You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

redding comments on Stupid Questions September 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: polymathwannabe 02 September 2015 06:26PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (174)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: redding 03 September 2015 01:03:18PM 2 points [-]

Could we ever get evidence of a "read-only" soul? I'm imagining something that translates biochemical reactions associated with emotions into "actual" emotions. Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself an atheist, but it seems to me that how strongly one believes in a soul that is only affected by physical reality is based purely on their prior probability.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 05 September 2015 02:15:54PM 1 point [-]

Sounds like epiphenomenalism.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2015 05:01:27PM 1 point [-]

Isn't that how it works right now? I mean, we actually "feel sad" and we actually "have thoughts".

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 03 September 2015 01:57:04PM 1 point [-]

In a sense, that's what ordinary materialists believe in: Oh look, here's this system which happens to be an instance of conscious thought! That's part of a soul!

It's just pattern-recognition, but that's all a read-only soul is.