Walden Pod

Ralph Stefan Weir and Ben Watkins debate whether there is a sound argument from mental causation to materialism. Is the interaction problem for substance dualism fake or fatal? 

My interview with Dr. Weir on substance dualism:   • You Are A Soul — w/ Ralph Stefan Weir  

Dr. Ralph Stefan Weir is the author of The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. He teaches philosophy at the University of Lincoln and is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. 

Ben Watkins is the co-host of the excellent philosophy of religion podcast, Real Atheology   / @realatheology  

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I respond briefly to Alex O'Conner's free will skepticism, specifically to an objection attributed to Schopenhauer: You can do what you will, but you can't will what you will. While I agree that we can't have ultimate responsibility for our actions, I think we can be responsible for our actions. Being the author of one's actions doesn't require anything magical, just that we are (in some sense) the source of what we do and that we (in some sense) could have done otherwise. As long as we have sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise, I think we have free will; and I think determinism is fatal to neither of these criteria. In defense of alternative possibilities, I appeal to Kadri Vihvelin's dispositional compatibilism, the thesis that "the most fundamental free will facts are facts about our causal powers (for instance, our power to decide on the basis of deliberation) and that our causal powers differ in complexity but not in kind from dispositions like fragility, elasticity, and flammability."

Kadri Vihvelin on Dispositional Compatibilism

Interview with Kadri Vihvelin 

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Durham University hosted a conference about panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism last November, and I was graciously given the opportunity to respond to Joanna Leidenhag and Tim Mulgan. Professor Leidenhag and Professor Mulgan both spoke about alternative models of theism, and I offered a few thoughts and objections to their respective models of God. 

On Durham's website, you can listen to all the full lectures from the event: https://sites.google.com/view/panpsychismandpanentheism/project-events/durham-workshop?authuser=0

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00:00 Emerson Green 

15:40 Joanna Leidenhag 

23:37 Tim Mulgan 

31:00 Q&A

We explore the nature of dreams. We discuss Daniel Dennett's cassette theory, which questions whether dreams are genuine experiences that occur during sleep, instead suggesting that dreams are spontaneous memory insertions at awakening. This theory contrasts with the common view that dreams involve phenomenal states in real time. However, lucid dreaming challenges the cassette theory. We also question the reality of "dreamless sleep" and examine prophetic, precognitive, and shared dreams. 

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We explore Paul Draper's "psychological aether theory" or "aetherism". In addition to gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak interactions, there is a fifth fundamental interaction: A field of consciousness, a world-soul or mental aether that interacts with our brains. 

"How does the brain produce the mind? It doesn't. Instead, mentality exists quite independently of the brain."

Draper's recent work on aetherism is a refinement of a view proposed by William James in his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality. James doesn't deny that thought is a function of the brain. Rather, he challenges the assumption that the function in question is one of production. He defends what he calls the "transmissive function" view over the theory that thought is produced by the brain. For James, consciousness pre-exists, with our brain giving finite human shape to experience, like the pipes of an organ shape the trembling air as it escapes from the organ's air-chest. Aetherism can explain the tight correlation between mental and physical states while allowing for their conceptual and ontological distinction, and dispensing with the need for any spontaneous production of consciousness de novo by the brain. 

Both Draper and James recognize that aetherism leaves the door open to an afterlife, as well as certain psi phenomena. As Draper puts it, "perhaps William James was right to challenge the confidence that most philosophers and scientists have that there is no life after death. For if we don't know that aetherism is false, then we don't actually know that the subject of our psychological properties does not continue to exist after our bodies are destroyed.” 

William James - Human Immortality 

Paul Draper - Psychological Aether Theory

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Monistic Idealism's video

Both Sides Brigade - Interacting with the Interaction Problem

My dualism playlist

Majesty of Reason on the interaction problem

You Are A Soul w/ Ralph Stefan Weir

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We dive into the philosophy of personal identity, exploring whether a consistent "self" persists through time despite physical and mental changes. Is there an essential core that endures transformations? We examine the Ship of Theseus, the deadly and murderous teletransporter which murders people, the “no self” view associated with Hume, mind uploading, Ralph Stefan Weir’s dilemma for transhumanists, and whether Socrates could have been an alligator.

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Explore zombieland with Philip Goff and I as we discuss type-b physicalism, the link between conceivability and possibility, Goff’s differences with David Chalmers, and much else related to the conceivability argument against materialism.

First Zombie Argument Video

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Ralph Stefan Weir joins me to discuss his book, The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. We talk about the myth of the interaction problem, the connection between theism and the soul, the implausibility of property dualism, substance dualism in Eastern thought, the causal closure argument and energy conservation, a posteriori necessities, modal rationalism, panpsychism and idealism, personal identity, transhumanism, mind-uploading, split brain cases, whether souls are eternal, and much else. 

Dustin Crummett's interview with Dr. Weir

. . .

For reference, here are the two arguments from the book we spent the most time on:

DISEMBODIMENT ARGUMENT

(i) The phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical.

(ii) If the phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical, then they do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.

(iii) Therefore, the phenomenal facts do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.


PARITY ARGUMENT

(i) If you accept the conceivability argument, you must accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument.

(ii) If you accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.

(iii) Therefore, if you accept the conceivability argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.

. . .

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I am once again begging apologists to stop treating atheism and materialism as interchangeable concepts. It's intellectual laziness at best and dishonesty at worst.

This was originally a short video posted on my youtube channel.

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