European idealist philosophers thought that reality was fundamentally conceptual, not material, but also that the concepts, e.g., Platonic Ideas or Hegelian categories, were not conscious. Thus, these philosophers held that an unconscious reality preceded consciousness and therefore they did not differ significantly from materialists. My Hegelian lecturer believed that God thought the categories as the template for creating a world but Hegel did not think that.
Guthrie rightly says that a mind is generated by an entire body, not just by a brain, then adds that, if the molecular encoding of a mind can be mapped or imposed onto a specially designed neural network composed of an electronic or photonic matrix, then it might be possible to learn what a mind really is and then to "'...generate one from scratch.'" (p. 164)
This conversation anticipates two technological advances that will occur later in the history: downloaded personalities and conscious AIs.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Fascinating to read about in science fiction, but I remain skeptical that downloading human personalities into artificial neural networks or creating AIs are even possible.
Sean
Sean,
If human consciousness requires an immaterial soul, then it cannot be reproduced materially whereas, if such consciousness is generated by material processes in the brain, then duplication of those processes should duplicate human consciousness.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I do believe the human personality or "consciousness" requires an immaterial, immortal soul. So, it's your first alternative which I believe to be true.
Sean
Sean,
Philosophers clarify concepts - then continue to disagree about them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Very true! And I wonder how you and St. Thomas Aquinas would debate this! See Anthony Boucher's "Balaam," where a Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi discuss what makes a man to BE a man on Mars.
Sean
Sean,
First, I would argue to St. Thomas that St Paul believed that a dead body is not due to be reunited with a soul. Instead, it is like a seed that can go into the earth to be raised up as a new kind of "spiritual" body - a Biblical concept that is entirely different from the Platonic soul which in fact wants to get away from the body.
Secondly, I would argue lots of other things as well.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
For all we know St. Thomas might well have discussed this very issue in his SUMMAS. I cannot say either way because I have read regrettably little of St. Thomas.
Also, you have touched here on a point where orthodox Christian philosophers would have disagreed with Plato. That is, they would not have agreed that the fleshly or material body is somehow unworthy of the soul, something which is something to be "gotten away" from. They would have argued that all that exists is, at least in its origins or beginnings, good. My belief is that the Catholic concept of the soul is a merging of what both the Bible and Plato/Aristotle taught (minus any disparaging of matter).
Sean
Sean,
Aristotle said that the soul was "the form of the body," not separate from it.
A separate soul leads more naturally to the idea of reincarnation.
Identification of the self with the body leads to the idea of resurrection.
We have discussed Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Wittgenstein etc as well as Indian philosophy. See the post, "Philosophy And SF," Saturday, 16 June 2018.
Paul.
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