Responses to a materialist

From here.

Philosopher Eric Steinhart has apparently published widely in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of religion. He is interviewed in Michael Sudduth's blog.

the immaterial minds of the dualists, the occultists, and the parapsychologists are fetish objects created as magical protections against the fear of death.

Not quite. It seems that objects we can see and touch are of a radically differing nature to the conscious mind. Not to mention that we are all instinctively dualists, it’s just that many of us are “educated” to reject dualism. And it needs to be pointed out that, of course, dualism does not entail an afterlife. Nor indeed does it entail the existence of ESP. So Steinhart is simply extremely ignorant on this whole subject.

Reincarnation theories usually say the same soul gets repeatedly embodied in different bodies. It seems to require a soul-body or mind-body dualism. Often these dualisms are substance dualisms, so that the soul is made of some kind of immaterial stuff.

A substantial self (or soul if it survives death), is not made of anything. It is simple and fundamental (a bit like electrons in this regard). What is meant by the self being a substance is that we are the same self throughout our lives (and perhaps before and after it too). Our intelligence, interests etc might change, but this has no consequences for our personal identity. This is because intelligence, interests, memories and so on are properties, they are not part of the substance, not part of what makes me me.

[I]t’s hard for me to understand the hostility to materialist theories of mind.

If we define the material world as constituting the quantifiable aspects of reality, then materialism contradicts our direct acquaintance with our own experiences which are, in their essence, qualitative. It's not a hostility, but a weariness in pointing out again and again that the very definition of the material excludes consciousness.

Dualists, and parapsychologists, never formulate mathematically precise theories of immaterial minds or of psychic functioning.

Do scientists who subscribe to materialism formulate mathematically precise theories of material minds? Obviously not since minds are too complex.

 

Mathematically precise theories describe change in the material world. What is meant by applying it to (non-material) minds?

Dualists have produced no useful results at all about immaterial minds.

The same can be said about materialists having produced no useful results about material minds.

There are no technologies based on psychic functioning. Dualism hasn’t led to treatments for mental illnesses. Dualism is a purely negative theory of what it means to be human.

No technologies are based on materialism either. Technology is the result of science and that science would work equally well no matter what our stance is on the mind-body problem. Fundamental science, indeed, leaves out the mind and consciousness in its description of reality.