TE,souls, and freedom
andrew (amandell@jpusa.chi.il.us)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:18:11 -0500Hi list,
I have stolen these two paragraphs from John's Ham and Scott post to ask
something:
>scientistic brain scientist (v., say, a non-scientistic brain scientist)
>would consider "physics" (i.e., natural science) to have demonstrated beyond
>a reasonable doubt that there's no such thing. That would be simplistic. of
>course, but it -does- seem true that more naive versions of Cartesian
>dualism are much less plausible today than in the past, the physics
>combining with philosophical argument to imply that the naive metaphysics in
>question is defective.
>
>Or freedom and morality-- scientism (again, not science) would say both are
>illusory, the former by demonstration, the latter by implication. (Indeed,
>one of the many things that makes scientism quite implausible is that it
>would even eliminate consciousness, I think: a holdover from folk
>psychology, a formerly useful but now useless fiction, like belief in
>witches, goblins, etc., and scientifically ridiculous. Consciousness is,
>wrt hard science, a wholly superfluous hypothesis.)
So I was wondering how the diverse advocates of TE on this list think
about either souls or freedom in light of science.
( I realize dualism is not necc. required for faith but the "soul" still
seems a problem) BTW this is not a challenge to TE as I am more and more
there these days so if we could avoid the banterfest on this one and just
assume TE for this thread (if anyone takes it) that would be cool,