Can information theory save ‘the soul’?

Anyone who has read more than a few articles here knows that I am an atheist, and rather a stern one at that. I also briefly thought of myself as something of a ‘New Atheist;’ but I have back-stepped from that for a number of reasons (which I may discuss in the future), although I do enjoy poking religion in the ribs, occasionally. Still, I do think it is worth-while to debate theists, not because I have any interest in shattering their belief – I do not any more, it seems unkind. I will say that I’ve come to believe that the real ground of all religion is feelings – emotions, intuitions and felt needs – and these are almost impossible to adjudicate, or dissuade others from responding to them.

But nonetheless, religions do have their arguments, and it is not only worthwhile confronting them, but doing so is an educative process – as we try to teach others, so do we learn from them.

Concerning a video article at the web-zine, Scientia Salon – Neuroscience and the soul, by Stephen Asma, I had reason to engage a brief conversation with a commenter who goes by the handle ‘labnut.’ He’s actually written a bit on issues of ethics, culture, and philosophy that I agree with. But he is a Roman Catholic, so of course it is inevitable that we clash on certain topics.

The topic of the video article happened to be that, given that modern science and philosophy seem to have no use for the concept of ‘soul’ anymore (and they largely don’t), of what use could be made of talk about the soul, that we find historically as well as in every day language? (I will not recap the video, but it certainly worth while.) https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/neuroscience-and-the-soul/

labnut, being a Catholic, objected, and offered a theory that he seems to be saying could be useful to contemporary philosophy, and possibly to contemporary science. I disagreed (and hope I did so respectfully). But here is the exchange (removing some site-relevant cross talk):

labnut:

“Let’s see, then, what a strong version of a soul hypothesis might look like and ask if neuroscience says anything at all about that. First off, some preliminaries to set the stage.

If you are an atheist and believe there is no God then talk of the soul is pointless. Clearly no God means no soul. Thus the real debate is about God’s existence. Given this, why do atheists bother to attack talk about the soul, since their faith, a-priori, rules out the existence of the soul? The answer to that is a modern God hypothesis makes three falsifiable predictions and one, as yet, non-falsifiable prediction. (I won’t detail the Modern God Hypothesis here since that would require a full length essay, which has been ruled out of the question)

The predictions of the Modern God Hypothesis:
P1. The universe is not a causally closed, complete in itself, wholly explainable in itself, entity.
P2. There will be conscious, free willing agents in the universe.
P3. The conscious, free willing agents will have a soul.
There is a fourth prediction, that is as yet unfalsifiable:
P4. There will be a multiverse.

Falsify any one of these and you falsify the God hypothesis. Thus the atheist attacks on P3, the existence of the soul. This, they sense, is the opportunity to falsify the God hypothesis.

As to P2, it suffices to say say – here we are, conscious and free willing!. Some atheists, of their own free will, argue against free will. What more can I say? Others consciously argue that consciousness is an illusion. There is no need to reply to such incoherent arguments.

Now that the stage has been set we can look at a strong hypothesis for the soul.”

My response:

“The problem is that the only way to prove – or disprove – the existence of a soul, is by first assuming its existence – because otherwise, there is simply nothing to be explained through such proof or disproof. That suggests that those trying to construct arguments against the soul’s existence, or who wish to interpret arguments or evidence that suggest there is no soul – would be those who are in fact attempting to rebut such arguments and evidence. For those who don’t believe in the existence of the soul, all previous discussions about it (once the supernatural architecture supporting it is set aside) reduce to remarks on instances of consciousness, and of life per se. That’s because there’s simply no phenomenon of consciousness or of life that requires assumption of a soul. Or to put it more bluntly, only those who believe in a soul would be interested in a ‘soul hypothesis;’ no one who does not believe has any need for it.

So the question is, why would philosophers or scientists who do not believe in the soul, discuss ‘soul-talk’ or examine events of consciousness attributed by folk psychology to a soul? In order to achieve greater clarity as to what we are really talking about when we use such language or make such attributions. Foe instance, feelings expressed as ‘longings of the soul’ originate in the same physiological and thought processes as other emotions. This doesn’t diminish their importance for the people expressing them, it simply clarifies that this as a human process with human consequences.”

labnut:

“Now to describe my soul hypothesis.

S1. God has an infinite memory. What this means is that once information is created it never ceases to exist.
S2. The mind, at any instant, can be characterized as the information state of the brain.
S3. God is instantaneously aware of the information state of the brain (mind) at all times.
S4. Once the person dies the mind (information state of the brain) is preserved in God’s memory.

This we call the soul. It is immortal because information is eternally preserved in God’s mind. The Bible describes this state as ‘being asleep in Christ’.

This is already in partial agreement with what is called Mind Uploading. Except that the information state of the brain is preserved in a computer. It goes further and claims that the uploaded mind can resume its consciousness in a suitably powerful computer simulation. Yes, I know it is controversial but some well known scientists support this possibility.

This of course raises the question – what next? Is there life after death? There are three possibilities:

1. The mind continues a simulated existence in God’s mind, which can be regarded as an infinitely powerful computer. This would be analogous with the uploaded mind in a supercomputer.

2. The information state of the brain (mind) is instantiated in a new brain and body at some future time. This would correspond, in some sense, with the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, in the Apostle’s Creed, line 11. I say in some sense because it would not be the resurrection of the previous body, but the resurrection of the mind in a new body (but then wouldn’t we all want a new body?).

3. Reincarnation. The information state of the brain (mind) is instantiated in a new brain and body but minus memories, in an ongoing cycle. I favor this possibility which makes me something of an oddity among Catholics. I think there are powerful arguments for it but that is another discussion.

Note that there are important consequences.

1. The objections to dualism are irrelevant. We don’t need dualism for there to be a soul.
2. Brain science objections to the soul are moribund (…). No matter how far or deep you look in the brain you will never find the soul, for the simple reason that the soul is the information state of the brain. All the traditional objections to a soul are rendered null and void. Very neat! Biological naturalists may rejoice.

Finally, can this hypothesis be falsified? Perhaps only in one way. If it can be shown that the mind is not the information state of the brain. Other than that it is wholly dependent on the belief that God exists. But if you believe that, the rest follows.

In short, the soul is the mind which is the information state of the brain in a suitable biological environment. The information state is preserved in God’s memory after death and possibly re-instantiated in a new brain and body.”

My response (this has been edited; originally it included remark’s on someone else’s comment as well, but that person has objected that I misread his comment, so my reply to that has been removed):

“The trouble is, (your hypothesis doesn’t) explain anything about consciousness or about the empirical realities in which we live. In fact, the only phenomena (it) explains at all is your own beliefs in the soul. Labnut, your hypothesis amounts to, ‘if we believe in the soul this is what we might be believing in.’ What experience of consciousness or living entities does it explain? You’re not providing a hypothesis about phenomena that can be researched, you are saying that the soul is a phenomenon that science should prove, or admit it cannot disprove. That’s just failing to understand the initial bases of any scientific inquiry; no matter how outre a science may seem to get, it always starts with the empirical. The sciences always begin by asking ‘what is this stuff, and how does it function?’ I see no stuff addressed by your hypothesis. Even if our consciousness could be discovered reducible to information sets – and I don’t think it can – this would not trigger any need to conceive mind-uploading into a divine intelligence that would need to be assumed without evidence. The ‘stuff’ there, the information, is not yet addressed by any hypothesis of ensoulment. It is still just stuff, as far as I can tell – stuff that needs explication in empirical terms. You seem to be saying, ‘this is the soul that we could believe in,’ but I see no need to go down that route. (…) (K)nowledge already developed in philosophy and the sciences that have long been demonstrating that the attributes people once assigned to the soul have quite material origins, and no longer need any belief – or assumption, or hypothesis – of an immaterial or immortal soul. The sciences asked questions about living-stuff, and about human brain-stuff, and even about social stuff, and in the research discovered physical, material, empirical explanations, to the extent that both scientists and philosophers came to understand that supposing any immaterial or supernatural causal or motivating factors to life, consciousness, or society, was simply no longer necessary.

That doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it. But there is no longer any place for such belief in the sciences; and, frankly, I see no place for it in any philosophy that wishes to address the human condition today.”

– At this point the conversation was somewhat interrupted by a commenter I can only refer to as a troll. They seem to be inescapable on the internet these days. In any event, labnut chose not to reply on Scientia Salon, but he did attempt comment on a a recent article of mine here (which was inappropriate to that article, but I include the relevant part of it here:

labnut’s comment:

“Having discovered your blog (very interesting), I thought we might continue the conversation about your objections to my Mind-Soul hypothesis. It will help if you list them so that I can reply to them individually. You might even make a new posting about the subject.”

So; I have given the general historical argument. Remember here that we are discussing secular philosophy. That includes atheists, but it also includes many thinkers who simply have no interest in religion, or interest in religion only as a social phenomenon. These latter thinkers may even be religious in their private lives, but not when they engage in their philosophical practice.

The problem, to simplify, is that modern philosophy has to account for the sciences; and the sciences have found no reason to presume the possible existence of either god or the soul. So contemporary philosophy has simply let go of either notion, because otherwise its reasoning would be hampered by having to explain possible phenomena that the sciences cannot articulate, let alone investigate. It would be like asking a statistician doing a study on, say, successful sales techniques, to account for the possibility of rain on a sunny day. (The analogy is loose, but conveys the idea.)

Again, we are discussing secular philosophy. What theology could make of labnut’s god/soul hypotheses, I cannot say. Frankly, my guess is that some theologians somewhere – and they are not stupid people, despite what some atheists think of them – are probably working out similar theories, to accommodate recent trends in AI and the neurosciences.

Now some specifics – specifics concerning the theory, but also concerning myself.

First, any regular reader of this blog should know by now that I am highly skeptical of projections of computer theory into human ontology. So, first, I don’t buy the whole principle of reducing the mind to information to begin with; so, even setting aside my atheist bias, I would have a hard time buying this theory. Human consciousness is a wonderful, magical, mysterious what-ness about the universe (or the most profound catastrophe nature has ever realized, depending on one’s perspective), but it is simply irreducible to information – it is too much of a mess. Imagine a garbage dump with a jewel atop it. We see the jewel and say ‘consciousness;’ unfortunately, it can’t exist without the garbage supporting it.

All right let’s set history and personal perspective aside. Let’s discuss theology for a moment.

I was raised a Catholic. I don’t have the historical information at hand, but I do seem to recall that at one point, the theology of Thomas Aquinas was established as the philosophy of the Catholic faith. And in my post-graduate studies, I actually did read the Summa Theologiae. It’s a masterful text (although once you lose your faith, it becomes lighter than air). Aquinas produced a grand synthesis of neo-Platonic metaphysics and Aristotelianism – the natural science available to his day. But Aquinas was a theologian – any claim the natural sciences made had to be judged through theological dictates (quite the converse of what we know to day). And Aquinas makes it very clear what the intellective soul is and what its function and teleology are, theologically determined. The soul is a learning spirit, destined for community with like souls – it cannot be reduced to information, because its purpose is to acquire information, concerning all the variety of possible material experience – shifted through the morality of divine governance – in preparation for peace with, and eternal subsistence with, the divine. It is agency through and through.

Some thinkers today believe that destruction of any basis for belief in ‘free will’ is a body blow to theism. That is not true, because there are quite non-theistic ways to conceive of choice events, and theisms without a faith in free will. But there is no doubt that the Thomistic conception of the soul not only depends on the idea of free will, but underscores it. (Of course ‘free will’ in Thomas’s theory of psychology is actually trickier than we understand it today – but for brevity’s sake we won’t get into it.)

But information states – data sets – are agency neutral; information just ‘is.’ In a sense, information isn’t ‘shared’ and doesn’t prepare – it ‘shares’ itself (it’s there whether one likes it or not), and it is only preparation for those who choose to use it – for whatever purposes. That also makes it value-neutral. I suppose there might be a god I cannot conceive, but I certainly cannot conceive of a god who might be interested in that.

At any rate, even as an atheist, I can’t accept labnut’s theory on historical-theological grounds.

Now, particulars:

“The predictions of the Modern God Hypothesis:
P1. The universe is not a causally closed, complete in itself, wholly explainable in itself, entity.
P2. There will be conscious, free willing agents in the universe.
P3. The conscious, free willing agents will have a soul.
There is a fourth prediction, that is as yet unfalsifiable:
P4. There will be a multiverse.”

The objection here is that none of these predictions, if proved true (and we are here talking about verifiability, not falsifiability – which, unlike falsifiability, has a necessary empirical requirement at initiation, rather than later through testing), would say anything at all about the possible existence of god. The universe could be open and unexplainable, free willing agents could be marching across its galaxies, these could all have something – or be something – we could call a soul, and they could be found in a multitude of universes –

– and yet we need never know that any of this originated from a divine mind or by a divine ordering of existence. A ‘god hypothesis,’ to offer predictions in any way testable, needs to posit a prediction that the origin of any of this is to be found in a divine mind or will or action. There is no getting around this, and the Medieval theologians understood that perfectly well.

“Now to describe my soul hypothesis.

S1. God has an infinite memory. What this means is that once information is created it never ceases to exist.
S2. The mind, at any instant, can be characterized as the information state of the brain.
S3. God is instantaneously aware of the information state of the brain (mind) at all times.
S4. Once the person dies the mind (information state of the brain) is preserved in God’s memory.”

Objections:

S1: God doesn’t remember anything – he knows. According to Augustine, he sees all past and future in a flash. Once we assume god exists outside of time, one can never invoke any temporal arguments concerning him.

S2: As noted previously, I argue that the soul cannot be reduced to information, per Aquinas. In more contemporary terms, I would argue that the brain – consciousness, I assume – also cannot be reduced to information due to its dependency on physiology and various bodily imperatives (like desire, fear, rage, etc.).

S3: I cannot object on theological grounds, but I can on naturalistic grounds – that ‘the brain state’ is a biological derivative, responding of course to environmental stimuli, seems to me beyond question at this point. There is also a problem noted by Phenomenologists and Pragmatists, that the brain state is actually in continual flux, so the only brain ‘state’ that could concern god ( as judge) is that existing at the death of the person.

(The implication of Phenomenological and Pragmatist theories of consciousness is that the whole notion of ‘brain states’ is possibly misconceived – but that of course is a much larger discussion than we can have here. *)

S4: God has no need of this. Were one to mount a ‘Civitas Dei’ argument ala Aquinas (souls sharing information among souls), one would be on firmer ground theologically. However, the problem still remains (which Aquinas never fully answers): why would an omniscient divinity be interested in all this information, anyway?

So the principle objections are four-fold: On theological grounds, it is unsound; on scientific grounds it can not be researched; on secular-philosophical grounds it is unnecessary; to a non-believer it counters no argument.

Again, I have no problem with anybody believing in this theology. But I don’t see it getting received well in contemporary sciences or secular philosophy.

Aquinas was a wonderful thinker, and I am awed even when I think of him. But the world has changed since then.

—–
* Suggested reading: Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered, Bradford Books, 1993 (http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Reconsidered-Bradford-Books-Flanagan/dp/0262560771).
—–

Since I am an essayist with limited readership, rather concerned (admittedly narcissistically) with clarifying my own thoughts, I rarely get involved in commentary discussions on this blog. I welcome commentary here, but ask that commenters show respect. I disagree with labnut, but he is nobody’s fool, and his beliefs provide him with adequate grounding to his life and writings.