Comment by solenoid0937
7 days ago
Any argument that a "soul" exists or that consciousness does not arise from the physical world (eg our neurons) is literally unfalsifiable. It cannot be disproven in the same way you can't disprove the existence of God, and so arguing with people that believe in it is largely pointless.
Yet the mere fact that I am conscious is a greater truth than any of my perception of the "physical" world.
Neither does pure materialism rest on falsifiable beliefs, in that I could claim nothing exists outside my conscious experience.
Just as one can say the neocortex named itself, it's your brain declaring that it is conscious.
If ten years from now your phone tells you it is conscious, would you believe it? What criteria would you use to decide?
I didnt say that I solved the problem, merely that I, myself, know that I am concious.
If we go falsifiability, again, I can equally say how do I know your concious, or even that how do I know youre alive and breathing beyond the moments that I myself am observing you?
> Any argument that a "soul" exists or that consciousness does not arise from the physical world (eg our neurons) is literally unfalsifiable.
This is an metaphysical discussion, so falsifiability is kind of irrelevant. All metaphysical positions are ultimately unfalsifiable - including materialism and physicalism just as much as dualism or monism or theism.
> All metaphysical positions are ultimately unfalsifiable
This is not true, there are many metaphysical positions that are falsifiable.
For example, "anything shaped like an apple is an apple" is a metaphysical position. It defines what it means to be apple-ish. You could hold that metaphysical position and also "apples are always made of plant material" as another position you hold at the same time.
Then you could falsify the metaphysical position by presenting a stone carved into the shape of an apple. You could choose to deny reality and change your physical definition (what the definition of the word "apple" is), but if you think logically the evidence constructively falsifies the original metaphysical position.
I think what you might have been trying to say is that people tend to adopt metaphysical positions which are non-falsifiable. Yes, they do, but that doesn't mean no metaphysical arguments can be resolved through logic and experiment.
True, I should have been more careful with my wording. My point was actually that unfalsifiable metaphysical statements are not invalid in the same way that unfalsifiable physical/scientific statements are.
So yes, some metaphysical statements are falsifiable, and some have in fact been falsified over time. And, very importantly, many of the biggest metaphysical questions have no known falsifiable answers (at least none that are not already known to be false, of course).
It would only be unfalsifiable if the connection was one-way, i.e. our souls receive input from the world but have no effect on the world. We would effectively be passengers in a meat puppet, and any influence we have on that puppet is purely imaginary. Certainly possible, but not usually how it's conceived, and then you have the question of how the meat puppets got the idea of consciousness and souls in the first place.
If souls can influence the world, as is the common belief for souls, then in principle that influence or its absence can be detected.
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Argue with someone who gathered evidence scientifically to demonstrate that we really, really don't know what we're talking about when it comes to the human soul:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Cases_Suggestive_of_Rei...
EDIT: Downvote all you want, materialists, but reincarnation is the spanner in the works nobody wants to confront ..
Reincarnation just doesn't make sense when you consider the numbers. Why are more people being born today than yesterday?
If you believe in reincarnation, for some reason brand new souls are spawning into existence. Why? How does reincarnation work for them?
> Why are more people being born today than yesterday?
Because souls split. Like rain and the ocean.