Comment by raincole
13 hours ago
> subjective experience and agency, amongst other things
In other words, souls? I'm sorry if that sounds accusing, but to me it sounds like you're talking about souls that are independent to the physical world, just with more 'scientific-y' wording.
(I fully understand that some people believe souls exist.)
As other commenters pointed out, I'm not getting into the mind/body problem. But that's what people normally do: you challenge the assumptions, and all of a sudden they assume you are already coming to a conclusion. And no, just because I challenge the assumptions, I don't need to provide a counter conclusion.
I don’t think the OP is discussing mind-body dualism. There are many materialists who believe that consciousness maybe a non-computational process.
But it is worth pointing out that something like 80% of the world (it fluctuates depending on the survey but its around that) believes in some non-physical spirit, life force, or soul.
It’s a very HN bubble thing to start a discussion with the assumption that everyone must be a materialist.
I acknowledge and understand that many people believe in the existence of souls. But I hope they just say it rather than try to wrap the concepts in layers of jargons.
Again I don’t think the person you were talking to was doing that.
But one of the reasons that people might do that is because on a forum like hacker news they’ll be attacked as a lunatic. Just look at some of the comments on this article. I saw one where someone said that dualism is so ridiculous that it can’t even be considered philosophy.