[extropy-chat] Role of MWI and Time Travel

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 25, 2006, at 12:28 PM, Russell Wallace wrote:

> 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.

Sorry but soul is already taken and means that non-material self  
independent of the body that enters the body somewhere around birth  
and survives the death of the body without us having to invent any  
new tech like uploading or whatever.  It is already immortal  
according to all the religions of the world that grant an  
individualized self.  Buddhism quibbles.  Please let's not label what  
we mean by using this old word with tons of tired baggage.

>
> 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!
>

Most of that stuff isn't biblical either for the negligible amount  
that is worth.  There is nothing in there about mass/energy of the  
soul.   And why are we having this conversation anyway?

>

> 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.
>

We don't agree with the mystical immaterial soul of yesteryear.   
There is no reason to cause confusion by pretending we do or that  
science, by gum, as proved it is real after all.  This simply leads  
our siblings into further error.  There is something in the bible  
about that.


> 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.
>

They have a different basis for anything remotely like "free will",  
yes.   Your working backwards practice is bound to generate errors  
and be intellectually dangerous as it starts with what it wants to be  
true and works backward to attempt to find some not too unpalatable  
way to support it.

- samantha


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