>Perhaps there is no difference between mind and soul; after all, it was the
>union (interaction?) between God's breath and earthly material that produced
>Adam, the "living soul". Sounds like an epiphenomenon to me!
That is partly my point. Epiphenominalism sounds very soul-like to me. I
don't see how it is epiphenominalism can be defined in a different manner
than soul. Epiphenominalism is supposed to come from matter without God or
other divine influence yet matter or mechanism in no way allows you to know
WHAT the epiphenomenon will be once the various parts are cojoined. Why is
that different epistemologically than stating that God breathed into man the
breathe of life and he became a living soul? Isn't this the cojoining of
two things, to produce a soul/epiphenomenon? How can you demonstrate that
epiphenomenon must come from matter alone when that matter will not allow
you to predict what the epiphenomenon will be like? It appears to me that in
order to say that epiphenominalism (or soul) can only apply to matter, you
have then already assumed a metaphysical position--the one that says that
there is nothing but matter. Thus logically to claim that there is no soul
but there is epiphenomenalism only is based upon the assumption that there
is nothing spiritual outside or inside of this universe and that all there
is is matter. Therefore it appears to me that the materialist has assumed
the consequence.
>What about information content as being as example of an epiphenomenon? Take
>for example the distinctly different information content conjured up in your
>mind when you read the following two sets of letters: phicsys vs. physics.
>Could we say the latter "contains" something "more" than the former?
wel, thes haf uf thee sintence cuntains no les infomation than this part of
the sentence contains. The information content of physics and phicsys is
identical. The semantic meaning might be different but that is not
information content.
Which of the following has semantic meaning and which has more information?
wo yao chi ji rou
te rew gun pa bue
They have approximatly the same mathematical information content, but the
upper one is a perfectly good mandarin sentence meaning I want to eat
chicken. The upper has semantic meaning but there is no way to prove that
without knowing the language.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm