Some people feel one’s essence is fundamentally different from one’s body, including the brain as part of the body. Not saying I support this notion, but to brush it aside as stupid or unjustified seems a bit hasty in view of the huge literature behind these issues. Moreover, doesn’t the notion of reincarnation in some parts of the Eastern world show it’s not restricted to Western culture? I’m sure there plenty more such notions outside the West.
> Some people feel one’s essence is fundamentally different from one’s body, including the brain as part of the body. Not saying I support this notion, but to brush it aside as stupid or unjustified seems a bit hasty in view of the huge literature behind these issues.
I don't think it is.
Consider: someone decides to say something without evidence. It's obviously okay to brush this aside and just say "there's no evidence for that". Then hundreds of thousands of people read what that person said, and then decide to propagate the idea by saying it themselves, still without any evidence. You're claiming that at some point, the bulk of literature means we can't say it's a stupid idea any more? I disagree. Ideas are determined valid by the evidence or lack of evidence, not by how popular they are.
In fact, when a stupid idea is popular, that's when it causes the most damage. So when there's a bulk of literature propagating a stupid idea, that's the time when it's important to say that it's a stupid idea.
> Moreover, doesn’t the notion of reincarnation in some parts of the Eastern world show it’s not restricted to Western culture?
You'll note I didn't say it was restricted to Western culture. I think Plato has a large part in spreading the idea in Western culture, but I'd guess he wasn't the first, and other people probably came up with the same idea independently.
What's the evidence that there is a brain or body in the first place, which is a big part of the original discussion? No, I don't mean that just because Plato said it cannot be "stupid", but you have clearly provoked the crowd bringing philosophy to the fore, and broadly speaking philosophy is where you stop having certain evidence for anything, as it precisely challenges anything deemed certain. Once the body is assumed and our senses trusted, if you find solid evidence it'll be about how the brain differs (or not) from the rest of the body, not about the presence or absence of a mind or soul.
> What's the evidence that there is a brain or body in the first place, which is a big part of the original discussion?
I'll sidestep this by saying that for my purposes, reality is just a theorized model of what our senses perceive. If we don't trust our senses, then it's possible none of the things we perceive exist, but who cares? The things we perceive as our brain and body can be modeled to predict what we will perceive in the future.
> broadly speaking philosophy is where you stop having certain evidence for anything
That's not how I define philosophy, but I won't get into a semantic argument about what philosophy is. I also think saying things are "certain" is almost always a mistake. All I'll say is that if that if you define philosophy as eschewing evidence, then I'm happy to dismiss all of what you consider philosophy. If you aren't able to produce evidence (empirical or logical) for the statements you make, then all you're doing is stringing together words into grammatically-correct but meaningless sentences, which is not a skill I care about by itself.
I'm happy to say that I don't think all philosophers share your view that evidence is unnecessary, so there are many people who I would respect who I would also call philosophers.
> Once the body is assumed and our senses trusted,
I don't think we can assume that. Nor should we. Nor is there any value in doing so.
Let's temporarily assume the opposite: let's assume our senses are lying to us. If that's so, I'd argue that our senses lie to us in consistent, predictable manners. I can predict how my senses will lie to me in the future based on how they are lying to me now, and how they have lied to me in the past. If I choose to tell my fake body to let go of a fake ball, my senses will lie to me and tell me that the fake ball falls toward the fake earth. Every fake morning, my senses lie to me and tell me that the fake sun rises.
How would my situation differ if all this were real? If I really dropped a real ball and it really fell toward the real earth, would that be different? If a real sun rose in the real morning, how would that change my experience? In short, a falsehood so complete that it is completely indistinguishable from the truth is not meaningfully different from the truth. If I put my hand on a hot stove and sense pain, does it matter whether that pain is real or fake? I don't think it does.
> if you find solid evidence it'll be about how the brain differs (or not) from the rest of the body, not about the presence or absence of a mind or soul.
That's true, which is why minds and souls should be relegated to the fiction section of the bookstore, with ghosts, werewolves, elves, and all the other fictional things we don't sense with our senses. I'm not saying these things aren't fun to think about, they just shouldn't be considered as existent phenomena on which we base our beliefs and decisions.
First of all, thank you for your thorough replies, and not just to me. I feel you engage in and know philosophy way more than I do, though I know in philosophical circles this is not supposed to be a problem. My main issue is simply that you labeled "stupid" and "unjustified" a position that indisputably has been justified at length (clearly not to your satisfaction), and that (at the risk of sounding stupid myself) makes some sense, like so many incompatible positions in this area. I understand people in philosophy are prone to dismiss other views, either as stupid, stating "we must pass over in silence", or with some remark in between. Interestingly, and I'm sure with plenty of precedent, in Wittgenstein's case he came to dismiss parts of his own dismissal later on.
I won't get into the philosophical issues themselves (as I'm sure it can only hurt my case:), but you must surely be aware that when dealing with philosophical matters, your, my or anybody's agreement or dismissal of a viewpoint will never be universal, not even nearly universal. To wit, philosophers will still in this century go back and forth about the law of non-contradiction [1], one of the pillars of classical logic, and there is no sign of a slowdown. So, before you find "evidence (empirical or logical)" you may have to first wrestle about the very nature and demarcation of logic, with turtles all the way down.
Like you say, these issues can be fun to think about... or not (I'm not sure I can agree, certainly not for the prolonged periods of time that would make a person a philosopher), but in any event I have great appreciation for the people that get involved seriously in this discipline. Precisely for this reason, I take issue with labeling most any position carefully put forth as stupid, moronic, unjustified, etc. Even more so when nobody will ever get nowhere near unanimous consensus on any topic in philosophy, which can easily be contrasted with science or mathematics, where you do find it, at least for some issues, such as the (sigh... nearly) universally dismissed geocentric and flat-Earth models.
> Interestingly, and I'm sure with plenty of precedent, in Wittgenstein's case he came to dismiss parts of his own dismissal later on.
Okay, but that doesn't prove that I will reach the same conclusions Wittgenstein did.
> I won't get into the philosophical issues themselves (as I'm sure it can only hurt my case:), but you must surely be aware that when dealing with philosophical matters, your, my or anybody's agreement or dismissal of a viewpoint will never be universal, not even nearly universal.
Whether everyone believes the truth is irrelevant to whether or not it's true. Universality and consensus are not goals I have when seeking the truth.
It will never be the case that everyone believes what's true.
> To wit, philosophers will still in this century go back and forth about the law of non-contradiction [1], one of the pillars of classical logic, and there is no sign of a slowdown. So, before you find "evidence (empirical or logical)" you may have to first wrestle about the very nature and demarcation of logic, with turtles all the way down.
Sure. I won't claim to have a solution to this debate, but this, like "Can we trust our senses?" is another question without implications. If the law of contradiction is false, few people are willing to really put their money where their mouth is and really embrace contradiction, and those who do end up in psych wards. That doesn't help us prove that it's true (or false) but it does make the question fairly uninteresting. I prefer to ask questions where the answer has real-world implications.
Universality and consensus are not goals I have when seeking the truth.
If there is one truth per (willing) mind we might as well call them points of view, no? I won't hide that's a big part of what pulled me to mathematics for my college degree: foundational issues notwithstanding, it is the discipline that, at least on some fundamental notions (such as the number 7 being prime), gets closest to universality and consensus.
I prefer to ask questions where the answer has real-world implications.
You have basically stated that science is more interesting to you than philosophy. We can agree on that, and so can most other people.
