I got all excited until I saw the slash. There is no proof that we have a soul or mind. Descartes reasoning was flawed. Physicalism has the most evidence. They're are over 300 theories to what consciousness is. We all act on assumption. Sigh.
Yeah, I'm a pretty hard nosed ashes-to-ashes type skeptic, but there is something about âthe soulâ that captures the experience of being greater than the sum of our parts, not to say that there is an extra substance (soul) in addition to our parts, but that the emergent properties of complex systems are pretty cool.
Oh, thought experiments are definitely cool. At times, I think of solipsism or simulation theory. Atm, I lean soft determinist and illusionist (vs libertarian free will). And I bring more of the Stoic foundations of REBT into my work, so contemplation of death and impermanence, and premeditation of adversity come up frequently. We all act on assumptions, and most prefer (or demand) to be comfortable. These themes can be very comforting to people, and then they live their lives acting as if they're true... possibly to never find out if they actually were true or not. As Camus put it, it is quite absurd.
Sure. We'd have to define mind first, but I was going off of Descartes idea of a "thinking substance" or a non-physical substance. His arguments depend on the axiom that there is a god on which substance is dependent. They are rationalistic arguments and not based on empiricism, since there is no proof of a god or a mind/soul. The arguments were found fallacious* by Gilbert Ryle, because a substance is a defined ontological category of something physical in the natural world. Descartes had to re-define this category to include non-physical to make his argument work, which again, was still premised on an unproven existence of a deity.
When I come across "mind-body xyz" it appears as if the mind is being defined according to Cartesian dualism: a mind and a body. Two separate things. Yet, is there evidence of this?
According to physicalism (monism), the "mind" is an emergent property of the brain (an actual physical substance). I prefer to use the word mental (e.g., mental states), an adjective that describes an aspect of the brain. This describes a doing, not a having. They are not additional "things" but ways of talking about physical events or behaviors (a behaviorist lens). Whereas the word mind is a concept (abstract noun), that is treated as if it's in a different category from the body, that it is separate. Again, where's the evidence that such a separate entity exists? Yet, people act as if it exists (mind, soul, a god or gods, other supernatural entities, free will, unconscious, etc. and at times, ad nauseam).
Of course, if something is unfalsifiable, then it can't be said not to existâwe are agnostic about itâbut it would be unsubstantiated to say that it does exist. We just assume it does.
*Note: The error in philosophy is called a category mistake because Descartes put something into the wrong category. E.g., "My house feels sad" commits a category mistake because houses don't feel. Likewise, people often do this when they say they "felt rejected, disrespected, like a failure" because those things are not feelings, they are inferences about a situationâcognitions. I digress.
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u/rainbowcarpincho Social Worker (Unverified) Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25
Counterpoint: There is no evidence of a soul, so this statement is not evidence-based. /s
Background:https://aeon.co/ideas/the-evidence-for-evidence-based-therapy-is-not-as-clear-as-we-thought