Do you have a soul?

[Insula Dei]

The denial of mental properties has always seemed weird and unlogic to me. (The question of mental substances is something else, of course. As is the "vitalitist" conception of the soul as a moving principle.)

[Insula Dei]

You're the one that's missing the point - it really is about demonstrating that something is real. There are numerous claims of the metaphysical, many of which contradict each other. Should we take all of them seriously just because someone's got a gut feeling that they are true?

The case for the existence of mental substances goes rather a bit beyond a 'gut feeling', since we all have a direct and very real experience of something that seems very difficult to explain in other terms. If anything, the responsability of finding evidence against the existence of such substances is on the reductionist side. There is no very convincing account of the mental in purely physical terms that I'm aware off. What we do have is rather a lot of vague promises and hugely simplified schemes of what such an acount *might* look like if we were ever to posses a complete understanding of the human brain in terms of chemical and neurophysical processes, and even those fail rather miserably at answering the 'qualia'-objection. (Roughly Speaking: how de we make sense of the 'what-it's-like' of an experience without falling into circularity.)

[Insula Dei]

You do not show that two things are identical by showing that one gives rise to the other. You're again ignoring the difference between nomological supervenience and logical identity.

I did not cite your facts as evidence of mind-body dualism. The point is that (contrary to your earlier suggestion) they in no way favor reductive materialism over its rivals.

I'm a reasonably intelligent human being who's seen this debate more than a few times, and I'm not familiar with this terminology -- or sure why you're assuming your audience here is.

It's the correct terminology when discussing the mind-body problem, though. I don't see what part of it you think is problematic?

The case for the existence of mental substances goes rather a bit beyond a 'gut feeling', since we all have a direct and very real experience of something that seems very difficult to explain in other terms.

Is this the royal we you're referring to?

Let me put it like this: you don't experience 'neurochemical process XYZ', you experience a desire for ice-cream. Now, it may be the case that what actually happens when we desire ice-cream is a 'neurochemical process XYZ', that my desire is actually identical to an exchange of chemicals in the brain, but to say that this is the case, like every explanation of an X in terms of Y, requires further explanation.

Now, it's alltogether possible that you yourself never find yourself having a desire, holding onto a belief, or experiencing a sensation, but I somewhat doubt that.

[Insula Dei]

I don't understand why people can't grasp the fact is that everything we think and feel comes from the brain. Simple as that. There is no evidence that it comes from elswhere, no evidence that there is anything other than the brain that processes it. If you drink it affects your brain, if you take drugs, have a stroke, get shot in the head it affects your brain. When you die you cease to think.

Again, a causal relationship doesn't equal a relationship of identity. Everything you post above is entirely consistent with even the most radical variant of cartesian dualism. I personally hold that we are quite empathically not our brain, but that's largely a combination of personal preference and the simple observation that reductionist accounts of the mind consistently fail to answer the delightfully simple qualia-objection.*

If you happen to be a reductionist that's fine with me of course, but you'll have to accept that I think you the victim of rather a nasty case of conceptual confusion. As Thomas Nagel says in 'What is it like to be a bat?' an identity theory of the mind may well be true, but it seems to be the case that we can't possibly imagine how it could be true.

*: Another problem for such a theory is, I understand, that type-physicalism is rendered wholly untenable by such phenomena as the plasticity of the brain or, more exotically, the possibility of alien minds. We are then left with token-physicalism, which I don't find an at all attractive alternative.

[Insula Dei]

This thread is why we can't have nice things.

[Insula Dei]

Anyone who thinks the soul is a thing needs a dose of Wittgenstein.

Which Wittgenstein?