After Rose and I managed invted Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary onto the Knight and Rose Show to discuss their new book about mind, we made lists of podcasts and articles to review in order to refresh ourselves on metaphysics and theories of mind. My favorite two podcasts (first, second) were from a three part series that Pat Flynn did with Michael Egnor.
And now there is a new episode of Pat Flynn, but this time with J. P. Moreland. When I was just still doing my undergraduate degree, I read two books by J. P. Moreland: “Scaling the Secular City” and “Christianity and the Nature of Science”. I actually taught the first one chapter-by-chapter, in my basement, to other students. I also listened to many of his Veritas Forum and Stand to Reason lectures, including the famous Wonmug lecture. He also has a STEM undergraduate degree (chemistry).
There are 3 parts:
Here is the description from Mind Matters:
Moreland turns to an older philosophical idea: the concept of a substance. Unlike an aggregate (a pile of wood, for example), a substance is a unified whole. It exists as a single thing. A deeper unity allows it to stay the same even as it changes in minor ways.
A human being, in this view, is a substance. Your soul is the organizing principle that gives you identity and holds everything together — even when your body changes. Moreland explains that the parts of a substance are inseparable; they only exist as part of the whole. For example, a hand that’s been cut off is no longer a real hand because it has lost its role and function.
This idea goes all the way back to Aristotle (384–322 BC). He said that substances are more basic than their parts. Your identity doesn’t come from the combination of your parts — it’s your identity as a substance that gives your parts their meaning and function.
Naturally, I like the scientific evidence from Egnor and O’Leary better than philosophical arguments. But I do think it’s worth it for even sensible people to know a little squishy nonsense about metaphysics and mind. There are good arguments against naturalism from philosophy, and we should all know about them. I find that it’s always better, in a discussion, to say “I have 10 reasons for what I believe, and you haven’t got any reasons for what you believe”.
By the way, here are the different views of mind that I learned about when I was younger, by listening to all these old on-campus lectures with Christian scholars:
- substance dualism
- thomistic dualism
- idealism
- physicalism
I asked Grok to list out the useful arguments for dualism. So, if you’ve never heard of any of this before, then you can check that out. If I were going to defend dualism using philosophy, I would argue from first-person knowledge of my own thoughts, intentionality, and persistent identity over time. Grok has two more in the list that I don’t use.
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Author: Wintery Knight
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