Ur-Platonism, Naturalism, and Atheism

[Quid est Veritas?]

So I finally got around to reading Barfield's essay, "The Harp and the Camera." Fascinating! Granted, Jung has bequeathed to us a vision of the archetypal, but I've never seen the two ideas juxtaposed in such a way (archetype/signature; harp/camera). It is also an interesting fact that the camera has prevailed given the intense focus on self and the individual in the modern West. I am going to read a few other essays in The Rediscovery of Meaning.

There are some fascinating essays there, though he has a distressing tendency to bring in Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, which I sometimes find disquieting. I like Barfield, and a lot he says I agree with, but he is like that one friend you don't want your other friends to meet, sometimes. Saving the Appearances is also fascinating, but with the same caveat. He is at his best when discussing language and poetics.

 

[Jok]

The logical conclusion of materialism is atheism, so if someone believes in their heart that materialism is true, then any religious conditioning is going to eventually fall away. It will probably be an unpleasant process, but you're going to end up with a lot of cognitive dissonance if you're simultaneously trying to be a materialist and a theist.

I think the really complicated, really interesting question is why materialism is the cultural default these days. Because I definitely think it is.

This seems like it should be so simple and so obvious. But it’s not, and in my mind I quickly scanned like 30 situations in my life where I witnessed a person go through a slow & unpleasant religious death because they were built on a foundation stone of materialism. Very cool observation!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

This seems like it should be so simple and so obvious. But it’s not, and in my mind I quickly scanned like 30 situations in my life where I witnessed a person go through a slow & unpleasant religious death because they were built on a foundation stone of materialism. Very cool observation!

To my mind, much of the supposed default to Materialism among folks is founded upon empirical expectations. And when those expectations don't "materialize," well then, POOF! Instant atheist!

Of course, I'm a materialist of sorts myself, but I also eschew Strong and even Moderate Foundationalism as epistemological frameworks, and I lean more toward the Rationalist camp in my Existentialism (but again, without going all Cartesian about it.)

 

[Jok]

To my mind, much of the supposed default to Materialism among folks is founded upon empirical expectations. And when those expectations don't "materialize," well then, POOF! Instant atheist!

From what I’ve seen it seems very common for people to get pulled into materialism without even thinking about metaphysics at all, instead they just say to themselves that they have never seen a miracle bend the laws of nature so therefore materialism is true.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

From what I’ve seen it seems very common for people to get pulled into materialism without even thinking about metaphysics at all, instead they just say to themselves that they have never seen a miracle bend the laws of nature so therefore materialism is true.

And that would stem perhaps from the fact that maybe (just maybe) those particular folks to whom you refer are familiar with the various forms of materialism one could theoretically subscribe to. I mean, there is such a thing even as "Christian Materialism," which isn't exactly one and the same with more specious ideas like "Christian Atheism."

No, I think the problem for many who deign to ponder the seeming wacka-doodle-ness of the Christian faith is a lack of education in the realm of Epistemology (and Hermeneutics), among other things.

 

[Jok]

I mean, there is such a thing even as "Christian Materialism," which isn't exactly one and the same with more specious ideas like "Christian Atheism."

Christian Atheism?

 

[Silmarien]

To my mind, much of the supposed default to Materialism among folks is founded upon empirical expectations. And when those expectations don't "materialize," well then, POOF! Instant atheist!

Of course, I'm a materialist of sorts myself, but I also eschew Strong and even Moderate Foundationalism as epistemological frameworks, and I lean more toward the Rationalist camp in my Existentialism (but again, without going all Cartesian about it.)

I can't imagine you being a materialist in the true sense of the word, Philo! We do need to distinguish between materialism as an ontology and materialism as philosophy of mind. When it comes to mind, I am... not quite a materialist, since I've got a bit of a Scotist haecceity thing going on, but probably closer to one than anything else. Though I need to wrap my head around the Aristotelian theories more. I feel like a materialistic theory of mind works perfectly fine with theism, since you actually can just say, "It shouldn't work, but it does, because it's a divine miracle."

 

[Jok]

We do need to distinguish between materialism as an ontology and materialism as philosophy of mind.

Yes. But I also think that the two can complement each other for having an opinion on materialism being true in general. An intuitive piece of knowledge is that I am me, you are you, Philo is Philo, Zippy is Zippy, etc., people are all distinctly “Them.” But our brain matter is all generic matter that is basically coming from identical storage bins in the “Human brain matter warehouse.” We can even exchange brain matter with each other if we had a skilled enough brain surgeon, and when we leave the operating room I will still be me and you will still be you.

So if ontological materialism is true why would identical brain materials be producing distinct personalities/people each & every time someone is born? There is a distinction going on that is non-material.

I feel like a materialistic theory of mind works perfectly fine with theism, since you actually can just say, "It shouldn't work, but it does, because it's a divine miracle."

Not only is it hard to see why it would work, but also hard to see why we are all different people. In addition to swapping brain matter with each other also think about repairing brain tissue with microchips and stuff. Again I am still me when I leave the operating room, I’m not C3PO when I leave lol

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I think the reason why materialism is the default today, is because of the idiom, the metaphor, we use to describe reality.

Metaphors have a tenor and a vehicle: As in sausage dog, the vehicle is a sausage, and the tenor is the implied value that it shares with the dog. Ever since the Enlightenment and perhaps a bit earlier from Descartes, we have mostly used a mechanical metaphor - even Christians like Paley with his watch use them - and Industrialisation accelerated it. We talk about the function or mechanism of something; we call the heart a pump; we say something is systematic. The vehicle is obviously derived from machines, and the tenor is clear.

But now we reverse the metaphor, and confuse tenor for vehicle, as if a dog was really a sausage. The heart is not really a pump, say, and the most notable example of recent years is the brain. We first used the metaphor of our 'thinking' and 'learning' to describe what a computer does - now it is taken for granted this is what is happening, and we reverse the process to treat our brain as a computer, albeit a living organic one. Our metaphor is running amok, and because people no longer realise they are metaphors, they assume it a real value - the vehicle is disappearing, leaving only the tenor (such as happened with other metaphors like understand, literally to stand underneath something; or disappoint, literally to not be picked). If all your language is to describe things mechanistically, as in the rotation of the sun (from a wheel) or so, is it any surprise people assume a clockwork universe? All you need is introduce automaticity, to remove the Prime Mover or Watchmaker, and there you go.

@Jok with the brain, this connecting it to chips and transplanting bits of it, is also mechanical metaphor. The brain does not use circuitry, but axonal impulses are one way depolarisations across nerve membranes. It is electro-chemical, but it certainly is not amenable to computers - which at heart are merely 1s and 0s in multiples of circuits being on or off. A brain-machine interface would of necessity be a stimulus that the brain somehow receives therefore, a changeover of type of activity would have to occur at the quick. Integration of brain and computer is quite implausible actually, but people think it reasonable because of our metaphor. Just how we pretend computers think or learn, when really they are running programmed functions or algorithms that are mere extensions of such programming, which by repetition can attempt to achieve a desired programmed end-point by various mechanisms, and we can then judge which most closely aligned with the goal. Now we are facing an increasimg belief that algorithms will save us, that computer simulations will 'learn' the best way - and it is more and more being implemented, a blind mechanism enforced onto organic reality, in a macabre reversal of metaphor like the Saracen Head in Hideous Strength.

The brain is an organ, and people forget that organ and organic means something that is separate but cannot be removed from the whole. It is interconnected with the rest, and the brain both acts on, and in turn is influenced by, every other organ system. We are not just our brains riding around a meat car, which is just further mechanical metaphor confusion, but the organic whole. How that whole is related to mind, is another problem, but more than just the nervous system is at play here. Personally, I do not think the mind/body problem is reducible to either side, and computer chips or so won't change this - as functionally we already have a brain interface with cochlear implants for hearing loss, and no diminishment of person is brought thereby, quite the opposite.

Basically I feel we are being silly, and it is this felt alienation of mind from matter that causes this. The mind is of matter, surely, as the neural correlates for consciousness seem to say, but it is also not. Those 'parts' cannot be readily divided, nor do I think they can really be (hence the idea that we receive glorified bodies at the Parousia makes exquisite sense), so I think we have something akin to the Incarnation - to borrow the metaphor, something fully spiritual and fully material, indivisible hypostasis.

 

[Jok]

I think the reason why materialism is the default today, is because of the idiom, the metaphor, we use to describe reality.

Metaphors have a tenor and a vehicle: As in sausage dog, the vehicle is a sausage, and the tenor is the implied value that it shares with the dog. Ever since the Enlightenment and perhaps a bit earlier from Descartes, we have mostly used a mechanical metaphor - even Christians like Paley with his watch use them - and Industrialisation accelerated it. We talk about the function or mechanism of something; we call the heart a pump; we say something is systematic. The vehicle is obviously derived from machines, and the tenor is clear.

But now we reverse the metaphor, and confuse tenor for vehicle, as if a dog was really a sausage. The heart is not really a pump, say, and the most notable example of recent years is the brain. We first used the metaphor of our 'thinking' and 'learning' to describe what a computer does - now it is taken for granted this is what is happening, and we reverse the process to treat our brain as a computer, albeit a living organic one. Our metaphor is running amok, and because people no longer realise they are metaphors, they assume it a real value - the vehicle is disappearing, leaving only the tenor (such as happened with other metaphors like understand, literally to stand underneath something; or disappoint, literally to not be picked). If all your language is to describe things mechanistically, as in the rotation of the sun (from a wheel) or so, is it any surprise people assume a clockwork universe? All you need is introduce automaticity, to remove the Prime Mover or Watchmaker, and there you go.

This is a great observation, it’s so true now that I think about it.

We first used the metaphor of our 'thinking' and 'learning' to describe what a computer does - now it is taken for granted this is what is happening, and we reverse the process to treat our brain as a computer

I have been guilty of this example especially! I have called the brain the most advanced computer in the world like 1000 times. Although I have definitely had a large amount of people in my life drive this concept into me, and at the time it never really felt like something that should have been objected to.

The brain is an organ, and people forget that organ and organic means something that is separate but cannot be removed from the whole. It is interconnected with the rest, and the brain both acts on, and in turn is influenced by, every other organ system.

It’s a funny coincidence that just today a program was on that was talking about gut bacteria and mental clarity.

We are not just our brains riding around a meat car, which is just further mechanical metaphor confusion, but the organic whole. How that whole is related to mind, is another problem, but more than just the nervous system is at play here. Personally, I do not think the mind/body problem is reducible to either side

I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but I do think that some people over simplify it (I believe in Dual-attribute theory), I don’t believe that the “Mind” can somehow just pop out of our body after death and be coherent. However I do believe that the mind is a non-physical essence that is dormant and useless unless attached to a physical body. Because if you damage your brain your logical self can definitely become idiotic/incoherent. I believe there is a very sensitive and very complicated interaction between mind & body, that they are both useless without each other, yet they are both distinct. Do you believe that the mind has a separate existence that is distinct from the fully organic human body?

I even have some radical beliefs that we all have a unique essence/mind that is dormant if it’s not fused into a body, and if you somehow fused my mind into the body of a dog my general temperament would shine through albeit minus a lot of the higher cognitive abilities that I currently have including self awareness. My essence would live as a lower level organism.

In the other direction if you somehow fused my essence to Einstein’s body I would enjoy a cognitive boost of comprehension, yet my personality would still just be me (as a dog my personality would not fully emerge, but I think that beyond a minimal brain IQ requirement my personality would fully emerge, and from there if you added a more powerful IQ to my essence/mind it would not change my personality, just my cognitive abilities). However this is just hypothetical, I don’t think that God will ever place human essences into dogs or something like that.

The mind is of matter, surely, as the neural correlates for consciousness seem to say, but it is also not. Those 'parts' cannot be readily divided, nor do I think they can really be (hence the idea that we receive glorified bodies at the Parousia makes exquisite sense), so I think we have something akin to the Incarnation - to borrow the metaphor, something fully spiritual and fully material, indivisible hypostasis.

It sounds like you are describing a type of dual attribute theory, although I suppose the lines could be blurred if one were to believe that the death of your body was also temporary death of your essence as well, and unless God “Reboots” your dormant essence into another body it remains dead. In other words your essence could never be “Floating outside of” a body.

I’m not so much interested in a non-physical essence that could reside outside of our dead body just for the sake of it existing outside of our body, I am interested in an essence that is non-bodily that could command certain causal events of mechanical motion to take place in our bodies. So that most of our bodily processes like a heartbeat would be automated, however if I choose to raise my right arm I need an essence that’s distinct from my body’s automated cause/effect structure. Something that commands the initial firing of certain neurons in my body for everyday free will decision making, yet an essence that is not part of that physical body (because then it would just be at the mercy of the automation of the body). Free will essences that God allows to reside at the level of our physical bodies. God allows us to be the captain of our own ships/bodies. But to be the captain of our ships our minds need to be outside of the physical causal chain of events.

 

[FireDragon76]

Yes. But I also think that the two can complement each other for having an opinion on materialism being true in general. An intuitive piece of knowledge is that I am me, you are you, Philo is Philo, Zippy is Zippy, etc., people are all distinctly “Them.” But our brain matter is all generic matter that is basically coming from identical storage bins in the “Human brain matter warehouse.” We can even exchange brain matter with each other if we had a skilled enough brain surgeon, and when we leave the operating room I will still be me and you will still be you.

So if ontological materialism is true why would identical brain materials be producing distinct personalities/people each & every time someone is born? There is a distinction going on that is non-material.

Not only is it hard to see why it would work, but also hard to see why we are all different people. In addition to swapping brain matter with each other also think about repairing brain tissue with microchips and stuff. Again I am still me when I leave the operating room, I’m not C3PO when I leave lol

There is also the possibility that these distinctions are not ultimately real, but only conventions.

 

[FireDragon76]

I think the reason why materialism is the default today, is because of the idiom, the metaphor, we use to describe reality.

Metaphors have a tenor and a vehicle: As in sausage dog, the vehicle is a sausage, and the tenor is the implied value that it shares with the dog. Ever since the Enlightenment and perhaps a bit earlier from Descartes, we have mostly used a mechanical metaphor - even Christians like Paley with his watch use them - and Industrialisation accelerated it. We talk about the function or mechanism of something; we call the heart a pump; we say something is systematic. The vehicle is obviously derived from machines, and the tenor is clear.

But now we reverse the metaphor, and confuse tenor for vehicle, as if a dog was really a sausage. The heart is not really a pump, say, and the most notable example of recent years is the brain. We first used the metaphor of our 'thinking' and 'learning' to describe what a computer does - now it is taken for granted this is what is happening, and we reverse the process to treat our brain as a computer, albeit a living organic one. Our metaphor is running amok, and because people no longer realise they are metaphors, they assume it a real value - the vehicle is disappearing, leaving only the tenor (such as happened with other metaphors like understand, literally to stand underneath something; or disappoint, literally to not be picked). If all your language is to describe things mechanistically, as in the rotation of the sun (from a wheel) or so, is it any surprise people assume a clockwork universe? All you need is introduce automaticity, to remove the Prime Mover or Watchmaker, and there you go.

@Jok with the brain, this connecting it to chips and transplanting bits of it, is also mechanical metaphor. The brain does not use circuitry, but axonal impulses are one way depolarisations across nerve membranes. It is electro-chemical, but it certainly is not amenable to computers - which at heart are merely 1s and 0s in multiples of circuits being on or off. A brain-machine interface would of necessity be a stimulus that the brain somehow receives therefore, a changeover of type of activity would have to occur at the quick. Integration of brain and computer is quite implausible actually, but people think it reasonable because of our metaphor. Just how we pretend computers think or learn, when really they are running programmed functions or algorithms that are mere extensions of such programming, which by repetition can attempt to achieve a desired programmed end-point by various mechanisms, and we can then judge which most closely aligned with the goal. Now we are facing an increasimg belief that algorithms will save us, that computer simulations will 'learn' the best way - and it is more and more being implemented, a blind mechanism enforced onto organic reality, in a macabre reversal of metaphor like the Saracen Head in Hideous Strength.

The brain is an organ, and people forget that organ and organic means something that is separate but cannot be removed from the whole. It is interconnected with the rest, and the brain both acts on, and in turn is influenced by, every other organ system. We are not just our brains riding around a meat car, which is just further mechanical metaphor confusion, but the organic whole. How that whole is related to mind, is another problem, but more than just the nervous system is at play here. Personally, I do not think the mind/body problem is reducible to either side, and computer chips or so won't change this - as functionally we already have a brain interface with cochlear implants for hearing loss, and no diminishment of person is brought thereby, quite the opposite.

Basically I feel we are being silly, and it is this felt alienation of mind from matter that causes this. The mind is of matter, surely, as the neural correlates for consciousness seem to say, but it is also not. Those 'parts' cannot be readily divided, nor do I think they can really be (hence the idea that we receive glorified bodies at the Parousia makes exquisite sense), so I think we have something akin to the Incarnation - to borrow the metaphor, something fully spiritual and fully material, indivisible hypostasis.

Here's the problem: what sauces the goose sauces the gander. Theism is just as much about the "tenor" as you put it, as materialism was. Ancient Near Easterners drew from their patriarchal society to describe what they thought of as ultimate reality. And Christians have been doing the same ever since.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

This is a great observation, it’s so true now that I think about it.

I have been guilty of this example especially! I have called the brain the most advanced computer in the world like 1000 times. Although I have definitely had a large amount of people in my life drive this concept into me, and at the time it never really felt like something that should have been objected to.

It’s a funny coincidence that just today a program was on that was talking about gut bacteria and mental clarity.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but I do think that some people over simplify it (I believe in Dual-attribute theory), I don’t believe that the “Mind” can somehow just pop out of our body after death and be coherent. However I do believe that the mind is a non-physical essence that is dormant and useless unless attached to a physical body. Because if you damage your brain your logical self can definitely become idiotic/incoherent. I believe there is a very sensitive and very complicated interaction between mind & body, that they are both useless without each other, yet they are both distinct. Do you believe that the mind has a separate existence that is distinct from the fully organic human body?

I even have some radical beliefs that we all have a unique essence/mind that is dormant if it’s not fused into a body, and if you somehow fused my mind into the body of a dog my general temperament would shine through albeit minus a lot of the higher cognitive abilities that I currently have including self awareness. My essence would live as a lower level organism.

In the other direction if you somehow fused my essence to Einstein’s body I would enjoy a cognitive boost of comprehension, yet my personality would still just be me (as a dog my personality would not fully emerge, but I think that beyond a minimal brain IQ requirement my personality would fully emerge, and from there if you added a more powerful IQ to my essence/mind it would not change my personality, just my cognitive abilities). However this is just hypothetical, I don’t think that God will ever place human essences into dogs or something like that.

It sounds like you are describing a type of dual attribute theory, although I suppose the lines could be blurred if one were to believe that the death of your body was also temporary death of your essence as well, and unless God “Reboots” your dormant essence into another body it remains dead. In other words your essence could never be “Floating outside of” a body.

I’m not so much interested in a non-physical essence that could reside outside of our dead body just for the sake of it existing outside of our body, I am interested in an essence that is non-bodily that could command certain causal events of mechanical motion to take place in our bodies. So that most of our bodily processes like a heartbeat would be automated, however if I choose to raise my right arm I need an essence that’s distinct from my body’s automated cause/effect structure. Something that commands the initial firing of certain neurons in my body for everyday free will decision making, yet an essence that is not part of that physical body (because then it would just be at the mercy of the automation of the body). Free will essences that God allows to reside at the level of our physical bodies. God allows us to be the captain of our own ships/bodies. But to be the captain of our ships our minds need to be outside of the physical causal chain of events.

Obviously we don't really know. What I mean by reducing the mind/body problem to either side, is that a full idealism or materialism are both inconsistent. The mind as an emergent property of matter is merely an unshowable excuse that implies determinism; and Idealism largely runs counter to our innate perception. So some sort of ongoing friction between both makes more sense to me. I was explicit to reference it to the Incarnation, because I do not think these are merely aspects of a single essence or modes or such - so not Sabellianism or Monophysitism, to further extend the metaphor. I am partial to the idea that if examining the mind aspect then the matter cannot be determined, and vice versa, almost as in Quantum theory you cannot determine both the velocity and position concurrently. But further from this field, the necessity and interdependance of observer and observation, for if you don't perceive, or at least something doesn't, what evidence do we have something can exist?

Why must something separate command your neurons? In like manner, why must it be merely the internal neuronal mechanism? I don't see a necessity for a must here. Jesus is both God and Man, but can a man really contain God? To further borrow from Quantum theory, why can't the Cat be both dead and alive? The Bible seems to imply a body, soul and spirit; or nephesh both living and dead with the ruach in the OT; so some sort of composite existence, indivisible in that the unitary existence needs the totality, but the individual aspects don't seem to exist fully without one another, seems to me to be implied - with somesort of interface with ultimate Reality, as the Dead-in-Christ. But of course, I am merely speculating beyond my initial rejection of the reduction of the mind/body problem. Perhaps this is a way we are made in the image of God though, that the Incarnation is writ large the lesser miracle of our own nature.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Here's the problem: what sauces the goose sauces the gander. Theism is just as much about the "tenor" as you put it, as materialism was. Ancient Near Easterners drew from their patriarchal society to describe what they thought of as ultimate reality. And Christians have been doing the same ever since.

What problem? All human language is couched of necessity in metaphor. That a metaphor was used is inevitable. Even words like courage or gravity or person hide metaphors underneath; whose vehicles are often opaque, buried in history or adopted from other languages merely in their tenor senses.

The question is do we realise they are metaphors? Does anyone believe God is their physical father? Well, maybe Mormons, but certainly not Christianity. Do we really believe the Holy Spirit is a form of fire? Are we sons of God in the sense we think of Jesus, as Son of God? Is the latter not even clearly a metaphor in Jesus' case?

This is different though. People do believe the brain is a form of computer, the heart a pump, the universe having mechanism running down, etc. They may have not stopped to give it much thought, but this is clearly the implication of much of our discourse.

In Medicine, you naturally fall into a mechanical metaphor - something gumming up the works, or a function is impeded in more latinate terms; or the military metaphor - of fighting off an infection. This can often impede understanding after a certain point, and in fact, there is evidence that these specific metaphors actually can do harm, in worse pain scores and such. The metaphor we use, and how valid we feel them to be - even if only subliminally - really matters. However, no communication is possible without metaphors, as you strip away language you find metaphor upon metaphor. Christianity with its Father, Son and Holy Ghost is rich in metaphor, but at heart we know this is an attempt to describe the indescribable. Ideally you should learn that early, once you realise God doesn't necessarily have a physical right hand for Jesus to sit next to - barring Mormonism again, which sometimes seems the same sort of metaphorical confusion, I agree. Sometimes our metaphors can trip us up, and I don't think anyone is fully immune of this.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I can't imagine you being a materialist in the true sense of the word, Philo!

Oh, I can imagine it....but only in a John Lennon kind of way (...or maybe even in a Vladamir Lenin kind of way). But if I did so, I'd have to concede to you that my materialism would just be "in" my imagination.

But seriously, now. Have I ever said I was a Materialist? I know I've said that I am 'methodologically,' but everybody knows that identifying with materialism in a methodological way doesn't really say very much at all ontologically speaking, nor does it require anyone to place any ontological eggs into any one specific basket of commitment.

We do need to distinguish between materialism as an ontology and materialism as philosophy of mind. When it comes to mind, I am... not quite a materialist, since I've got a bit of a Scotist haecceity thing going on, but probably closer to one than anything else. Though I need to wrap my head around the Aristotelian theories more. I feel like a materialistic theory of mind works perfectly fine with theism, since you actually can just say, "It shouldn't work, but it does, because it's a divine miracle."

And that's what I've always liked about you. You seem to me to be the perennial optimist where the role of the Greek philosophers is concerned. Sometimes I'll admit that I wish I could wrap my mind around them, but when I attempt to do so, I always have some kind of materialist knee-jerk reaction. The strange thing for me in saying this this is that even Pascal and Kierkegaard apparently saw some use for the Greek praxis of analysis (mostly that of Socrates/Plato, I guess), but even though that is the case, I struggle with appropriating much of it in my own thinking. So, being that that's the case with me, maybe it's partly why I like to grapple with the Hiddenness of God issue so much.

Of course, then again, I have moments where I think (however mistakenly maybe) that I DO see the Devil in the details, even if not under every rock. So, there is a strange inconsistency operating in my brain somewhere; I can't detect God, but it seems I can detect the Devil. (Hmmmmmm........ . Weird! )

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Christian Atheism?

View attachment 283495

Yep, it be a thang! Of course, it's not my thang.

 

[Jok]

Obviously we don't really know. What I mean by reducing the mind/body problem to either side, is that a full idealism or materialism are both inconsistent.

I think so too.

The mind as an emergent property of matter is merely an unshowable excuse that implies determinism; and Idealism largely runs counter to our innate perception.

I like the word emerge because it makes me think of all the things that must go right, and all the things that can’t go wrong, in order for a large brained mammal to result in a personality coming forth. But I do not believe in the epiphenomenalism version of emergence that denies causal power to that which emerges. I think body & mind both have causal power on each other.

I was explicit to reference it to the Incarnation, because I do not think these are merely aspects of a single essence or modes or such - so not Sabellianism or Monophysitism,

Oh every time I said essence in that post I meant the essence of me and you, not of God

I am partial to the idea that if examining the mind aspect then the matter cannot be determined, and vice versa,

That’s a good way to say it.

Why must something separate command your neurons?

I’m more so just thinking backwards. It’s not so much that I start out saying that mind MUST be separate, so it MUST work like this... Rather, for certain reasons I believe that mind is separate, and then I think about the puzzle of how it works under that assumption (and I’m also probably lazy with how I’m throwing around the word must).

I like to just say or ask people “What do you think causes the first physical domino to fall for the sequence of me deciding to raise my right arm?” And if we just call the first domino Neuron #1, then it’s just easy for me to visualize my non-physical essence exerting some sort of influence on physical Neuron #1 to cause it to fire. A way to think about it would be a person with Parkinson’s Disease can’t stop his right hand from twitching, he decides to voluntarily mimic the exact motions of his right hand with his left hand. We can oversimplify it and say that step 1 of his right hand twitches always begins with neuron #16, and step 1 for his left hand always begins with neuron #32. Neuron #16 is firing automatically like a heartbeat, but his “Mind” keeps imposing the first domino of neuron #32 to fall/fire. If neuron #32 is the physical domino #1 then it’s hard for me to think of the mind also being physical. Neuron #16 and #32 are like mirror images of each other, physically a materialist who was observing both causal chains would be forced to conclude that the same thing was happening. But it’s not the same thing, the right hand is twitching automatically and the left hand voluntarily.

In like manner, why must it be merely the internal neuronal mechanism? I don't see a necessity for a must here.

I find it more plausible is what I should have said.

To further borrow from Quantum theory, why can't the Cat be both dead and alive?

Oh did you just request my favorite GIF?

Lol

The Bible seems to imply a body, soul and spirit; or nephesh both living and dead with the ruach in the OT; so some sort of composite existence, indivisible in that the unitary existence needs the totality

When I think about the puzzle from any side it is as you say, it runs into problems of inconsistencies. The materialists only find consistency because they write off any side that isn’t physical matter as illusory. But what happens when there is no observable difference between the right & left hand movements of the man with Parkinson’s Disease? To me it seems like you either have to call the man’s internal experience of the clear distinction between the two states as being a false illusion, or you would have to look at mind as a non-material causal agent.

 

[Jok]

There is also the possibility that these distinctions are not ultimately real, but only conventions.

I definitely realize that certain conventions are irrelevant depending on context, such as doing a land survey and one tenth of the land lies across a state border. If the survey was geological the distinction would be meaningless, but if the survey was about voting districts it would become relevant. It would be a pretty tough pill for me to swallow to say that people are not different, or that that factor isn’t a relevant consideration when thinking about how we all have common brain tissue.

 

[Jok]

Hi @Quid est Veritas?
I just happened to have stumbled across this thread (unfortunately just an OP that got no replies) and it looked interesting and very related to what we were talking about so I just thought that I would tag you with the link. Unfortunately the paper in the link at the bottom of his OP isn’t working but I will try to track it down.

Wigner's friend, the immaterial soul and the death of materialism

I get the gist of what it is saying, but it’s tough for me to visualize the exact setup. You probably already knew this with your passing reference to Schrodinger’s Cat, but quantum mechanics is pretty cryptic for me, I didn’t realize that some physical/mathematical reality can instantly become altered if I simply gain knowledge about it from some far off remote location (if I’m interpreting it right). I have heard Schrodinger’s Cat mentioned a few times in passing but I never understood what people were trying to say (maybe it was always poorly explained to me), I never realized that they were saying that nothing more than a remote mental thought from a person’s conscious mind could kill the cat.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

@Jok

First thing to realise, is that no one understands quantum mechanics, as the physicist Richard Feynman observed - including physicists.

It is also important to realise what Schrodinger's Cat is. It is an illustration of the principle of entanglement and quantum superposition. Obviously it makes no sense in day to day life for a cat to be both dead and alive. That was Schrodinger's intention, to point out how weird and frankly absurd it would be. Now we have embraced it, graced it with the stamp of authority as Science, and extrapolate from it to day to day life - this is very much the opposite of what Schrodinger wanted.

It is important to remember that fundamentally we know all our science is 'wrong' in some way. Quantum theory and Relativity theory are incompatible, hence they are seeking for a way to reconcile them, or a new Theory of Everything. Science is not straight-up epistemology, though it is often treated like it; as the goal is to Save the Appearances, to craft an hypothesis that best fits the observed empiric phenomena. You may assume Empiricism as your touchstone of Epistemology, and thereby bring Science in tow, but Science itself is nothing but a bystander in that fight, though often pushed to the fore to hide behind.

Anyway, so using quantum entanglement as a proof of the soul is a bit dubious to me. It is true that modern science holds that objective observation is impossible, and as the observer impacts the observation, that there is a dynamic between them that impacts the whole system. This means that the observer alters the observation, so if the observer is changed, so would the finding. For instance: A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

So perhaps different people seeing the same thing, see different results, thus killing intersubjectivity to some extent - the bedrock of Empiricism, actually.

I disagree with this person's post in that OP, but I am not going to resurrect his thread that he never himself returned to. I am sympathetic though. I have long argued that we cannot think something can exist without being observed, as we have no evidence that anything exists unobserved - we only know something is there once observed. I made a thread on it once:

Reality as Construct

There is much truth to the need for Mind to observe reality, for such a reality to have structure. After all, for something to exist means to differentiate something from something else, otherwise there is just monism, and that requires Mind. To return to Schrodinger, Something must know the Cat's status to maintain the idea that an intersubjective truth exists, otherwise the Cat can be both Dead and Alive to one observer, but merely Alive to the other that has opened the box. Without that, you have cut the roots of meaning to some extent.

I am not a scientist though, but a doctor, so bear that in mind. I don't fully grasp all the implications of quantum mechanics, but I am confident few, if any, do. There was an interesting book I read a while ago: Starting Science from God: Rational Scientific Theories from Theism, by physicist Ian Thompson. I would be lying if I said I understood it all, but the gist certainly has a lot to do with the need for an Observer.

I am rambling, but I hope you understand what I am saying. I found his article that the poster you referenced linked though, too. I hope this one works for you, otherwise I'll copy and paste it here. Just let me know:

The Migrant Mind: Quantum Soul