The self or soul as a mental substance

Mental Substance

What is a mental substance? I think it can best be understood by contrasting mental substances with material substances. Think of material objects. They have properties such as their weight, whether they are dented, their colour and so on. These properties cannot exist by themselves, they are not freestanding, they belong to a material substance. Material substances, on the other hand, exist in and of themselves and are the bearer of such properties. Crucially, the properties can change but without changing the identity of the object or substance. So, for example, a table might acquire certain types of scratches, its colour might fade and so on as it grows older, but, despite these changes, it is still the very same table or the very same substance as it ages.



The concept of a substance and its properties also apply to the realm of the mental. There are experiences, for example, the experience of pain. But one can argue a pain doesn't exist all by itself, there has to be a self that undergoes the pain. Experiences, in other words, are seemingly always had by an experiencer, or self.

This self is called the mental substance. This self remains the same identical self throughout our lives. It is the I. It is that which makes me feel I am the very same person from one hour to the next, one day to the next, and one year to the next. My moods might change from one hour to the next, my interests and even intelligence might change from one year to the next, nevertheless, it is still me that undergoes all these changes. The I or me is the mental substance; contrariwise the moods, cognitive abilities, memories, interests and so on are the properties of the self/mental substance. These properties can change without me ceasing to exist and turning into another person. 

To try and illustrate my meaning here imagine someone throughout their lives wearing a pair of spectacles.  The lenses will age, acquire scratches and so on.  In addition, the lenses might be changed periodically.  As a result, even if that person's unaided vision remains the same, their bespectacled vision will change throughout their life.  And such changes need not be confined to the acuity of their vision.  They could have lenses that cast everything in a shade of colour or distort their vision in a particular manner.  They could even have lenses that render them unable to see at all.



Our unaided vision can analogically be compared to the mental substance/self. The bespectacled vision can analogically be compared to one's particular mental state at any time, or our minds.   Just as changes in the lenses influence our bespectacled vision but not our unaided vision, so too might changes in the brain influence our mental states (the properties of the self) but not our essence (the mental substance).



Notwithstanding the fact that throughout our lives our moods, cognitive abilities and so on continually change, we all still feel that we are nevertheless the very same self throughout our lives.  This is so even for those who reject an afterlife.  So the mental substance/self that I have described seems to align up to most peoples intuitions as to what they truly are.

Note that this self I have outlined is not the same as the sense of self just as a sense of a tree is not the same as the tree itself. Few of us would deny that we have at least a sense of self.  But most professional philosophers reject this notion of an actual self, they believe it is an illusion.



Should there be an afterlife it is my view that it is this self or mental substance that will survive.  In which case the self or mental substance can be referred to as one's soul.

Alleged problems with such a mental substance or soul

In The Soul Fallacy, the author Julien Musolino refers to the analogy of a radio. He says that this involves:

the idea that the brain does not cause the mind, but that it merely serves as a gateway for it, just like a radio set functions as a receiver and decoder of electromagnetic waves.

He goes on to say:

A radio set (or a TV, if you prefer) and the signal it receives are separate things, and so they can exist independently of each other ...  Destroy the receptor, and you still have the signal. Obliterate the brain and you still have the soul.

This then seems to be essentially the same type of analogy as my own analogy of spectacles.  So just as destroying a radio will have no effect on the signal, so too destroying one's spectacles clearly will have no effect on our unaided vision.



However, Julien Musolino is not impressed with such analogies.  He goes on to say:

a few moment's reflection reveal so many dead-ends, contradictions, and nonsensical implications that it will make your head spin.

For starters, the receptor view of the brain doesn't even begin to respond to the challenge posed for dualism by what we called the fragility of the mind. If damaging only parts of the brain can annihilate just about every aspect of our mind, then by what miracle would the complete destruction of our brain following death leave us with all our mental faculties intact so that we can recognize Uncle Fred in heaven? If the soul needs a functioning brain to be able to think, see, and feel, then how could it perform these functions without a brain at all?

But, of course, the whole purpose of the analogy is to convey the idea that the soul doesn't need a functioning brain to think, see, and feel.  If the lenses in my spectacles get dirtier and dirtier as time goes by, this can have no implications for my unaided vision when I take my spectacles off.   He needs to argue that this analogy is false or inappropriate.  Instead, he seems to have completely missed its point.



He also says:

Does the all-or-nothing radio-brain view entail that the soul signal gives rise to my entire mental life? Are the languages I speak, the memories I have, the skills I possess all the product of something beamed into my brain from above? My suspicion is that the reason I speak French and English is because I grew up in France and then moved to the United States. I am also convinced that my memories have to do with the people I've met and the places I've visited in this world. If certain aspects of my mind are the obvious consequence of my dealings with the denizens of the physical world, then what exactly is the soul signal supposed to do? Does it just make me conscious?

One's memories and acquired skills are clearly not part of the mental substance, they are, rather, acquired properties.  Also, it should be noted that the self or soul doesn't make one conscious any more than a table makes its colour or shape etc.  That is to say, a substance doesn't make its properties, a substance is the prerequisite requirement for the very existence of any properties. 



It seems to me that Julien Musolino doesn't appear to have any understanding of what he's attacking.  And he essentially says nothing else regarding the analogy.  So much for the aforementioned "dead-ends, contradictions, and nonsensical implications that it will make your head spin".



Two other people I've read that attack this analogy, but equally and independently misunderstand it, and in precisely the same manner, are Keith Augustine and Steven Novella. Keith Augustine is one of the editors and is by far the most prolific contributor to The Myth of an Afterlife (I wrote a ~13,000 word assessment of the arguments contained in that volume here).  In that book Keith Augustine says:

It doesn’t take much reflection to see that a television receiver is a terrible analogy for making sense of known mind-brain correlations. For the analogues would have to be:

Broadcast station → Electromagnetic signal → TV receiver → TV program images 

External soul ↔ Interactive forces ↔ Brain ↔ Behavior

On this analogy, mental activity itself occurs in the external soul, just as the images of a television program originate from the broadcast station. But no damage to the local circuitry of your TV set can have any effect on the television program recording playing at the remote broadcast station, or on the signal that the station puts out.

Steven Novella  raises the same objection, except he invokes the plot of TV programmes rather than the TV signal.  He says:

A more accurate analogy would be this – can you alter the wiring of a TV in order to change the plot of a TV program? Can you change a sitcom into a drama? Can you change the dialogue of the characters? Can you stimulate one of the wires in the TV in order to make one of the on-screen characters twitch?

Well, that is what would be necessary in order for the analogy to hold.

But the fact that the TV set can have no effect on the TV signal/plot of a programme is the very point. Or, to use the simpler analogy, the fact that the eyeglasses have no effect on our unaided vision is the very point.  For it is the TV signal/unaided vision that represents the mental substance/self.  They are conflating the mind, which is what results when the self operates through the brain, with the mental substance/self/soul.  In my many communications with Keith Augustine (e.g. in the comments under my amazon review of his book and elsewhere.  Update 11/2/22 Amazon have, without warning, deleted all comments under customer reviews!). I have pointed out his misunderstanding on this issue, but in his responses he has always ignored this particular point.  I'm also pretty sure I've pointed out this misunderstanding to Steven Novella too.

What would destroy the analogy and the whole concept of mental substance would be if damage to the brain could alter the actual mental substance rather than merely affecting its properties.  However, this is a difficult task since there is not much we can say about this substance apart from it being responsible for the feeling that we are the very same self throughout the duration of our lives and serving as the bearer of properties. Moreover, that feeling need not be constantly present.



 

Conclusion

So long as we feel we are the same self as time passes the default assumption should surely be that this is correct unless compelling reasons are advanced to doubt this.  And they would need to be compelling indeed since I'm sure the vast majority of us are convinced of our persisting nature, at least from our births until our deaths.  

Finally, is such an enduring self/mental substance consistent with the notion that the brain somehow produces this self? Consider that my brain changes all the time. Could a constantly changing brain produce a self that is unchanging?  Arguably this is problematic.  Hence this notion that we are mental substances implies both an afterlife and indeed "beforelife". And this is before we consider any evidence for an afterlife.

Adverts on Facebook

According to this Guardian article the ads that Facebook shows you are heavily influenced by what you actually post on facebook.  I never see ads on there as I have them suppressed. I wonder what they'd try to sell me? Cryonics? Existential therapy? Battered haddock?

It's a bizarre situation we find ourselves in

It's bizarre enough that we find ourselves existing on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an eternal nothingness. But, arguably, what's even more bizarre is that no-one questions it. Everyone thinks it's normal.



We need to take a step back and just consider how utterly strange is the situation in which we find ourselves. Are we all being deceived? Are our lives akin to some strange dream, and when we die we'll realise how preposterous it all is? I don't know.

Believers in a God hate telescopes?

Kinda like peering closely at the screen of computer game in the anticipation of seeing the programmer.

Woke Capitalism

I've just read the following article:



How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture



I'm in entire agreement with every word. A few quotes from the article:

In the second group, the blameless, lies Emmanuel Cafferty, a truck driver who appears to have been tricked into making an “okay” symbol by a driver he cut off at a traffic light. The inevitable viral video claimed that this was a deliberate use of the symbol as a white-power gesture, and he was promptly fired. Cafferty is a working-class man in his 40s from San Diego. The loss of his job hit him hard enough that he saw a counselor.

and

not being racist is not going to save you if the lightning strikes. Nor is the fact that your comments lie decades in the past, or that they have been misinterpreted by bad-faith actors, or that you didn’t make them. The ground—your life—is scorched just the same.

and

Here is another option for big companies: Put your money into paying all junior staff enough for them to live in the big city where the company is based, without needing help from their parents. That would increase the company’s diversity.

Indeed, but they're only interested in profits, hence they're only interested in how others perceive them, not the reality. So they just need to sack people for any imagined transgression against woke values. Not do the decent thing and bring about real positive change.

When people talk about the “excesses of the left”—a phenomenon that blights the electoral prospects of progressive parties by alienating swing voters—in many cases they’re talking about the jumpy overreactions of corporations that aren’t left-wing at all.

This nails it on the head! This article is brilliant.

Just finished reading "the soul fallacy".

Just this second finished "the soul fallacy". There was nothing in it that I haven't heard before, but I do read skeptic views on this issue extensively, so perhaps that's not surprising.



His rejection of the soul is parasitic on some form of reductive materialism being entirely unproblematic. If reductive materialism is possible, then it beats dualism in virtue of being the more simple and parsimonious hypothesis. But he never provides any arguments for materialism nor responds to the objections raised against it, he merely effectively says that materialism is what science tells us is true. But he omits to tell us how science tells us this.



He also sees it entirely unproblematic that the world and everything that happens within it is wholly a result of physical chains of causes and effects, including all our behaviour and, by implication, everything we think.



There are compelling arguments against such a modern reductive materialism that I regard as decisive. There are also compelling arguments that necessarily our consciousness per se must have at least some causal efficacy as I argue here.



Simply assuming that reductive materialism is possible and simply assuming that our behaviour is entirely due to material causal chains is entirely unproblematic makes the entire book one huge question begging exercise. Instead he contents himself with attacking interactive dualism. Many of these attacks in their turn though presuppose that the alternative of materialism is viable and hence are also question begging.



I'll write a review, perhaps in differing parts.

No, I don't Hate Science

Apples fall. That is to say, if we hold an apple, then release it, then it will fall to the ground.



Why does it? Why not just stay there in the air, or move upwards, or whatever?



Throughout history, human beings have dreamt up explanations for why apples and any other unsupported object falls. Aristotle gave a teleological account; namely that objects have a goal-directed behaviour to move downwards to the ground. Isaac Newton dispensed with goal-directed behaviour and said that objects fall due to this thing called gravitational force, a thing only known via its effects. Albert Einstein then came along and said objects fall due to the warping of space-time, this warping again only known via its effects.



Throughout these differing explanations, apples still fall. The rate at which they fall i.e the acceleration, can be quantified. We can note that they fall at the same acceleration irrespective of their weight.



More generally the material world exhibits regularities and we can describe these regularities using mathematical equations. No matter what our explanations for these regularities, no more how regularly such explanations might change, reality still exhibits the same patterns.



Don't imagine I pooh-pooh such scientific explanations though. They can be very useful! Look at the GIF below:







How do we explain the movement of the black dots? We can hypothesis the existence of invisible triangles! Clearly, the apexes of these invisible triangles somehow give rise to the black dots. Such an explanation is useful, it allows us to confidently mathematically describe the path of the black dots. We have given a scientific explanation! All done and dusted. And anyone who denies the existence of these triangles is being unscientific and must hate science (I have often been accused of being anti-science and even hating science).



But hold on just a sec. We could equally hypothesize invisible squares too. Or invisible stars! Which is the real underlying explanation, the real mechanism? Perhaps, to be very radical, none of them are?



We don't know why reality behaves as it does. Yes, reality exhibits regular patterns that can be mathematically described. But we don't know why it exhibits those particular patterns, or why reality exhibits any patterns at all. Nor indeed do we know why the world/universe exists at all.



Science doesn't explain, it doesn't tell us why reality is as it is. It merely describes. Bear that in mind when someone next tells you that some phenomenon couldn't possibly be for real. They are assuming that our scientific explanations amount to more than mere descriptions. That their explanations depict how reality really is. That the triangles, or perhaps the squares, or perhaps the stars, have a literal existence.

Us and Them

And then there's me who doesn't belong to either group and is cast out into no-man's land where I get fired at by both sides.

That reminds me, I think I'll listen to the 2nd side of Dark side of the Moon which, of course, includes Us and Them.

The Idolization of Celebrities

I find this constant idolization of celebrities to be wearisome. I find it especially irritating when people say I should have heard of X as s/he is one of the most famous people on the planet.



Why?? What profound thoughts do they have? Or what have they done to earn my interest? People become celebrities mainly through happenstance. There's no reason to admire them. And no, I won't read up about them.

Being Praised

Some guy called David McRaney said:

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but to feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days.

Eh?? Peoples' experiences must be very different from my own.  No, it's pretty much the diametric opposite for me. Depending on the nature of the praise it often makes me feel great! I imagine because the negative remarks directed towards me vastly outnumber the positive remarks. Especially on the net. Am I unique here? Does everyone else get more positive remarks than negative remarks?

Looking on the net he's written a few books eg:

Yet another negative remark!

Response to an article on the meaning of life

I've just read most of the following article by a certain Frank Martela, PhD:



How Can Life Be Valuable in a Cold and Mechanistic Universe?



I made 3 responses underneath the article. Hopefully they won't be deleted since I disagree profoundly with the author and I'm more strident than I tend to be in my blog posts. I'll reproduce my replies below (perhaps slightly expanded to include links to relevant blog posts of mine).



Frank Martela says:

As Thomas Huxley observed already in 1874, although we might feel our actions as volitional and emanating from our own will, such “volitions do not enter into the chain of causation,“ as doing that would break the laws of physics.

Why do all these silly people think there are "laws of physics"? Such "laws" are merely a description of what occurs (see this post by me). And part of what occurs are our actions as produced by the voluntary movements of our bodies. If your description ("law") doesn't accommodate such voluntary behaviour, then dream up a more encompassing description (I argue that our consciousness is necessarily causally efficacious here).



Frank Martela says:

For example, there is not really a thing called "temperature" in the world — it is just our way of experiencing the average amount of kinetic energy of the molecules around us. Similarly, the color "red" doesn’t exist for real. It is just our way of experiencing and describing light of a certain wavelength. Temperature and redness don’t exist in the world.

I do not subscribe to any of this. Where are the arguments, where is any evidence that red is not out there in the world? And Carroll simply presupposes our scientific theories depict literal states of affairs (see this post by me). Temperature is how hot it is, not anything else. To reiterate, physics merely describes the world, it doesn't tell us what it is in and of itself, that's what metaphysics deals with.



It's interesting how utterly crazy our modern conception of the world is. Most educated people are brainwashed into believing that colours, sounds, smells have no reality outside our minds, but mysterious stuff such as "kinetic energy" does. Testimony to the power of "education" to mould and shape peoples' beliefs to readily embrace preposterous notions.





Frank Martela says:

What then is the meaning of life? Depends on what you mean by that question. Are you asking about an overarching purpose to all human lives, some externally imposed commandment and justification for how we all ought to live our lives and find value in them? Then I am afraid that we must conclude that based on this naturalistic understanding of human values, there is no meaning of life.

Naturalism hasn't been argued for. Nor could it be since the problems inherent to it are insurmountable (see this post by me).



Naturalism cannot explain the ability of human beings to have goals, exhibit intentionality, have a causally efficacious consciousness. Indeed, it cannot even accommodate the very existence of consciousness. Since naturalism cannot accommodate the facts, then it is incorrect.





Frank Martela says:

The emergence of life was an accidental by-product of natural laws. The emergence of human beings as a form of life was an accidental by-product of the mechanisms of natural selection. The emergence of values was a by-product of human intentionality and reflectivity. There is no justification for life, no external purpose to it. Life just is. An accident — but from our own point of view, a very lucky accident indeed.

All unsubstantiated assertions. How do you know that "natural laws" aren't innately teleological?



Let's assume you're right and there's no afterlife and we are mere biological machines. If so, I agree life has meaning. I find it absurd for people to suggest that if there is no "God" etc we might as well just kill ourselves now.



But, nevertheless, it remains the case that the Universe and our lives are ultimately to no avail. Whatever goals are achieved, whatever satisfactions are attained, whatever pleasures we experience, ultimately it is all pointless in the grand scheme of things. Eventually, the last human being will die, the last sentient being on Earth will die and eventually the earth will be swallowed up by the Sun when it ends its life as a red giant.



With the death of the Earth we might legitimately conclude that the whole history of the human race -- every thought, every action, every emotion experienced -- might as well never have occurred.



If we gravitate towards materialism (or more loosely that the brain produces consciousness) perhaps it is best to put aside such thoughts and lose ourselves in our day to day lives; care about the concrete things in life such as making a living, forming relationships, and just marvel at our fortune to be privileged to have this brief spark of sentience before the veil of forever nothingness descends upon us.



However, we are not in a position to conclude there is no transcendental meaning. The author presupposes that we are mere biological machines and we will cease to exist when we die. If this is untrue, then a possibility of some ultimate transcendental meaning is opened up.