Which View that You’ve Defended are You MOST Certain of? (Richard Swinburne)
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- čas přidán 26. 03. 2018
- Richard Swinburne answers which philosophical view he's defended that he's most certain of. You might be surprised by his answer!
Link to the full interview: • My Interview with Rich...
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He's a genius.
@Ncdcfan Come to orthodoxy brother. Catholic is the closest faith to orthodoxy, however orthodoxy is seeing God in everything, living with God, endless prayer, ascetics monks etc. We admit Catholic church has the closest faith but there are some wrong dogmas in the Catholic Church
I'm convinced by the second argument he gave starting at 6:05. I thought it was brilliant. I have kind of had similar thoughts before but could never have put it so succinctly.
I'm sorry, but what possible sense could it make to say of two living things (say, two dogs) that it does or doesn't make a difference if one had the other's body? Even the phrase of "having a body" is misleading, but how much more so adding "what if this dog had that other dog's body"?? That is a meaningless question. Dogs are living organisms, and they "have bodies" only in the sense that there are bodily/physical properties and capacities that can be ascribed to them. They are not owners of a piece of physical property called "their body", such that it makes any sense to ask if they could own another one.
@@Mentat1231 The illustration is stronger and more evident if it is you and I that swap bodies, rather than two random dogs. If two dogs were to be in different bodies it wouldn't make any difference to us. But if you were in my body, it would be completely different for you because you would be experiencing my life and body instead of your own.
@@andrewmiller6051
Yes, of course, but I wasn't arguing about how much difference it would make; I was showing that the phrase "if you were in my body" makes no sense. I am a living organism, just like a dog is. The only way for me to be in someone else's body is (quite macabre) to wear their cadaver over my own body. It has no meaning to talk of "swapping" bodies, since we do not "have" any bodies in the sense that we have cell phones. "Having" a body just means there are descriptions of me that involve corporeal terms. Just like "having" a talent is really a description me (not some object that I own).
@Jon
I'm just talking about what the term "having a body" means in normal speech. Let me ask you: What do you think it means when we say a dog "has a fat body", or that it died and what's on the floor is "its body"? No one thinks the dog is a dualistic being that owned a body, do they? And no one thinks it makes any sense to ask about it "having" some other dog's body, do they? So, why should it make sense of human organisms? What do you imagine when you think of "having another human's body"?
Let me ask you all this additional question, please (since I agree Swinburne is brilliant; I just don't follow him here): What does the question "which of them will be me" mean, in the thought experiment about the "past life"? Doesn't it just mean, "will I progress and grow to be describable in this way or that way?" If so, how is that anything like being in some other body?? It seems just like a seed growing into a tree.
Swinburne: substance dualism
Me, an idealist: ah heck
Facts HAHA
Really it was just an argument against materialism/physicalism, but I had the same reaction before listening further lol
Put it another way, the law of identity is a necessary element of logic. It is true in every possible world. 2+2 is always identical to 4 for example.
There is at least one conceivable world where I am not identical with my body. For example, I'm 100% sure that I exist, but I'm not 100% sure that my body and the external world exist. it's at least possible that I could be in some kind of simulation that makes me think that all of these things exist. So although I can be certain that my mind exists, I cannot be certain that parts of the brain like the prefrontal cortex, etc exist because knowing that would require the reality of the external world.
But if it's true that that's at least possible, then it means that in that world I would not be identical to my body. But if I identity is necessary and applies to all possible worlds, then if I am not identical to my body in one possible world, then I'm not identical to my body in any possible world. Therefore, I'm not identical to my brain and body.
I find his argument for substance dualism completely unconvincing. Concerning the operation, I think they'd both be me. So what if I don't know what 'the other one' is doing? I presently lack all sorts of knowledge about myself. Here's a thought experiment: I can imagine having a curious disorder (it seems metaphysically possible, anyway) that I have two personalities, one that is active Monday, Wednesday and Friday (me-A), and the other Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (me-B). I'm unconscious on Sundays. Me-A only retains perception and memory from me-A, and me-B from me-B. But both are obviously me. I don't see why the 'simultaneity' of me-A and me-B would change anything. It's just a matter of setting a different schedule.
@Jon I'm pretty sure I understand the argument. I read Swinburne's book "Mind, Brain, and Free Will" and he's a good writer and a clear thinker, and I believe I followed most of his arguments. I just don't share his intuitions, and this argument in particular is an intuition pump. If the intuitions don't match, I don't think the argument will work.
I'm not sure why it follows from Me-A not being able to know the thoughts of Me-B that Me-A and Me-B are not both me. But even if this follows, I don't accept the premise. Me-A can know what Me-B is thinking, and vice versa. God could rejoin the hemispheres, maybe an operation could as well, and both the thought patterns of Me-A and Me-B could be copied onto silicon and reintegrated. However impractical, I don't see why any of these outcomes is metaphysically impossible.
Your analogy is very ambiguous in the sense that it doesn't tell whether me a and me b are the same owner of the 2 distinct mental life's aka the conscious subject that has access to them.
If not then your analogy fails to show how swinburnes analogy fails as there would be 2 yous on your analogy
And if yes then the analogy is irrelevant since on swinburnes analogy there are 2 brains who differ in mental life and are hence different subjects who have those mental lives (impressions and ideas can't be both present and not present in the first person perspective of the subject)
@@philo2903 I think there's one me in two places and two sets of memories. But that might happen anyway over time, if I get hit on the head, or even when I forget something about a vacation I was on. Since all these events are part of my singular history (even if they are spatially separated), I believe that it all gets restored in the new heavens and new Earth. God will rejoin bodies, so that my body is fractured, in two very separate places, and my memories are fractured, into two sets, they will be rejoined. LIkewise, Me-A and Me-B are both really, totally, completely me, but I'm damaged, and will be made whole.
In other words, there really aren't two distinct mental lives for Me-A and Me-B. There's a single mental life that I have, but it turns out that I am not aware of one half of it on Monday, and I'm not aware of the other half on Tuesday. Or, if my hemispheres get separated, and I end up living in Wyoming and Florida, then when I'm in Florida, I'm not aware of my life while I'm in Wyoming. Both sets of experiences are totally mine, and there is only one me. Just not one me in one place.
What? I'm a Christian, but doesn't he beg the question that there's a soul whenever he introduced the idea that there's a "me" and "you"?
Substance Dualism opens up to the identity problem and concedes too much with regards to the metaphysical views of early modern philosophy.
Our true essence is spiritual not physical,our soul is driving the body not the other way around.
Doesn't this argument completely beg the question? By asking which one of the two guys, if any, will be "you", he already presupposes that there is some persistent "you" to be found somewhere.
I think he can/would provide a defense of a persistent "you" given the time or the specific question. That being said, the "persistent you" has got to fall under the category of beliefs that we can't prove but that we are all rational in believing (like our belief in other minds, or that the universe wasn't created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of history). Literally everything we perceive is processed through this belief in me - things happen to me, I see things, I hear things, I.... To deny this persistent self would require some amazing evidence which itself would be processed by the assumed person.
It's the same idea as the Ship of Theseus. If half of his brain is gone, is he the same person? Terrible argument for the existence of anything beyond the body.
@@uabjf I don't think it is a terrible question and here is why. If you simply lost half your brain, would you still be you? I think most of us would say yes. If we then cloned the rest of your body because it was greatly injured, and moved your brain to the new body and rid us of the old, would it still be you? Surely you would have differences, but I think we would still consider it you. Finally, if we split the brain at the beginning instead of you having lost the brain, and followed the same process, which of the two would be you?
@@rjonesx If I lost half my brain, I definitely _wouldn't_ be "me" anymore. The same applies regularly to people who have a brain tumor or dimentia. Others rightfully say things like "he wasn't himself anymore." I'd personally go further and say that I'm not the same person I was when I was in high school, or college, or even last week. There's continuity, but to say a person is the same, or that two entities that each have half of the same brain is like saying that two buildings that we're build using bricks from a wall are still the wall.
@@uabjf Go ahead a little further in your materialistic dehumanization. Take the argument to its proper conclusion. It's not that you wouldn't be you if you lost half your brain or that you are not the same you that you were in high school/college, etc. There's no you in the first place. The self is an illusion on this view. Not only does materialism eliminate meaning, free will, love, and everything else that makes life worth living, it annihilates the self. Great worldview to build a society on!
The two hemispheres do not perform the same function,arguably, which is explained in the concept of lateralization
Some knowledge about neuroscience would probably effect how one thinks about the argument
The soulific substance will be damaged in different ways by removing parts of the tissue, I do not agree with the argument
Very little eye contact.
and?
He's looking towards his mental sketchpad
This argument only works as a counter to the brain-centric, reductionist approach to living beings that is so popular today. A touch of Wittgenstein, a dose of Kenny/Hacker, and a sprinkle of Heidegger and/or Merleau-Ponty would solve this with alarming ease. You are a living animal organism, not a brain. And personhood is an ethical/social matter. So, the "something else" is just what we would always use to say this picture of a kitten is of the very same being as this old cat over here, but that picture of a kitten is of some other creature altogether.
isn't that still reductionism?
I never for one second think of myself as an ethical/social construct. If everybody else dies and I'm left alone in the world, I'll still live.
you certainly don't know what you are saying
@@pathfinder2557
I wish I'd seen these responses before, so I could have replied. I'm not saying we are social or ethical constructs, as one commenter misunderstood. I'm saying the ascription of "personhood" is not a substance ascription, but a social one. And yes, we are biological organisms of the species homo sapiens. I don't think I'm saying anything very radical there either.
I gave the references because spelling out everything takes quite a long time. But, to give just a couple of quick points:
1) Postulating immaterial minds which just are conscious (no explanation of how; they just are) offers nothing explanatory at all. It adds a bunch of ontological baggage (including the problems Kant pointed out about distinguishing one from the other) for no explanatory benefit whatsoever. If you can say "it just is conscious" as a sort of first-order property, then you can say that of living things and skip the souls altogether.
2) The conceptual framework in which talk of consciousness, knowledge, and other such mental capacities makes sense is in ascribing these properties to living creatures. Only of something that could in principle demonstrate the behavioral criteria for ascription does it make any sense at all to ascribe the property (whether the thing is always manifesting the behavior in each case or not). Thus it makes no sense to say of a rock that it is conscious or unconscious, sighted or blind, etc. The meanings of those terms are parasitic on the behaviors, and a rock could not even in principle manifest those behaviors. I would add, neither can a non-material soul. What would it even mean to say that such a thing has had its attention caught and held by something, or that it falls asleep and then wakes, or that it moves its eyes closer to see something...? Meaningless, right? So then it is not the kind of thing for which such properties make any sense.
Again, there is a LOT more to be said. Which is why I recommended the writing in the first post. I apologize for not seeing these replies before.
I don't see any argument here. Seems to me more like, "I feel there is something beyond this physical stuff that is me, therefore there is."
@Anthony Burton formulate it if philosophy is your strong suit.
@Straight White Male oh please condescendingly school me, my dear.