The latest feedback on
Immortal
Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.
At Twitter/X, theologian Ulrich Lehner
writes: “A
wonderful book. Sharply sharply argued, readable, and always illuminating.” Szilvay Gergely kindly
reviews
the book in the Hungarian magazine
Mandiner. From the review: “Feser… can argue
surprisingly effectively and convincingly… If you considered the immortality of
the soul (and the whole person) to be an unsupported myth, then Feser shows
that this is not the case.”
A Hungarian review? WOW, that's pretty good Ed!
ReplyDeleteIt makes me happy to see that your work is so influential that it is crossing the borders of the linguistic world (and in a sense, it's no surprise coming from a talented and singular philosopher such as you). Congratulations, boss!
I hope that someday we can translate your incredible Immortal Souls to Brazilian Portuguese, so more people can come to see the force of the A-T view when it comes to explaining human nature.
What does the book have to say regarding the Jehovah's Witnesses doctrine of the conditional immortality of the soul, which might be a half-finite object?
ReplyDeleteGreat to see the reviews Prof!
ReplyDeleteI think you should do a Thomistic Institute talk on what constitutes actual intelligence and also highlighting how "Artificial Intelligence" is essentially a simulation.
I liked the fact that in your book, you make the point that just because it isn't "real intelligence" does not mean that we don't have to take precautions while developing the technology. We can take care while still acknowledging it is not intelligence.
I think your background as a renowned philosopher of mind and your affinity for sci-fi themes makes you uniquely positioned to tackle this subject.
Always the sober middle ground!
Cheers!
Good idea, Norm.
DeleteAlso with the advent of Neuralink , I think it would be important for Prof to use it to show that, how mind and body are two aspects of the same substance, that's why it isn't surprising that a person with a chip integrated into his motor cortex is able to control a robotic arm with mere signals from his brain.
DeleteOur body is not a separate substance, we are our bodies, that's why we experience it as such, as part of ourselves
The question about substance dualism is also very important and I agree with you.
DeleteAlso, your comment reminds me of when one guy that I used to work with said that "If we could perform a brain transplant, how much that fact would affect (in a negative way) religions ." Jokingly, I replied "Only the religions that are figments of your mind would be affected." Sincerely, I don't know what's worse nowadays: the reductionist ideal that took over the minds of *educated* persons, or, the cult around AI (notice that both ideas end up contradicting one another in practice because reductionism ends up reducing the person to the "nothing but" cliché, and AI ends up transforming itself into a new reality irreducible to its parts -- something wrongly analogous as prime matter taking a new substantial form).
Long ago I heard a lecture from Michael Gorman and he was quoting a passage from a book he read that said something along the lines of "Every generation (or every century) has an idea that seems rightmost than any other," and I think that our generation has blended both the idealism behind AI and the old reductionism.
Even when I was in the grip of the materialist ideology, I never took artificial intelligence seriously. It was so obvious even back then that someone was doing the machine or computer do the things it does (implicitly I was thinking in terms of the artificial x natural distinction that Aristotle did back in his day). I really don't know what people have in mind (besides the commitment to a materialistic concept of mind) when they try to attribute intelligence to a computer.
Dualism is more complicated. I'm Brazilian, and here people tend to believe quite a lot in reincarnation and all the bogus behind it. I think that you nailed the point when you said that we are our bodies. There is a huge difference between moving a pen and moving one's arm. But I guess that some people find the idea of the soul as a separate thing and reincarnation very tasty for the mind when in fact it's just fancy wishful thinking created (or forced into) by erroneous metaphysical views (either it be by treating matter mechanistically or by trying to metaphysically mutilate the human person into various distinct pieces).
I think that having people like Ed around is truly a gift for our generation. I am really thankful to him and all his work for bringing a sober middle ground position amidst all the craziness we have nowadays.
Vini
DeleteVery Interesting Commentary.
I think that, as things currently stand with regards to the general perception, there's an implicit recognition that Chalmer's style substance dualism has won the day, so there isn't even any attempt or hardly any attempts to try and explain it in mathematical terms. It was always bound to fail as Prof has shown consistently for almost two decades now. The Qualitative aspects of reality were never going to be explained in Purely Quantitative language. All attempts to do so usually collapse into eliminativism or some problematic form of dualism, neither of which are compatible with the tenets of empirical science.(some of those tenets being problematic themselves like the expectation of having to explain everything in abstract quantitative language)
The problem is that because Chalmer's style dualism seems to have won out implicitly, people have shifted focus from consciousness to what they think is "intelligence".
This I think is in part because there isn't as much popular familiarity with the arguments of philosophers like Kripke and it's logical entailments, this might be in part because Kripke himself never presented them in conjunction with the debates of dualism nor carried them through to their logical conclusion, but Prof Feser's 2013 article on Ross did point out that such arguments imply the existence of an immaterial mind.
The battle for consciousness was important, but it was never really high stakes for traditional thrusts compared to intelligence. Non human animals are also obviously conscious.
The battle for intellect has begun and making sure that the right arguments within the field are put forth is of utmost importance. And I can say with complete confidence that Dr Feser's latest book Immortal Souls has done the world a great service in that regard. And in my opinion there was no one better to do so than our esteemed host.
Dr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteWhat made this particular book the lengtheist book you have written to date? Thank you.
For a different perspective, see "Do We Have a Soul? A Debate" by Eric Olson and Aaron Segal, published in 2023 by Routledge. You can click on "preview" and read many pages by Olson who argues we don't have a soul.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.routledge.com/Do-We-Have-a-Soul-A-Debate/Olson-Segal/p/book/9780367333645?srsltid=AfmBOor3PPN3J4e5-2rlOAtnAF51XHiuAsJQgf7e4VFZ4HiEVEPHv34K
Hi Dr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteI'm currently reading and very much enjoying "Immortal Souls", and I have a question. in Ch. 4 on the will, pg. 129, you distinguish willing from desiring or forming an intention to do something. The example you give of going to the liquor store to buy gin is helpful. But couldn't an anti-volitionist argue that this is all accounted for by competing desires? A person could desire to go buy some gin, and also desire to reduce his alcohol consumption and become healthier, but only of those will win out. The mere fact of his having multiple desires can't tell us which of them will be acted upon, but certainly one of them will be, it would seem. Absent some coercive set of circumstances, this person will act on one of his desires, whether that's to go buy gin, or stay home and drink Yoohoo, or go play volleyball. The will doesn't seem to be required as a category to do any explanatory work here.
How would you answer such a reply?