[extropy-chat] Role of MWI and Time Travel

[Russell Wallace]

On 5/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> We ought not willy-nilly redefine ordinary meanings when we can
> avoid it. In some cases where there is something at stake and
> some relevance, it doesn't bother me. But to redefine "soul"
> so that it exists really opens the door.
>
> Next I can say that God exists, and atheists are wrong. I need
> only mean by "God" the laws of nature.


Well, I don't think the two are equivalent... to define "God" as the laws of
nature discards the core of the traditional definition of God (a conscious
agent, a source of moral authority), so that would be just doing violence to
language yes.

But to define "soul" as that nonmaterial entity which is the seat of
consciousness and which could potentially survive the death of the body... I
will suggest that preserves the core of the traditional definition.

What I'm trying to get at here is saying "what's at the core of what people
really meant by this?" and then constructing a definition that is faithful
to that, while using modern knowledge. I mean, sure the Bible doesn't talk
about the soul being a stream of bits - that's because nobody in those days
knew about information theory!

They thought the soul needed to be a _physical_ thing. Yes that's right,
physical; for all the talk about the soul being nonmaterial, the attributes
traditionally assigned to it - only in one place at a time, noncopyable, in
some renditions having mass/energy - are those of a material object!

We could say "you're wrong, there's nothing there, you're just chasing
illusions". But I don't think that's true, because there is something there,
it's something we ourselves believe in and care a lot about otherwise we
wouldn't spend so much time talking about cryonics, uploading etc.

So I'm saying, okay there _is_ something there. Now what's the nature of
that something? Well okay, the ancients were wrong about how it works,
that's not surprising, shoulders of giants and all. But the solution is to
fix the errors and come up with a corrected definition, not to throw out the
whole concept, since we ourselves agree there is a baby in the bath water.

Well, we might have to conduct a poll to see who is right, but
> my guess is that the everyday definition most people would use
> is that of an uncaused decision: namely, most people do believe
> in souls of a non-mechanical nature, and that it is possible
> for a soul to simply decide to do something, and to do it without
> following any laws of physics.
>

So you reckon a typical atheist/materialist and a typical religious believer
have fundamentally different definitions of free will? Perhaps in the sense
of what words they'd say if asked to give a definition... but I'll suggest
that they have basically the same _extension_, the same set of things they'd
call free will vs not... and that's what I've been working off; after all,
the way I arrived at my definition was to start off by asking what's the
extension, and working back from that to an appropriate definition.

I guess it's the same idea, I'm starting off saying, is the traditional view
just fluff to be thrown out wholesale? No, there's something there at the
core, something important that we want to keep. So I constructed what I
think is a corrected definition that uses everything we know today, but
keeps the inherited core of that which is important.
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