Logic is the connecting factor of this mind to this body. The given age determines the number of years that the mind has shaped the body through all experience, even in the sense of the very thinking. Heck, even the creation of the very body happens according to the logic of the mind (if not the mind of the father and mother through the act of creation).
More importantly, as I happen to believe that the soul is proven by OBEs (Out-of-Body-Experiences), Van Lommel studies, NDEs (Near-Death-Experiences) and Phantom Feelings, I think that those who deny the existence of the soul don't know what they are talking about or that they are lying about the issue. Because I sense that they are subject to the Problem of Induction, they don't know about the "black swans" from their "little" Life-Worlds of information!
That is, they have never incarnated (at least never revealed), they have never been forced out of their bodies into seeming death by abuse or wanton of suicide, etc! They don't have it in their "little" Life-Worlds (of first-hand/second-hand information)!
And how difficult can it be? One can never do "soul walking" in forcing oneself out of the body by drowning in a pool or large bathtub because that's illegal! So how can one prove the soul other than scour the Earth for the very stories (the credible ones, possibly also confirmed by MRI/fMRI)?!
Dualism is winning!
What say you?
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_studies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Van_Lommel.27s_study
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_after_death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_pain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
This may be something I share with one or more people, but it's worth noting that "out-of-body" experiences are examples of thinking or sensing that put marks in brain activity, signal firing when a person recalls this memory. This should be able to pass for being a solid example of an argument for Dualism. This can be confirmed by a MR-examination or something like that where there's created an actual, objective signal firing of the recollection of this sensation. This sensation can also be compared by the signal firing due to the visual stimuli of the artistic picture of this sensation. You then have the recollection and the artistic picture or image, by your instructions and whatever aids used to create it as closely as possible to the subjective view of this "out-of-body" experience such as revisiting and taking pictures of the surgery room. You get the MR image of recollection and of the artistic picture. You can also ask this person to hypothetically try to view one's self while in the surgery room and have this 3rd MR image compared to the other 2. Remember, this person has no reason to lie about seeing one's self in 3rd person apart from the body and in all honesty what ways are there, but the subjective story of which you know nothing and therefore has no authority in? Why shouldn't you at least take this view into mind as a possibility? Of course, the skeptics are questioning the reality of this sensation, sensing, but I can't say that it can represent any weight to the discussion if the empirical examination by MR actually supports this discernment of distinction of experience. Let's just make the note also that the background story of the person having such an experience or the patient who is brought to the hospital in cardiac arrest or some other serious condition.
Thoughts? Does this clinch the case for Dualism? At least, "out-of-body" experiences remain anomalies in the Reductionist account.
It is understood that this Dualistic account suggests that the actual sensing/thinking happens in the mind outside of the body and thus it doesn't require any brain to function/exist! This should be, bang, in the middle of the street of the Dualism. Emergentism is backed by a number of underlying structures and as such can't be compared to the "out-of-body" experience which has no material links, no physical foundation. Your response?
If you are in fact outside of your body, which you have to be to truly see yourself from the outside of it (it doesn't count if you use your eyes in the skull to see a reflection in some mirror), then there's something that escapes the physicalist account. This sensing that happens outside of yourself transfers to your brain as it is carried with the non-physical soul, consciousness, mind to the brain and make the appropriate signal firings there as one recalls the "out-of-body" experience. So why is this not understandable? Why is it hard to understand that other people have truths to tell? Do you have problems with imagining an "out-of-body" experience or do you question its reality such as naming it fantasy?
It should take a near-death or short period of clinical death to be able to have the OoB experience, something which should be too harsh to demand for any amount of money, although, of course, I can understand James Randi. Second, it is not given that the OoB experience is controllable in any way more than seeing one's self looking down on one's own body in 3rd person perspective. Therefore, if the situation arises at all, the account from the patient/person is what it is, "...looking down on my self...", which is not like "let's do an OoB experience on this person. The whole argument, new or not, builds clearly on a recognition that an unknown phenomenon takes place and produces the account in the mind of the patient which is consequently told. By the way, this is not a thought experiment. I haven't invented the OoB phenomena. It's a story told by several people around the world, I believe. All I want to show, is a kind of procedure that should certify the OoB experience and in turn make the case for Dualism. I can't make an OoB-exp on my self like that. This should be a sufficient answer to what you've written.
Key words: no James Randi contest - accidental OoB-exp - no physical links, material basis - recollection of OoB-exp produces/is creating signal firings in the brain.
Foundation: several accounts of OoB-exp by different people with no motive of lying.
As I've noted, this is not a thought experiment in the classical sense because there are actual stories from people forming the investigation on it and providing the basis for this thread's purpose of highlighting possible consequences from it in respect to a case for Dualism.
Here's a link from Wikip.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience. I'd like you to put special attention to the section of Van Lommel studies. The rest is crap, I think.
As much as the beginning of the universe or existence itself is a mystery, you'll have to accept other people's accounts, subjective stories as accounts/stories of possible factual reality that may give directions on what actually exists! You can't subject people to near-death or clinical death and at the same time exercise good ethics for proving something experimentally. If one denies the possibility of an honest story of some phenomenon, then one is at a loss because one may lose important leads about what reality has to offer. In there being "no physical links" I emphasise the mystery of this phenomenon. What can I do? People mysteriously see themselves in 3rd person perspective. If there have been physical links, this would be a matter of physicalism! The nature of this is subjective and I find no possibility for solving it other than asking people to be serious about other stories outside their own heads! Read the Van Lommel stuff and write what you think, please! I have no more than you have, other than some belief in possibility and the logical connections from it as in this thread!
You can also take note of this from Dr. Sam Parnia (a scientist indeed, clearly...): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uk...t-of-body-experiences.html. There are serious efforts from serious people who are investigating this. Article is from 2008. Hah!
It's a procedure that is meant to be applied after someone is reporting having had the OoB-exp so that there's no interruption in the surgery situation and that every report can be treated equally. It's still possible to apply a procedure to something without having a case of experiment, this should be obvious.
In the traditional literature, as of today and given that "ghosts" exist and are not detectable, an OoB-exp that is confirmed in either way, using my account of the procedure or Dr. Sam Parnia's, is undeniably Dualism, whether you like it or not! It's just too easy to write off Dualism by asserting that all must be physical. As long as "ghosts" are seen as "non-physical" in the current literature, there's no way around this. I agree that the future may be able to change our view and describe "ghosts" as physical, but it's simply not the case today!
In current literature as a matter of fact:
Physicalists generally speak of mind as being the brain or something commonly known to be physical and not something else!
Substance Dualists (incl. Descartes) speak of the mind as being a distinct entity apart from the brain!
So, if you want to go on to redefine the literature of Philosophy of Mind, then go ahead and do so!
As for Physicalism: I take it from p. 11 in Jaegwon Kim's book, Philosophy of Mind, 2nd ed., where it says: "Since physicalism broadly understood is the basic framework in which contemporary philosophy of mind has been debated..." It says further: "Take two immaterial minds: We have to say that they are exactly alike in all physical respects since neither has any physical property and it is not possible to distinguish them from a physical perspective." I don't intend to shrink all physicalists to identity theorists, I just want to write that physicalists don't speak of minds like the substance dualists and that every physicalist require that mind is in or is something material or physical, whether it's non-reductionists, reductionists or functionalists. It says physicalist for a very good reason and that reason doesn't include "ghosts" or minds outside of the body or other traditional physicality.
By Terje Lea, 30th December, 2009 and 2nd January, 2010.
