The Top 10 Objections To the Soul Answered in Rapid-Fire

I don't know why short videos like this aren't more popular, but I can tell you that as someone who hates wasting time, I really appreciate this quality over quantity approach. It's extremely informative for it's length and I know what to look up now if I want to go deeper.

I like these short videos Cam. Keep these up

Neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases provide a very strong critique of dualism- specifically for how immaterial “souls” interact with material brains. And the way that this problem is shrugged off in this video does a disservice to those who seriously grapple with this problem.

1. Mind-body interaction problem 2. Dualism is unnecessary - William's Razor (W. of Okham) 3. Out of body experiences 4. The brain explains the mind 5. Causal closure (but is it?) 6. Evolution 7. Identity (over time) 8. Other minds 9. Location (where is it?) 10. Dualism not coherent - memory, perception, etc

Excellent! Get Bruce Greyson on next! He has worked for over 50 years with people who have had verified Near Death Experiences and has done scientific experiments with them.

excellent video

I technically am a monist, as I believe that only one substance exists, but I am not a materialist. I agree with substance dualism that the mind is irreducible to any nonconscious substance and believe in a mental substance; That being said, I do not see the need to posit the existence of a nonmental subdtance, as anything that is material can be derived from mind without the additional assumption of a material substance. This makes me an Idealist. A great idealist YouTuber is InspiringPhilosophy.

Catholics do not affirm substance dualism. We affirm hylemorphism. The Council of Vienna: "Furthermore, with the approval of the holy council We reject as erroneous and contrary to the truth of the Catholic faith any doctrine or opinion that rashly asserts that the substance of the rational and intellectual soul is not truly and of itself the form of the human body or that calls this into doubt. In order that the truth of the pure faith may be known to all and the path to error barred, We define that from now on whoever presumes to assert, defend, or obstinately hold that the rational and intellectual soul is not of itself and essentially the form of the human body is to be censured as heretic." Denzinger, 43rd ed, 902

It might be interesting to have a neuroscientist on. It has been seen with the eye how neural pathways form. It can be either “bottom up” meaning from reactions to triggers from our conditioning/wiring. Or “top down” meaning the effect of our thoughts and actions that can override the conditioned neural pathways.

As a Catholic I find myself in a difficult middle position here, because Catholicism teaches that a human being is a body and a soul together, not a soul living in a body. Its not materialistic monism but not platonic dualism either. In fact, in our view, souls were never supposed to be separated from bodies - because death was not supposed to exist in the first place. Does this have practical consequences? Yes, very much so. For example, I found his answer about the empirical proofs of dualism to be very poor. No scientist accept that NDEs or out of body experiences are facts. The experience itself is a fact but to them it doesnt say anything about whether this experience tells us something about reality. So they can simply reject this response with no need of a good argument. Instead, as a Catholic Id argue that souls simply lie beyond the purview of empirical science. Because they are not a physical phenomenon. Same goes for God. These (empirical and metaphysical) are two different types of claim. We should rather reject the dogmatic premise that all existing things must be verifiable through the scientific method. We already know several things that cant - e.g. the laws of logic that underlie science itself for starters.

When do identical twins get their individual souls if life begins at conception, but twins don’t form until a later time when a single zygote splits into two separate entities? Do they start with one soul at conception that then splits into two? Or are they given their unique souls later on?

Get Edward Feser on to discuss hylemorphic dualism. It's not substance dualism, it's not panpsychism, it's a really fascinating Aristotelian solution to the mind body problem.

9:37 "The problem of other Minds is not a metaphysical problem or objection the fact that I have access to my own mental States and you have access to your own mental States and you don't have direct access to my mental States it doesn't seem to be a problem" That's interesting, that's usually precisely what I point out when responding to arguments against physicalism... Can he formulate an argument against physicalism given what he said here ? If I have "access to my own mental states and you have access to yours" then we have our explanation for why we have different "properties", and why they can indeed be "reducible to physical properties" (1:04)

Veridical NDEs and OBEs may be examples of refined remote viewing/clairvoyance (and other psi) mediated by a brain in altered states (some of which are conducive to psi) The soul interpretation of NOBEs presupposes such refined clairvoyance (souls don't have eyes/ears, and their accurate "perceptions" would just BE clairvoyance and telepathy) But if we grant refined ESP, we have to tackle the possibility of living people using ESP in these extreme conditions. It's also interesting that Christian academics routinely ignore much stronger "empirical cases" suggesting postmortem survival. Cardena (2018), Braude (2003), Hodgson (1898) etc

I think Cam should mention that this was Chat GPTs top 10 objections to dualism

If soul real how come i cant get soul surgery Chekcmate fundies

What about conjoined twins with one brain? How many souls there?

deboosted?

The interaction problem is not a "problem to all", because it is not a problem to idealism.

7:28 "I think uh basically we have no good reason no a prior reason or empirical reason for rejecting something like psychophysical laws that there are actually laws that govern the interaction of Minds with bodies and if we don't have any good reasons to reject that interaction then it doesn't seem like there's any good reason to reject dualism as incompatible with an evolutionary perspective" The "a priori reason" is Occam's razor, which goes back to question number 2