Footnote cP28

cP28. Donald Mackay, an information theorist and physicist, counters the Cartesian notion of Karl Popper and John Eccles that the brain must be open to non-physical influences if mental activity is to be effective. Consider a computer set up to solve a mathematical equation.

The mathematician means by this that the behaviour of the computer is determined by the equation he wants to solve; were it not so, it would be of no interest to him. On the other hand, if we were to ask a computer engineer what is happening in the computer, he could easily demonstrate that every physical event in it was determined (same word) by the laws of physics as applied to the physical components. Any appearance of conflict here would be quite illusory. There is no need for a computer to be "open to non-physical influences" in order that its behavior may be determined by a (non-physical) equation as well as the laws of physics. The two "claims to determination" here are not mutually exclusive; rather they are complementary.

But, MacKay adds, the analogy is limited by the fact that we (unlike the computer) are conscious agents.

Mackay makes the interesting point that, as a computer program may be "embodied" in different physical machines,

mechanistic brain science would seem to raise ... little objection to the hope of eternal life expressed in biblical Christian doctrine, with its characteristic emphasis on the "resurrection" (not to be confused with the resuscitation) of the body. The destruction of our present embodiment sets no logical barrier to our being re-embodied, perhaps in a quite different medium, if our Creator so wishes.

The quotations are from Mackay's contribution to The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Richard L. Gregory, ed. (Oxford 1987) as cited in the anthology Immortality, Paul Edwards, ed. (Prometheus 1997). Mackay in the first quotation refers to The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism by Popper and Eccles (Springer-Verlag 1977).

I would like to hone the notion of determinism by arguing that the word is used as an explanation for a pattern, in which sub-pattern A is judged to necessarily be followed by sub-pattern B. The "laws of physics" are explanations, reinforced with mathematics, that explain and thus predict that phenomenon A "must" be followed by phenomenon B. When a set of such explanations accounts for a plenitude of phenomena, it is considered a good theory, or a very useful explanation. Of course, modern physics relies on the uniformity and regularity of nature as an article of faith -- though quantum weirdness undermines that creed at least somewhat.

No physical explanation, it seems to me, can ever get at the fundamental nitty gritty of the cosmos's animation. That is beyond human ken, as far as I can tell.

As for Mackay's thought on resurrection implying the possibility of some computer program -- i.e. soul -- providing self-identity from one embodiment to the next, I would like to stretch that idea a bit more by drawing an analogy between the universal Turing machine (UTM), which can be set to any computable program. The UTM, I suppose, would be analogous to an Oversoul -- or in other word, God. There is an infinitude of possible programs (with the 7 billion of the human variety now present with us comprising an infinitesimally small percentage of that set). So, following Mackay, we might say it is within logic to say that while possibly most programs exist only transiently (though they subsist in the Platonic set of possibilities), the "human" TM programs either continue forever or indefinitely. Further, we can imagine the UTM resetting some of the conditions on the continuing TMs (us) to improve their efficiency (transformed by the renewing of their minds).

Another point: Just as there is no reason that a UTM cannot inhabit a number of computers simultaneously, what is the objection to the Oversoul/God being expressed in many embodiments? Similarly, as a TM can be simultaneously poly-local, what is the objection to human bi- or poly-localism?

Obviously, we must not lose sight of the fact that all this expresses only rough analogies offered for the purpose of saying that not only do non-physical entities exist -- or subsist -- but that there is no logical reason to deny Christian verities merely on the basis of physicalism.

---

Footnote AT20

AT20. John Hick gives a useful summary of the Ryle/dualism situation:

The body-soul distinction, first formulated as a philosophical doctrine in ancient Greece, was baptized into Christianity, ran through the medieval period, and entered the modern world with the public status of a self-evident truth when it was redefined in the seventeenth century by Descartes. Since World War II, however, the Cartesian mind-matter dualism, having been taken for granted for many centuries, has been sharply criticized by philosophers of the contemporary analytical school. It is argued  [particularly by Ryle] that the words that describe mental characteristics and operations -- such as "intelligent," "thoughtful," "carefree," "happy," "calculating" and the like -- apply in practice to types of human behavior and to behavioral dispositions. They refer to the empirical individual, the observable human being who is born and grows and acts and feels and dies, and not to the shadowy proceedings of a "ghost in the machine."

---

Thus, the Old Testament scholar, J. Pedersen, says of the Hebrews that for them "the body is the soul in its outward form."

 Philosophy of Religion
by John Hicks
(Prentice Hall 1963; 2d ed. 1973)

---

There was of course quite a bit of controversy over Descartesian dualism in the 17th and 18th centuries, as British and then French thinkers proposed various forms of materialism (such as resurrection of the material body and material soul), but the general public retained its belief in the immaterial soul, a belief which tended to fall off after World War II. There has also been a great deal of difficulty over the distinction, if any, between the soul and the mind. Descartes essentially saw no distinction, and even today it is popularly assumed that the mind -- purified -- will carry on pretty much as on earth. But this point gives rise to various subtleties which we do not go into here.

---

Footnote Wn53

Wn53. Mind and Body -- The Theories of Their Relation by Alexander Bain (D. Appleton 1873).

---

Footnote Bn47

Bn47.  In 1709, Jean La Placette upbraided Spinoza thus:

once one has stated that there is no liberty in the world and that men only do what they cannot prevent themselves doing, it is obvious they are no more worthy of praise or blame for anything they do than is a stone falling from above when what held it up is removed... In short, wherever there is absolute physical necessity, there cannot be virtue or vice or anything worthy of praise or blame.

Eclaircissemens sur quelques difficultez by Placette, cited in Bodies of Thought -- Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment by Ann Thomson (Oxford 2008).

---

Footnote ar68

ar68. In an essay attributed to Franz Lieber, a 19th Century German-American philosopher, Hegel's monism is described thus:

For Hegel and his true disciples there is no truth, substance, life or intelligence in matter; all is infinite Mind. Thus matter has no reality; it is only the manifestation of Spirit. It is the transitory world of phenomena. Yet it is not a mere ungrounded show but based in our thought-constitution. Such matter will gradually disappear with progress of Spirit. Hegel's science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, God's entirety, and matter's nothingness. For him there are but two realities, God and the Ideas of God, in other words, Spirit and what it shadows forth. Properly, there is no physical science. The principal of science is God, Intelligence and not matter. Therefore science is spiritual, for God is Spirit and the Principle of the universe is man.

Lieber goes on to say that, for Hegel, the account of the resurrection is a religious fable that reveals a deeper truth.

---

The quotation comes from "The Lieber Document" recovered by Walter M. Haushalter and reproduced in his book Mrs. Eddy Purloins from Hegel (A.A. Beauchamp 1936). Haushalter makes a convincing case that the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, cribbed extensively from Lieber's unpublished manuscript after he died in 1872. The first edition of her Science and Health came out in 1875.

Two errors were corrected in the quotation from Haushalter. This was achieved by comparing the printed text with a photograph of the handwritten manuscript supplied by Haushalter. Haushaulter had misread ungrounded as unbounded and unaccountably had inserted an [and] in front of man.

I reprinted Lieber's description because it usefully summarizes an important aspect of Hegel's thought, not because of the controversy regarding the founder of Christian Science.

---

Footnote ip18

ip18. The notion often found in philosophy that "like attracts like" appears to arise from the related assumptions of sympathetic magic. Even the notion that matter, of itself, cannot think is a consequence of that notion. That is, matter attracts matter; spirit attracts spirit.

On the human propensity for sympathetic magic, James Frazer writes,

Here what I wish to impress on you is not so much the difference between the theory and the practice of magic as the distinction between the principles of thought that respectively underlie the two branches of magic which I have called Homœopathic and Contagious. Both principles turn out on analysis to be merely two different misapplications of the association of ideas. Homœopathic magic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity; contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contiguity. Homœopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the same; contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact. But in practice the two branches of magic are often combined ; or, to be more exact, while homœopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself, contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of the homœopathic or imitative principle. Thus abstractly stated, the two things may be a little difficult to grasp. You will readily understand them when they are illustrated by concrete examples. Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete, though certainly not in the abstract, to the crude intelligence not only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere. Both branches of magic, the homœopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from the one to the other by means of what we may conceive as a sort of invisible ether, not unlike that which, I understand, is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty.

Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship
by James Frazer
(Macmillan 1905)

---

Footnote GV25

GV25.  In From Religion to Philosophy (Edward Arnold 1912), F.M. Cornford espouses the view that animism and the associated Olympian gods came after a primitive period of unity with nature. Even the concept of Moira (destiny or fate) came, he speculates, from clan territorial boundaries. In that period all was mana, a magical spectrum embracing the clan member and his whole environment. Cornford writes,

'Soul' and physis are not merely analogous, but identical. The two conceptions — Soul, and ultimate matter — are as yet fused in one, just as we found that at a certain stage mana and the blood-soul were fused in the magical continuum. The later differentiation of the two conceptions will bring out one of the latent contradictions which divide the philosophic schools. As the properties of life come to be distinguished from those of inanimate matter, philosophers will have to make their choice between conceiving the ultimate reality as mind or as matter, as living or as dead. Whichever choice they make, the nature of Soul will still be the same as that of physis.

GV25a. In a footnote, Cornford says,

The case of the Indian  âtman appears to be exactly parallel to that of physis and the individual soul in Greece. The oldest Upanishads recognise only one soul: *It is thy soul, which is within all.’ 'He who, while dwelling in the earth, the water, the fire, in space, wind, heaven, sun, etc., is distinct from them, whose body they are, who rules them all from within, “he is thy soul, the inner guide, the immortal.” . . . This âtman who alone exists is the knowing subject in us . . . and with the knowledge of the âtman , therefore, all is known. . . . The âtman created the universe and then entered into it as soul,’ and this gives rise to the later conception of individual souls, imprisoned in the eternal round of samsâra and needing deliverance. See Deussen, Relig. and Philos. of India, Upanishads, Eng. trans. 1906, p. 257.

GV25b. Cornford theorizes that dualism is traceable in archaic Greece to a period when Orphism supplemented Dionysiasm.

Whether or not this revival [return of Greeks to worship of the sky and celestial bodies] was occasioned by Oriental influence, it is easy to see how well it agrees with the doctrines characteristic of Orphism. The wheel of birth or becoming is now governed by the circling of the starry heaven. From the stars the soul of man is believed to have fallen into the prison of this earthy body, sinking from the upper region of fire and light into the misty darkness of this ‘ roofed-in cave.' The fall is ascribed to some original sin, which entailed expulsion from the purity and perfection of divine existence, and has to be expiated by life on earth and by purgation in the underworld. Caught in the wheel of birth, the soul passes through the forms ol man and beast and plant. But the cycle, instead of going on for ever, is terminated by the limit of the Great Year of ten thousand solar years; at the end of this period, the soul may escape and fly aloft to the fiery heaven whence it came, regaining perfection and divinity. Then a new Great Year begins (for the cycle of Time is endless), and a new world is bom, to pass away in its season, and give place to another.

When we analyse this conception, it becomes clear that the cycle of the Great Year, which must have an astral origin, has been superimposed upon the old cycle of reincarnation. That primitive belief belonged to earth, not to heaven: it taught the revolution of all life or soul in man and nature, passing in an endless round from the underworld into the light of day, and back again. There was no hope or possibility of any release; indeed, such an idea would have no meaning, since the individual soul did not persist after death, but was reabsorbed in the one life of all things. No part or fragment of this life had any separate persistence. It had not come from the  æther, and could not fly off thither; it came from earth, and returned to earth again. In the later doctrine, a series of such periods is fitted into a larger period or Great Year, based upon astronomical theories, probably of Babylonian origin, of the length of time required for all the heavenly bodies, in their various revolutions, to come back to the same relative positions. The focus is thus shifted from the annual recurrence of earthly life to the periodicity of the stars; and with this change goes the doctrine that, while the body is of earth, the soul comes from the starry sky and claims to be of heavenly descent.

This contrast brings out what seems to be the essential difler- ence between the ' Dionysiac' view of immortality (as we may call it) and the Orphic. Orphism is focused on the individual soul, its heavenly origin and immutable nature, and its persis- tence, as an individual, throughout the round of incarnations. It is 'an exile from God and a wanderer ' ; and it is reunited with God, and with other souls, only after its final escape at the end of the Great Year. Hence, the Orphic is preoccupied with the salvation, by purifying rites, of his individual soul.

The insistence on the individual soul, perhaps, gives us the psychological key to the phenomena of Orphism. The cosmic dualism, with its contrast of the principles of light and darkness, identified with good and evil, reflects outwards upon the universe that inner sense of the double nature of man and the war in our members, which is called the ‘sense of sin.' It is also the sense of separation from ‘God,' which goes with the intense desire for reunion. We may, perhaps, see the psychological cause of all this in the development of self-conscious individuality, which necessarily entails a feeling of isolation from the common life, and at the same time an increasing conflict between self-assertive instincts and that part of the common consciousness which resides in each of us, and is called  'conscience.’  If this is so, it is significant that the conflict is represented as between 'body ' and ‘soul.' To ‘body' are assigned those senses and lusts whose insurrection destroys the inward harmony. ‘Soul ’ still covers the field of the common consciousness, or ‘ conscience ' ; but it has shrunk from being the pervasive soul of the whole group to being one among an aggregate of individual selves, weakened by their novel isolation, and always longing for the old undivided conununion.

---