This will be my final response to @JAL, who is not responding to my posts in a coherent and meaningful fashion. The following represents my final remarks on his responses.
Sorry, this nit-picking critique of my terminology is shallow.
Notwithstanding his opinion to the contrary, if equivocation is an informal fallacy—and it is—then seeking careful precision with terminology is not "nit-picking." And calling out cases of equivocation is just disciplined rational argumentation. (For example, if the soul is "divinely hidden from human instruments of detection," then it is incoherent to say that it's "tangibly material." Or if a rock "has no awareness of pain, sensory experience, or cognition" then it is incoherent to say that it's "sentient.")
Also I suspect you aren't familiar with my cosmogony summarized ... [in] another thread.
It should be expected that a discussion would be based upon and relevant to the material within that discussion. Since his cosmogony was not included in this discussion, it was not considered.
Why do you find "negligibly sentient" a confusing term?
I had already explained that, and he didn't interact with my explanation. Instead, he pretended I didn't give one and acted perplexed.
Consider a man stuck in minimal brain activity, hooked up to a life-support machine. The family terminates life support because he is negligibly sentient.
Incorrect. As most people understand, they terminate life support because he's been in a
permanent vegatative state for
several months with
no expectation of recovery (these are terms relevant to diagnosis and prognosis). "Negligibly sentient" is not a medical term but a neologism which I think this gentleman invented. (And on his view the hospital equipment is also negligibly sentient, so it's not even a useful term.)
Or consider pro-abortion philosophy. The argument is that a zygote is negligibly sentient.
Again, incorrect. The argument is that a zygote is not a human person (a position with which I strongly disagree). I suspect there are zero abortion advocates who use this neologism he probably invented.
A rock is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less sentient than these two examples ...
Incorrect. A rock is not sentient whatsoever, as it does not have the capacity to experience feelings and sensations (which require natural neural structures).
More than that, in my view God is determined to PREVENT the rock from achieving significant sentience ...
Apparently, this fellow thinks that a rock could achieve sentience if God didn't actively prevent it. That's sort of out there, but whatever.
... because [God] has purposed most of the matter in this universe to serve as machinery.
That's some interesting Enlightment-era theology there but ultimately irrelevant to the discussion we were having.
You're saying that I should apply the same term "soul" to both machinery (such as the body) on the one hand and the sentient inner man on the other.
Unsurprising, he is wrong again. I never said he should do that. I was simply decribing what I learned is the biblical view of man, that he is a holistic unit—he doesn't HAVE a soul but rather IS a soul, which includes his body and mind, yes. That's just what holistic means (comprehending the parts "as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole"). And I cited evidence for this view, none of which he interacted with.
His view is different—very, very different—and he is entitled to it. There is no expectation of him adopting mine or conforming his to mine. He can be a substance dualist if he wishes, the machinery (body) and the sentient inner man (mind). That would just be more inconsistency in a view that is already remarkably inconsistent (much of which I had already exposed and he did not address). It also smacks of ancient Greek anthropology, but that's typical within Christianity.
And you claim this conflation would make my ontology more clear?
Obviously not, since his view and mine are so radically different. It wouldn't help anyone for him to mash his view and mine together. But, again, I never said he should. That was something he made up to give himself something to criticize, as if I hadn't given him plenty of material to interact with.
Newsflash: Blurring and abolishing vital distinctions doesn't help surface them and clarify them, it only obfuscates them.
He is unironically projecting here, given his blurring any distinctions between alive, sentient, and soul (which I brought up and he never addressed). That's the obfuscation I was trying to highlight in my response to him, but here he fabricates a straw man in order to spin it around on me.
And just because you dislike my terminology, please don't falsely accuse me of a contradiction.
I never said anything about liking or disliking his terminology. I critically scrutinized it to expose his own inconsistencies and contradictions (which rubs him the wrong way because he proudly esteems his view as the only one that is genuinely plausible, consistent, and explanatory). If there was a flaw in my critical scrutiny, why wouldn't he just point out the flaw? I made it super easy to do.
For example, I said his view could be expressed thus: "All matter in the universe (apart from souls) is sentient to one degree or another, including the human body—but only the human soul is fully sentient." This eliminates as much as possible any equivocations, obfuscations, and confusions, yet states his view clearly, concisely, and accurately (I think). Where is the flaw?
(Again, if the terms alive and sentient are basically interchangeable, and if the term alive is essentially meaningless apart from sentience, then the latter is the most relevant term and the former can be ditched.)
Amazing. How is that a contradiction? Do you NOT understand the word "practical" here?
I do understand that word, of course, which is why I suggested its elimination. A rock is not dead "for all practical purposes," it is dead simpliciter. A rock is not "many orders of magnitude less sensible" than an anesthetized human, it is insensible simplicter. But his aversion to plainly stating that rocks are dead makes sense, for it would contradict his assertion that they're alive. And he can't say that rocks are insensible, for that would contradict his assertion that they're sentient. However, his aversion to plainly stating that rocks are alive and sentient also makes sense, for these terms relate to biology and rocks do not. Thus, he needs to equivocate and side-step in order to avoid close examination. (In other words, the flaw in my articulation of his view is precisely that it was clear and concise. We can't have that.)
On my view, one can assert with consistency and confidence that rocks are dead and lack any sentience, an assertion that seems to correspond with observed reality.
Death is a highly unconscious state.
Here we have more ambiguity. A person is fully unconscious (e.g., coma) when he is unable to respond to stimuli—can't follow instructions, no speech or other forms of communication, no purposeful movement. Now, obviously all of that is true of a dead person, too, so there is a need to
distinguish between fully unconscious and dead.
Contrary to his ideas, death is not a state of unconsciousness, it is the complete absence of brain function (electroactivity). If there is some brain activity, you are unconscious but not dead. If there is no activity, you are dead, not unconscious.
There are degrees of ... unconsciousness.
That's true. There are five stages, in fact—and none of them are death.
Thus, "dead as a rock" is a relative expression, ...
But not a helpful one because on his view rocks are not dead. On his view, all matter in the universe is alive, more or less (i.e., rocks less so than humans).
Your EITHER-OR attitude is garbage (EITHER dead OR alive, EITHER conscious OR unconscious).
Here he either tosses logic completely out the window or badly misunderstood my position. Two fundamental principles of logic are the laws of non-contradiction
¬(P∧¬P) and excluded middle
P∨¬P, a completely either/or attitude, to be sure. That being said, my position is that a rock is either dead (P) or not dead (¬P). It is strictly binary. There is no third option, no intermediate between contradictories (that's what "excluded middle" means).
You said, "Either something is alive or it is not." And yet today, if a person passes out, you'd call him unconscious.
I would not call him dead, however. Again, he is either alive or not. If there is some brain activity, then he is alive.
You are not insisting that he is COMPLETELY unconscious—there may be some brain activity.
There is always some brain activity in a COMPLETELY unconscious person.
If there is no brain activity,
the person is no longer unconscious but dead (brain death).
Relative to a normal person, the man who is passed out is unconscious.
But he is not dead.
People would TOTALLY misunderstand me if I took your advice and said, "The whole universe is alive." They'd think I'm some kind of pantheist.
There is no reason to think someone would think he is a pantheist, for his statement asserts nothing about deity. There is no necessary or inherent connection between "the universe is alive" and "the universe is God."
Nevertheless, as the reader might recall, that is precisely what he said: "My monistic materialism regards all matter as alive/sentient." My advice was simply (a) that he have the courage of his convictions to state clearly, concisely, and consistently what he means, and I provided examples, and (b) to eliminate the contradictions and confusions that plague his view, such as "tangibly material" souls that are "hidden from human instruments of detection" (wherein tangible means perceptible by touch).
The universe, in my view, is dead as a rock ...
And here is another contradiction. "Dead as a rock" is a meaningless expression when rocks are alive (i.e., not dead). Also, how is it that the universe is dead when all the matter constituting the created universe is alive, more or less (i.e., rocks less so than humans)?
This is the problem that inheres in equivocations. Don't say the universe is dead when you believe it is alive, don't call souls tangible if they can't be detected, and so on, otherwise people aren't going to understand you when reading your posts.
The irony here is unbelievable, if you reflect on your nit-picking charges of contradiction. You just made these two statements:
"No, [my] dead particles remain always dead. They don't come alive."
"I am alive"
Yet you're accusing ME of contradiction? Wow.
And I have amply demonstrated his contradictions.
Has he shown any in mine, even here? No. These two statements do not contradict each other: (1) I am alive. (2) The atoms of my body are not alive. (I am assuming a particular definition of life.)
The only way there would be a contradiction is if I was identical to the atoms of this body, but I do not believe that at all. I am
constituted by these atoms and molecules, I am not
identical to them.
So, if that body is not you, can we dispense with it?
Clearly not. It would have been helpful if he had even briefly familiarized himself with Lynne R. Baker and her constitution view which I cited in my earlier response.
What are you? In your view:
1. You're not a soul separate from your body.
2. You're not your body, either. That's dead particles, according to you.
He is correct on both counts. I am a soul constituted by a body.
You're asking me to believe that these dead particles, if properly assembled, somehow create a "you" ex nihilo?
I don't know where he gets "out of nothing" from. All the particles that comprise my body can be traced back to a single cell (zygote), the fusion of a certain oocyte and sperm, and those can be traced back to my mother and father, and so on. I also don't know why he can't follow that. ("Sorry, I just can't seem to make that leap," he said.) It's fairly basic biology.
If you die and God, on the last day, resurrects you by reassembling the particles, would the particles re-recreate the same "you" ex nihilo? I can't see how identity would be preserved.
He would if he studied Lynne R. Baker's constitution view fairly and honestly (which is why I included those kinds of citations). For example, "
Why Constitution is Not Identity," (PDF)
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 94, no. 12 (1997): 599-621.
Simple way to summarize your nit-picking of my terminology: Ultimately, you're implying that the word "negligible" shouldn't exist in any language because, in your view, a situation is EITHER fully black OR fully white and, thus, never a light shade of grey.
Simple? Sure, I guess—and so wildly inaccurate as to completely miss the mark. It fails so badly at representing my view that it scarcely qualifies as a straw man. Moreover, I don't believe a situation is "either fully black or fully white." I believe it is either fully black or not fully black. One may pick whatever shade of gray one likes and I can guarantee that it is "not fully black." Again, it is simply the application of the laws of logic. Either something is alive (P) or it is not (¬P). If it is "negligibly alive," then it is alive. If it is "barely alive," then it is alive. If it is "less alive," then it is alive.
Of course you vacillate on this point when you admit to "degrees" of something ...
There is no vacillation, of course, because his train wreck straw man was his own creation. It was never my position. (See just above.)
