Sum of our parts

Hivemind187

Perhaps i will find myself huddling in a dark corner alone on this line of thought as well but here goes.

The soul, or more particularly the "more than the sum of our parts" argument. Is this not total rubbish?

Why must human beings, specifically the theistic ones resort to agrandising themslves in such a way? Why is it not perfectly acceptable to be simply the sum total of our chemistry, biology, psychology and hitstory?

It is again the point that many people reduce the worth of our consituents in order to bestow worship on a mythical creature. In a sense, it does not speak well for that creatures true worth if to bestow credit upon it we must arbitrarily reduce the gross value of ourselves.

Its coming at the problem from a peculiar angle I know but to say that we are more than the sum of our parts presupposes we know the actual value of those parts (experiences, genetics, point in history) and are somehow unsatisfied with the result.

Is it merely a peculiar extention of a self esteem issue? Or is it a hang over form the kind of "mind contrtol" techniques used by religion to make you feel supplicant to a deity being by default (the term "higher being" being no accident)?

Whispered

hmmmm I dont know if I should get involved in this one as I am liable to get slated

Tim Robbins

Hivemind187 wrote: »

Perhaps i will find myself huddling in a dark corner alone on this line of thought as well but here goes.

The soul, or more particularly the "more than the sum of our parts" argument. Is this not total rubbish?

Why must human beings, specifically the theistic ones resort to agrandising themslves in such a way? Why is it not perfectly acceptable to be simply the sum total of our chemistry, biology, psychology and hitstory?

It is again the point that many people reduce the worth of our consituents in order to bestow worship on a mythical creature. In a sense, it does not speak well for that creatures true worth if to bestow credit upon it we must arbitrarily reduce the gross value of ourselves.

Its coming at the problem from a peculiar angle I know but to say that we are more than the sum of our parts presupposes we know the actual value of those parts (experiences, genetics, point in history) and are somehow unsatisfied with the result.

Is it merely a peculiar extention of a self esteem issue? Or is it a hang over form the kind of "mind contrtol" techniques used by religion to make you feel supplicant to a deity being by default (the term "higher being" being no accident)?

As an experiment, submit that to the Metro and see if they publish it.

Dades

If we are just the sum of our parts, it means there is nothing left after the body is destroyed to go 'someplace' else. Hence to make an afterlife viable, there needs to be a bit of us that isn't buried/cremated/mulched so as our journey can continue.

Naturally I don't subscribe to this, but if you're of the mind to believe in an afterlife you kinda have to believe you are more than the sum of your parts.

Hivemind187

Dades wrote: »

If we are just the sum of our parts, it means there is nothing left after the body is destroyed to go 'someplace' else. Hence to make an afterlife viable, there needs to be a bit of us that isn't buried/cremated/mulched so as our journey can continue.

Naturally I don't subscribe to this, but if you're of the mind to believe in an afterlife you kinda have to believe you are more than the sum of your parts.

AHA! But then would that piece that "goes on" after you were to snuff it would, in fact, be a part of you.

Therefore, mathematically speaking, you would still not be "more than the sum of your parts".

No?

Dades

Hivemind187 wrote: »

Therefore, mathematically speaking, you would still not be "more than the sum of your parts".

Mathematically speaking? Good luck with that. Holy Trinity, anyone?!

Sapien

Dades wrote: »

If we are just the sum of our parts, it means there is nothing left after the body is destroyed to go 'someplace' else. Hence to make an afterlife viable, there needs to be a bit of us that isn't buried/cremated/mulched so as our journey can continue.

Naturally I don't subscribe to this, but if you're of the mind to believe in an afterlife you kinda have to believe you are more than the sum of your parts.

The "more than the sum of its parts", or emergent property idea has no particular relationship with ideas of the afterlife. It is not so closely coterminous with the concept of the soul as you chaps seem to be treating it. Firstly, theists do not necessarily believe that the soul is an emergent property - often rather a discrete part, or invisible organ of a person. Secondly, there is no requirement for an emergent property to survive the destruction of the system from which it emerges. In fact, that would need a whole lot of explaining.

Emergentist concepts such as this are more commonly used to approach the problem of consciousness - which, though often equated with the soul, is a very different thing. While emergentism isn't as comfortable to modern rationalist thinkers as faithful reductionism, it would be rash to throw it in with superstition and religiosity.

eoin5

A bit of an aside to the scientific end of things and for a more philosophical approach:

One idea is that we are all part of the same being, so we are the parts of humankind. I know it seems like an arbitary generalisation but its something worth thinking about I think.

Grant Morrison addressed this in his 'interesting' speech at disinfo.con :rolleyes:. He said if you think of humankind as a hand stretching across time then you can imagine each person at the present to be a cross section of a finger from the same hand, so we are not really individuals but we are all part of the same organism, man. If you consider this to be possible, the concept of an individual soul can be replaced with other possibilities such as your 'self' could be partially contained in within others, whether you are dead or alive.

Personally I dont buy it but I think its more believable than this individual soul lark.

lookinforpicnic

Hivemind187 wrote: »

but to say that we are more than the sum of our parts presupposes we know the actual value of those parts

And what parts they are... much recent work in philosophy and cognitive science make the argument that it is not easy to define "where the mind stops and the rest world begins" (Andy Clark), in that the self is not just some sort of coalition between neural systems but that it is literally extended out into the body and world (including the social world). The supernatural statement that your soul may live on in other people may be closer to the truth than what contemporary neuroscience would tell us i.e. that the illusive 'I' is in the brain.

Asiaprod

Nice post Sapien.
For myself, I would look to an explanation that is taught in Buddism.
Take two candles, one that is just about to go out and a brand new one. Using the burned down candle light the new candle. The old candle goes out, but the new one burns on. Without the old candle the new one could not light? Does that imply there was a dependency? Does that imply that something passed from the old to the new. The answer of course depends on ones own faith or belief, but it is an interesting example.

Hivemind187

Asiaprod wrote: »

Nice post Sapien.
For myself, I would look to an explanation that is taught in Buddism.
Take two candles, one that is just about to go out and a brand new one. Using the burned down candle light the new candle. The old candle goes out, but the new one burns on. Without the old candle the new one could not light? Does that imply there was a dependency? Does that imply that something passed from the old to the new. The answer of course depends on ones own faith or belief, but it is an interesting example.

That is suggesting more than is there surely.

Consider that the requirement for a soul is not necessary for the "spirit" (for lack of a better term and used in its artistic sense rather than the supernatural) to live on through other people.

For example, in LaVeyan Satanism, the only "afterlife" is "eternal life through fulfillment of the ego" or more basically, achieving enough that you st out to do to make your mark on the world and other people so that your philosophies, ethics etc will be imitated by others after your death. Eternity through homage I suppose.

The candles thing I admit is very pretty and quite eloquent in a kind of Kane-in-Kung-Fu kind of way. I just dont see why it should be a "soul" rather than education, teaching or guidance or, in fact, DNA.

Not arguing with you Asiaprod, just disagreeing over the implications of the metaphor.

Hivemind187

lookinforpicnic wrote: »

And what parts they are... much recent work in philosophy and cognitive science make the argument that it is not easy to define "where the mind stops and the rest world begins" (Andy Clark), in that the self is not just some sort of coalition between neural systems but that it is literally extended out into the body and world (including the social world). The supernatural statement that your soul may live on in other people may be closer to the truth than what contemporary neuroscience would tell us i.e. that the illusive 'I' is in the brain.

Kind of missing the point really. The cognitive "I" is no more a manifestation of the devine or the supernatural (that which is beyond the natural) than an arm or a leg. It is the cumulative expression of psychology and biology the genotype and the phenotype. Philosophical musings on theological constructs aside, if the cognitive "I" is somehow more than the projection of the above mentioned - where does the additional come from? Why is it not measurable? Why would it appear for all intents and purposes to be utterly vestigial?

While it is nice to say that as human beings capable of creating art etc that we are more than simple bags of meat it is intellectually dishonest since no evidence to the contrary exists (or at least has been shown here).

Joe1919

I read John Searle's book 'Mind' lately and although he is an atheist and a materialist, he is critical of material Reductionism or the idea that we are the 'sum of the parts' when it comes to explaining consciousness.
In many ways he tries to re-incorporate some aspects of dualism into his theory of consciousness.

lookinforpicnic

Hivemind187 wrote: »

Kind of missing the point really. The cognitive "I" is no more a manifestation of the devine or the supernatural (that which is beyond the natural) than an arm or a leg.

what...you are missing my point (again). Just because I said the supernatural statement etc. may be closer to the truth than what traditional neuroscientists believe, this does not anywhere imply that the supernatural statement is correct

Hivemind187 wrote: »

It is the cumulative expression of psychology and biology the genotype and the phenotype.

that is not really informative, where does the phenotype stop and where do you make the boundaries for the study of psychology? Even Dawkin's 'Extended phenotype' back in 1982 was making the simple argument that it is arbitrary to just consider the phenotype solely to be the effect of the genes on the organisms body, but that the effect of the genes on the environment (through the body) is just as important i.e. birds nests, beavers dams, termite houses etc etc..

And in psychology (or all the related disciplines that study the mind...cognitive science being a big one) trying to locate the mind within the brain is not the only game in town, for example to take a standard psychological position (much debated) is Gibson's position on sensations i.e. that they are not generated in the brain and then followed by some handy patchwork coupled with stored knowledge to produce a perceptual experience, instead he argues the neural networks just tune into different invariances in the environment, so basically what was thought to be the sole product of the brain (the construction of visual perception from the retinal signal and information stored in the brain), he instead argues that movement of an organism in the environment creates all sorts of dependencies with the sensory environment and that the proper study of perception is not what is going on in the brain but is instead the study of these organisms-environmental dependencies. Gibsons theories are far from uncontroversial but many leading perceptual scientists would still regard themselves as Gibsonians.

With cognition there is a whole wealth of research, computational models, theorizing regarding what is called situated cognition or embodied cognition all of which emphazise the role of the environment and body in cognition. Importantly, not in the trivial sense where the items in the world (such as a sketchpad) are simply tools to be manipulated by the illusive 'I' situated in the brain but instead should be considered just as much part of the 'I' as the unconscious neural subsystems which enable you to walk around without hitting walls (or even technological add-ons such as sensory augmentation). "The skin is not that important a boundary" is often the slogan of people working in this field. See Andy Clarks "being there" or "Natural born cyborgs" for evidence along this path, but there is also lots of papers on the topic.

Hivemind187 wrote: »

While it is nice to say that as human beings capable of creating art etc that we are more than simple bags of meat it is intellectually dishonest since no evidence to the contrary exists (or at least has been shown here).

That again is really unhelpful..bags of meat.. that is simply being dishonest, I have never seen meat talking, or walking, writing a poem or a scientific article.

Of course there is not an immaterial spark that is the root of the 'I' and thus a locus of reincarnation or something, saying that the 'I' is not located in the brain (or can be extended out in the body and the world) is not a claim that it must be supernatural, but is instead a simple empirical claim that what a neuroscientist may think has to happen in the brain does not in fact happen there but is instead the result of say the biomechanics of the body or the interaction with the world.

And the do you locate the 'I' in these parts of the brain that are involved in enabling certain aspects of it, what gives these neural subsystems priority over external or bodily contributions to the self (or indeed technological sensory or motor prosthesis).

The more than sum of its parts argument lead to empirical questions. Work in dynamical systems has showed unexpected emergent properties in many aspects of say motor control (look at Thelan and Smiths work) (because of the unexpected effects of the biomechanics involved and how it can simplify and distribute the computation). I suppose they are called emergent as they are not easily predictable from the sum of the parts..but when the science gets a grasp on these patterns they may not be called emergent anymore.

But if something is not predictable from the sum of its parts this just means more work needs to be done, not that it must be supernatural.

Hivemind187

Sorry picnic, I clearly misread your post.