Okay, we're on philosophy lecture number 11. Philosophy lecture number 11. And we're still in metaphysics. And we're going to try to answer the question, does man survive death? Does man survive death? and that is chapter 14 in your book by Geisler and Feinberg we're just going to look at arguments against immortality and of course immortality is the view that man lives forever and then arguments for it So taking a look at arguments against immortality, there is the argument used from the universality of human mortality. The universality of human mortality. This just argues that all humans will eventually die. Nobody doubts this. And You know, everybody's in agreement on that. So does that prove that there's no life after death? No. Everybody agrees that humans will physically die, but the real question is what follows that? Do we just cease to exist or is there life after death? So that really is beside the point. We all agree that humans physically die. David Hume argued from the analogy of nature In the analogy of nature, he argued against immortality. David Hume argued that bodily changes produce proportionate changes in our minds. Bodily changes produce proportionate changes in our minds, therefore the total death of the body will entail the total death of the mind. Jung argued that nothing in nature can survive a drastic change in environment for instance supposing the sun moved closer to the earth and all of a sudden every day instead of it being 80 degrees on a hot day it was 250 degrees or 300 degrees obviously man would die nothing in nature can survive a drastic change in environment can the mind survive without the body? that would be a drastic change in the environment for the mind Jung argues also from analogy he's looking for similarities in nature with man that animals resemble men but today nobody believes that animals are immortal he also argues that the world is destructible and since man is part of the world, so is man's mind structure now the criticism here that Geisler and Feinberg bring to this the criticism here is that Jung assumes the conclusion everybody agrees, everyone agrees in the mortality of the physical realm but the mind is not in the physical realm Those who argue for immortality usually argue the mind is apart from the physical realm. So what happens in the physical realm? It doesn't necessarily happen in the realm of the mind. And by the way, there are also ways that animals do not resemble man. Bertrand Russell used the body-mind dependence argument. Bertrand Russell argued against immortality using the body-mind dependence argument. Russell was an agnostic. Questioned God's existence. If I can be honest, he was probably an atheist. This has been known, thought of by many as the most impressive argument against immortality. He says that the activity of the mind is now dependent on the body. The activity of the mind is now dependent on the body. Our mental life is dependent on brain activity. For instance, if you had a horrible, took a horrible blow to the head and it caused brain damage, it's going to affect your mental life. Now our brains will eventually die. And so, Bertrand Russell is saying, well if the brain eventually dies, the mind is going to have to die with it. The criticism of this is that the present body-mind dependence says nothing about the conditions of future existence you have to assume that the present body-mind dependence is going to be that is going to have that relationship for as long as the mind lasts and we don't know about the conditions of future existence so we can't use that so now let's take a look at different views about immortality and then try to decide which would be the the best view. As Christians we must hold to a view of immortality, that man survives death in some way. There is the immortal soul, immortal soul doctrine, made famous by Plato, the Greek philosopher. There is the shadow man or minimal person doctrine. And there is the reconstruction. Now first, let's take a look at the immortal soul doctrine of Plato. That was Plato's belief that the human soul is immortal. It is immortal in itself. In other words, God's not going to keep our souls in existence for all eternity. They are by nature immortal. Nothing has to hold them in existence. The human soul is by nature immortal. And the soul is the real person. The physical part of you isn't the real you. It's less real. than the real you, which is the soul. This is where that distinction, the Gnostics ended up picking up on this and getting that distinction that the flesh is evil and the spirit realm is good and therefore God could not become a man. That was the immortal soul doctrine. There's a few areas there that Christians obviously cannot agree with. The shadow man or minimal person doctrine says The real person is, or the minimal person, is the soul. In other words, the person can survive without the body, although it doesn't make the body evil or it doesn't make the body non-important, although it is not essential to you. You can exist as a conscious human being, a conscious person without a body. And so the soul, the mind of the man can survive without the body. This, I think, the shadow man or minimal person is the closest to Christianity and that's the one we'll be defending. The reconstruction doctrine says that our bodies will be resurrected after death and obviously Christianity believes that, but the way they view it is that God calls us back into existence. So it's the doctrine of soul sleep that the Jehovah's Witnesses hold to, where we cease to, when we physically die we cease to exist until God physically raises us from the dead. So if there's life after physical death, no, in the sense that if you don't have a physical body you're not alive but yes, in that God will eventually physically raise us so we would hold to more the shadow man or minimal person doctrine where the soul can survive without the body so where does the reincarnation fit in with? is that kind of a recompression doctrine? no, that would be much more like the immortal soul doctrine because eventually the goal is to It would be more like the immortal soul doctrine except this immortal soul would only be one world soul and you would... because eventually you're... the physical realm is either less real or just a total illusion in the mind of the Hindus and eventually you become part of the world soul and the cycle of reincarnation, the goal of it is to get out of it and to become one with the world soul. So it would be a lot closer to the immortal soul doctrine of Plato. Now in defense of the shadow man doctrine Socrates argued that only composite things like bodies decompose. Bodies are made up of different parts but the soul is a simple entity and it isn't made up apart so it can't come apart can't be taken apart, can't decompose Plato's view of the eternal ideas can also help to defend the shadow man or minimal person obviously it would defend his immortal soul doctrine as well but we can use it to defend our doctrine and then use some other arguments as well But Plato's view of the eternal ideas is that the forms or the ideas, the form of something, you know, a chair is made of matter, but there's a form. If that matter is formed into a different form, it wouldn't be a chair, it might be a table or a dresser or something. But the forms or ideas are eternal or unchanging. They're the idea chair, the chairness of the chair. things like equality or color are ideas. The forms or ideas are eternal and unchanging and in Plato's way of thinking the forms are the real objects of knowledge. The soul knows the forms. The soul recognizes, can recognize a particular chair as being part of the universal classification of chairs. So the soul knows the forms and therefore we can argue the soul is probably eternal and unchanging just like the ideas, the forms or ideas are eternal and unchanging. Plato also argued from reminiscence that we can know certain things a priori. We do know certain things a priori before investigating things and determining if this culprit is real. We bring into that certain a priori ideas. Certain things that we know without experiencing it and finding evidence in the facts of experience. So we know certain things a priori and Plato argued that in order to have this a priori knowledge, in other words, in order to be created with ideas already in our mind through which we can make judgments, rational judgments upon the physical facts of sense data Plato argued that therefore the soul must have pre-existed the body and we must have had these ideas before we became bodily, had bodily existence. Now obviously Christians reject this view so we would not use that argument to argue for the defense of the shadow man doctrine. C.S. Lewis argued that rationality or reason could not have been caused by purely material causes. What he's arguing there is that nature is non-rational. We would not get in a debate with a rock. We would not try to shake hands with a tree and exchange ideas with a tree. Nature by definition is non-rational, non-thinking. So rationality or reason could not have been caused by purely material causes. Therefore, rationality is supernatural and immaterial. Our thinking is non-material. You can't weigh a thought. Our thinking is immaterial and supernatural. It transcends nature. Near-death experiences would also be an argument for immortality. People who have had no brainwaves and their hearts have ceased to beat and they're just laying there at times have said that they came out of their bodies and then they during that time period could tell you what was going on in that room and sometimes could tell you what was going on ten blocks away from that room and have witnessed things and given some information that can't be explained on naturalistic terms. Now, a lot of New Agers are using these near-death experiences to try to argue for the New Age movement, but Abermass and Moreland, in their book, I think it's something like The Case for Immortality, Life After Death or something, their book is probably the best creaking work on the subject. Dr. Habermas was one of my professors at Liberty and Moreland taught at Liberty at one time and I was teaching down at Talbot in California Habermas and Moreland in their book also argue from recent brain research now scientists have managed to prod the human brain and they've gotten people to raise their right hand and then they ask them what happened and people say you raised my right hand And that shocked the professors that have done this test because they assumed that there was no immaterial soul of man. They assumed that man was simply material and that his brain did his thinking so that if you push the right button in the brain and it raises the right hand then the guy would say, I decided to raise my hand and I rose my right hand. In actuality what it's showing is that the people are saying, what it shows is that the brain does it make the decision? Somewhere outside of the brain or outside the material man the man chooses to raise his right hand and that acts upon the brain and causes some kind of chemical reaction which causes the man to raise his right hand but the decision was not made in the brain the decision was made in the mind, in the immaterial mind. so decisions not being made in the brain seem to indicate the soul is not the brain and when the brain dies it might not just the soul might not just continue on in existence but might even be freed to a more powerful existence and the brain might actually keep limit that which the soul can learn to a lot of sense that and things like that. Jesus' resurrection of course would be the ultimate evidence for immortality. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead and came back and he can guarantee our immortality by promising to raise those from the dead and trust in him. There's still, you know, further objections to arguments for immortality. Some would argue that even though the soul cannot experience change, maybe it can still cease to exist. Others would argue, why must the knower resemble the thing known? Just because we know some invisible, unchangeable things, does that mean that our soul has to be invisible and unchangeable? I was going to say the problem of identity. Is the soul the same person as you are after death? Those who hold immortality would probably argue that we would continue in conscious existence and we would have memory about our life before, so it would be the same person even without the body. You know, just like you're the same person you were yesterday even though you were wearing different clothes. yesterday. Our present way of individuating between persons is by way of their bodies, but that still says nothing about the future. Once we see more clearly on the spiritual realm, with spiritual eyes, we may individuate between persons in different ways. In fact, I think if we judge the worth of a person In purely physical terms, I think we're making a poor judgment of you. The character traits, those invisible attributes of a person are more important than the visible ones. Some reduce mental space to the mere physical realm, but I think that's been disproven both scientifically and philosophically. It can be shown that there is more to man than just the body. Others would argue that sense experience is impossible without the body, but there may still be a more direct way of knowing that may be possible without the hindrance of our bodies. So we just, you know, we're talking about uncharted waters, and the possibility that man can still know without having sense experience is possible. And then some others would say, well, where is the afterlife? But there's no logical reason to deny that the afterlife is a non-physical realm. It's in a non-physical realm, though it could be in the physical realm. So we don't have to know where the afterlife is to know that there is an afterlife. In conclusion, for that chapter, chapter 14, does man survive death? There's no decisive philosophical evidence against immortality. For Christians, Christ's resurrection settles the issue. the minimal person survives the death of a body Luke chapter 16 verses 19-31 is a good passage to look at for that and so at the resurrection the minimal person the soul will be reunited with it's resurrection body and there's good philosophical evidence to at least show that that view is reasonable chapter 15 deals with the question are there other minds? Are there other minds? So let's discuss that question. Are there other minds? The argument for other minds based on analogy goes like this. The mental states we experience are associated with our bodies and their behavior. Other bodies similar to ours display similar behavior. The mental states we experience, thoughts we have in the world, The mental states we experience are associated with our bodies and their behavior. Other bodies similar to ours display similar behavior. And so we assume that there are mental states associated with other bodies that are similar to our own mental states. We assume that there are mental states associated with our bodies that are similar to our own mental states. Be like I'm talking with Doug, and Doug's lips are moving, his hands are moving and he's talking to me and dialoguing and so I'm assuming I'm hearing if the sounds come out of him similar to sounds that come out of me I'm seeing his physical actions and stuff he touches something that's hot and he screams and so I'm assuming that the same type of mental activity that's occurring inside of me is also occurring inside of him and so that would be an argument for other minds based on analogy Criticisms of his view is that, number one, arguments based on analogy are usually weak. Yeah, but not always. The analogy is pretty strong. The similarities are pretty strong. The arguments can be pretty strong. There's also, there's no way to verify this argument. It is said, you know, we have to be able to or a sense of mind with the five senses to verify it with the five senses that type of thing and then others say the argument is circular although I don't believe it's a circular if you claim it's circular well I know he's got a mind because I've got a mind and he acts just like me so he must have a mind and say well that's kind of circular reasoning I don't think it's as circular as it's denial So the denial of the existence of other minds, if you deny, you can go in a closet and turn off the light and close the door and say, there are no other minds, there are no other minds, there are no other minds. That's not contradictory. You're not contradicting yourself there. But! Once you tell another person that you do not believe in the existence of other minds, you're contradicting yourself. Because you have to assume the existence of the other person's mind in order to dialogue with them and to make the denial of the existence of the other person's mind. A. J. Ayer defended the argument from analogy. He said that verbal communists Communication confirms the argument. People explain their mental states in much the same way that we understand our own. And so the argument can be directly checked. Well, you also already know that the argument can be directly checked. Others rightly conclude we are in pain when we scream. We scream and they say, are you okay? No, I'm in pain. And they start giving us first aid or whatever. We do not need public phenomenon phenomena to verify a private experience like mental thoughts. That's what A.J.A. would argue. An alternate form of the argument from analogy that Geisel and Feinberg present, an effect often resembles its cause. Other beings display rational activity. Rational activity only comes from rational minds. So it would be an argument that would run along those lines. all to form the same argument from now on. So there's been other arguments for the existence of other minds that have been offered that I don't think are as strong. I'm not even going to mention P.F. Strawson and John Wisdom. I don't think they really... the authors don't go into that much depth on them anyway, but I don't think it really offers much to our... Even Ludwig Wittgenstein, even what he mentions here, words being used as symbols for sense perceptions, John Wisdom clarifying the problem. I don't think it really offers enough to the discussion. But an alternative argument for the existence of other minds would be like behaviorism that they mention here. The idea that all mental states are fully reducible to physical states. In other words, the mind is the brain. They're synonymous. Behaviorism, All mental states are fully reducible to physical states. The mind is the brain. Obviously, we already presented evidence in the last lecture that the mind is not the brain. The mind is more than the brain, and so we would not hold to that argument. So, in conclusion, the argument from analogy which has been much criticized in contemporary thought, still it seems to be as defensible as any other argument for other minds. In fact, even more defensible. My basic argument would be that the denial of other minds cannot be communicated to others. The denial of other minds cannot be communicated to others without affirming the existence of other minds. Can you repeat that? The denial of other minds cannot be communicated without affirming the existence, cannot be communicated to others without affirming the existence of other minds. So, if a guy says, I do not believe in the existence of other minds, if he's willing to debate you on it, he automatically loses the debate. because he has to assume the existence of another mind in order to try to convince the other mind of the non-existence of other minds. So my argument is the denial of other minds cannot be communicated to others without affirming the existence of other minds. Now we move on, we're making some real good progress, we're still on metaphysics and the question comes up, what is truth? What is truth? What is truth? That's chapter 16 in Geismann and Feinberg's book. There is the coherence theory of truth. The coherence theory of truth. There is the pragmatic theory of truth. Pragmatic theory of truth. There's the performative theory of truth. And then there is the correspondence theory of truth, which is what I hold to. correspondence theory of truth. A lot of people are moving into the coherence theory of truth, but I find that very weak. Let's take a look at the coherence theory of truth. The coherence theory of truth says that something is true only if it does not contradict other statements in its own system of thought. Coherence theory of truth says that something is true only if it does not contradict other statements in its system of thought. Okay? Statements can be either partially true or partially false in the coherence theory of truth. But the whole system of statements that it belongs in It must be wholly true. It could be wholly true or wholly false. For instance, I'm going to draw a circle and then some x's inside the circle. The circle represents the system of truth. That whole system of truth is either going to be wholly true or wholly false. But each one of these little x's inside there can only be partially true or partially false. That's kind of the theory that they got. I think it's sloppy. I don't really hold to it. Evaluation of the coherence view. If something is to be true, then the law of non-contradiction is necessary. So, the fact that things must cohere, the fact that something in the statement, something is... In order for something to be true, it cannot contradict other statements within its own system. In other words, if you've got a system of thought that is contradictory, we know it cannot be true. But just because all the beliefs in your worldview or your system of thought do not contradict themselves, it still doesn't tell you that your view is true. See what I'm getting at? Let's say In my world view, man equals non-man. Well that's obviously a contradiction, so we know that my world view cannot be, that's an essential part of my world view, my world view cannot be true. But suppose that in my world view, man equals man. And all the beliefs in my world view are not contradictory. These are the three views in my worldview. Man equals man, animal equals animal, and ground equals ground. So in my entire worldview, there are absolutely no contradictions, but I still wouldn't say anything about whether or not my worldview is true. So a statement can be consistent with one system, but inconsistent with another system. A coherent statement also might not apply to the real world. Suppose my worldview contains one statement, glob equals glob. Well, if there's no such thing as globs, what good is the worldview if it says nothing about the real world? So a coherent statement might not apply to the real world. Even if we define bachelors as unmarried males, If there are no, that doesn't tell us if there's any bachelors in the real world. It is logically possible that there are two coherent systems. In other words, it's logically possible that we can have two systems that don't contradict anything within their systems. But they could be two systems where only one of them could be true, not both of them. So how do you know which one's true and which one's false? Coherence wouldn't tell you. As long as they're self-consistent, coherence would say they're true. What if Hinduism was totally consistent, which it isn't, but what if it was totally consistent and Christianity was totally consistent? There'd be no way for us to say Hinduism is false and Christianity is true if we alter the coherence theory of truth. And this whole idea of the concept of partial truth or partial falsehood is ludicrous. Once you get out of the realm of absolute truth, you know, something can be true in one sense and false in another sense, but we're not saying it's partially true. We're saying it's totally true in one sense and totally false in another sense. So the coherence view of truth fails. Then there's the pragmatic theory of truth. So, basically the coherence theory though says basically whatever does not contradict, non-contradiction is true. Well, if it doesn't contradict, it tells us, if something does contradict, it tells us that something is false. But if it doesn't contradict itself, then it just says it might be true. It doesn't tell us what must be true. Now the pragmatic theory is that truth is whatever, truth equals whatever works. Truth equals whatever works. It takes truth and it makes it, you know, it has to be something that's practical. So the pragmatic theory of truth is that truth is what works. Charles Sanders Peirce he said that truth is the practical consequence of experimentation by the scientific community truth is the practical consequence of experimentation by the scientific community so truth is whatever works within science within scientific experimentation would be the way that he argues not many people would hold to that William James says that truth is determined by personal, he's out of the realm of the scientific community, by personal and practical consequence. Truth is what works for the individual. Problem with James' view there, lies often work. Still, they aren't true, otherwise there wouldn't be lies. For instance, a doctor might lie to help a patient recover. He said, 95% chance you're going to survive the surgery. Well, he might be lying. There might only be a 5% chance of him surviving the surgery. But it makes the patient optimistic. The patient survives. The lie worked. William Jayne says, since it worked, it must be true. But it was a lie. It worked, but it was false. So, that seems to prove. John Dewey also holds a pragmatic theory of truth. He says, ideas become true when the facts are right. And so truth is mutable, truth is changeable, it's not absolute. So the problem with Dewey is that denial of absolutes is absurd. To say there is no absolute truth, if that's true, it's an absolute truth. So it's a self-refuting statement. Also, if Dewey's view is true, then a crime committed on Wednesday would not be true, it would not really occur until it was proven on Friday, and that's ludicrous. The whole idea Just remember about pragmatism. It holds the view that truth is whatever works. Kind of the ends justifies the means type of thing. And that's ludicrous. The performative theory of truth, P.S. Fawson, he holds to this. He says, we perform an action when we make a truth claim. We're actually doing something when we make a truth claim. So he says to say it is true that it is raining, It is true that it is raining really means I agree. I'm making the action of agreeing with the statement that it is true that it is raining. And to agree that something is true is not the same as saying that something is true. There's a difference between the two. Some people are convinced that they're wrong and therefore they change their account. And by the way, on 246, Steisen and Feinberg said that performatives cannot account for blind uses of the word true. A blind use of the word true is the bottom paragraph. A blind use of the word true occurs when a person describes a statement or group of statements as true without knowing what the statement or statements are. So in other words, somebody could say, I think the Raiders are good, are going to win the Super Bowl. I think it's true. I say, I like the Raiders. I think they're going to win the Super Bowl. What do you think? The person says, yeah, I think that's true. They'll win the Super Bowl. And then we find out that the guy really doesn't know anything about football. You know, there's a blind usage of the word true. There's no real knowledge if you don't really understand what the statement It really is. It's a real vague issue here in the performative theory of truth. It's like to say something is true, you're just expressing your opinion, that's all it is. You're not going to support your opinion in any way, that's just what you're saying. He's even saying that you really can't be supported. He's kind of getting into the relativity of truth, if I understand correctly. So there really is no such thing as absolute truth. But the correspondence theory of truth, this is the view that I hold to. It's when a statement corresponds to reality, it is true. Such as if I said, there are 300 people in this classroom. That statement would not correspond to reality, so it would be false. If I said there are two people in this classroom, that statement would, clearly. We didn't have too good of a turnout today. That statement would correspond to reality. Aristotle, on page 290, 247, he defines truth. That says, Aristotle gives a definition of truth that is on examination, clear and simple. To say of what is, that it is not, or of what is not, that it is, is false. Then Aristotle says, well, to say of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not, is true. Okay, so I like that when you get a chance. Right under Aristotle's name on page 247, that's his definition of truth. Statement is true if it says of what is, that it is. And a statement is true if it says of what is not, that it is not. Telling it like it is, that corresponds to being true. A statement corresponds to reality. If I say there is a pulpit in this room, that is a true statement because in reality there is a pulpit in this room. A statement corresponds to reality. If I say there is not a pulpit in this room, that is a false statement because it does not correspond to the reality that there is a pulpit in this room. G.E. Moore says truth is the facts, but there's no such thing as true propositions. Propositions are statements about the facts. G.E. Moore is off the wall. There are true propositions. To say there is a pulpit, that's a proposition and that proposition is true. G.E. Moore wants to bring us to the physical realm alone there. Alfred Tarski says truth is a property of sentences, When the sentence expresses the genuine state of a reality, then the sentence is true, and I would agree on that point there. In conclusion, I would say only the correspondence theory of truth is adequate. Only the correspondence theory of truth is adequate. The other theories result in relativism or agnosticism. They result in the idea there's no real absolute truths. Something can be half-true or whatever. It can be true to you and not true to me. And we don't need to say agnosticism. To say man cannot know pure agnosticism is a claim to know that man cannot know. Self-refute. So man can know something. So we need to get away from agnosticism. And to say that there is no absolute truth which is the basic statement of pure relativism, to say there is no absolute truth. If that statement is true, it is an absolute truth, then it would contradict itself, so therefore it must be false. So there is absolute truth and we know something, and therefore the correspondence theory of truth is the truth that I would hold to, to answer the question, what is truth? Now that completes the section, part three, the section on metaphysics, the whole section on metaphysics, what is reality. So we've covered an introduction to philosophy, we've covered epistemology, what is knowledge, how can man know, then metaphysics, what is reality, And now we enter part four, what is the ultimate, which is philosophy of religion. What is the ultimate, philosophy of religion? After a few lectures on that, then we'll go to ethics, what is right and what is wrong. So in the next lecture, we'll pick up with a section on philosophy of religion, part four, what is the ultimate.