If you reject the existence of the soul then you are an Animist?

by Seraphim23 149 Replies latest jw friends

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  Seraphim23

  O dear!
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  Seraphim23

  Thank you Apognophos for a more thoughtful answer in the spirit of discussion! I did waffle on a little bit for the benefit of those who might not know much about the background to animism and so forth. You make a valid point. I guess the validity of my argument depends on how well I can make the case that consciousness is something special. You know what? You right. I spent two hours writing it and well, time is limited and to tackle that one as well might take a week. Lol

  I guess I could try to make the case, but first of all I reckon that it might be valid to say that if the ancient animists also didn’t think it was special, then I might still have a valid point, not on the specialness of consciousness but on the commonality of materialists to animists. Not that it would mean much if consciousness is not something special but just mechanical.

  I’ll try to post something to make the case later.
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  Viviane

  Don't forget to deal with the inherent "not A = A" contradiction. Any re-thinking that fails to address the central problem inherent to the argument will still come up short.
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  Caedes

  Animism is the idea that soul, spirit, consciousness, or whatever it might be called, exists in plants, animals, things, objects, places or basically in everything and anything in the material world.

  consciousness is merely the result of the operation of the brain

  I would say the second statement is more or less my position, the first statement does not fit because it glosses over the requirement of having a brain.

  That requirement is fundamental to any rational idea of consciousness.
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  cofty

  1 - Animism is the idea that soul...exists

  2 - If you reject the existence of the soul then you are an Animist

  Please read these two lines slowly.
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  Seraphim23

  You have to read the whole thing to see why these statements are not contradictions. The issue lies in what some say consciousness is and what others say it is because there is contradiction there. If you place these two lines side by side then of course it looks like the contradiction is in what I am saying.
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  Viviane

  You have to read the whole thing to see why these statements are not contradictions.

  There is no amount of unconnected points and bad logic that can make "A = Not A" true. The crux of your fallacy is below:

  Plants, rocks and brains are all the same in the sense that they are physical material, other than the complexity/organisation they contain. So to accept that brains create consciousness is in fact a form of animism. A merely organic like structure is said to have consciousness by materialists in effect, but this is virtually the same view that animism teaches.

  You start with the non-logic that all things are the same other than where they are different. That's like saying flying is the same as driving except in the ways they aren't the same. Your conclusion "so to accept that brains create consciousness..." is a non-sequitur that doesn't follow at all from anything you wrote up to that point. Because some reactions can cause a fire to happen doesn't mean all reactions have fire or even the potential for fire. You are making a composition fallacy, assuming the properties of one thing can be applied to everything, i.e., atom are invisible to the naked eye, you are made of atoms, therefore you must be invisible.
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  cofty

  The OP is a master class in logical fallacies.
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  Seraphim23

  What is interesting is that all things are energy yet all things are different. Another topic!
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  Mikado

  iN my opinion there is no correlation between the two positions .

  The concept of the soul is an attempt to explain consciousness, animism is an attempt to explain the sold, prior to science..