my thoughts. Indeed, the direction of my thoughts will sometimes be informed and guided by an unfolding understanding as I think through some issue. Of course, there will be accompanying neural processes, but it would be highly unreasonable, and I have argued incoherent, to imagine that my thoughts slavishly simply follow this brain activity. Physical processes are blind, undirected and hence, on the face of it, will be no more likely to reach correct conclusions than false ones. And indeed, if my mental activity simply follows physical chains of causes and effects with such chains representing the true causal agency, why would I have any train of thought at all rather than experience merely disconnected mental elements? But regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees that purely physical chains of causes could produce coherent trains of thought, clearly another possibility is that the ability to think is a property of the self/mental substance. In which case, the accompanying neural processes won’t cause the thoughts, rather the thoughts cause the neural processes.

Chapter 7: Descartes's Shadow

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Saying that the soul gives rise to qualia is about as informative as saying that David Copperfield can make his assistant disappear using “magic.”

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Saying that electrons give rise to electrical charge also explains nothing.

Electrons don't give rise to charge, charge is simply a property of electrons? Yes, and so is qualia in relation to souls. A property that might or might not be elicited by external objects.

Even if we subscribe to universal reductionism, the reductive process has to terminate at the most fundamental existents.

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So much for D’Souza's claim that consciousness has nothing to do with brain activity.

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I think this will probably just rest upon what is meant by "nothing to do".

My ability to see the sky has nothing to do with windows.

However, should I be inside a building that's no longer true.