One in a googolplex

 

Emerson Green is a former atheist who defines himself as an agnostic these days. He is also a non-materialist, but I´m not sure if he´s a dualist or a panpsychist. In this long video, Green discusses with philosopher Michael Huemer, who is obviously a dualist. Indeed, he defines himself as a substance dualist. Judging by his book "Ethical Intuitionism", Huemer is also a non-naturalist moral realist. He is, however, an atheist and holds the dualist position on purely philosophical grounds. 

The video is a bit difficult to follow (or am I just showing my age?). I get the impression that Huemer´s position is really a hybrid between substance dualism and emergent materialism. He seems to be saying that the soul emerges from a material substrate at a certain point in time when the structural configuration of matter is just right, due to psycho-physical laws the origins of which remain mysterious. Then, the soul becomes in effect eternal. But it´s possible that I´m misunderstanding him. He certainly does believe in reincarnation, although he concedes that it may take "a googolplex years" before your soul gets reincarnated. I *think* his point is that the soul can only reincarnate in a body that looks almost similar to the one it emerged from. But this, too, suggests that the body and the soul have a very strong connection. Your soul will lose all its memories, so presumably "past life regression" doesn´t work.

The most intriguing part of the video (around 39:00 to 50:00) discusses Einstein´s theory of relativity. Huemer offers a kind of "common sense" critique of relativity, arguing that space and time are two different things, and that all measurements must be absolute (or else absolutely wrong).

I admit that I became somewhat *less* convinced about dualism after watching this video. Huemer admits (!) that the strong correlation between brain states and mind states isn´t expected on dualism, albeit it isn´t incompatible with it either. True, but in science, the winner is invariably the theory that makes the most fruitful predictions. So this would favor either physicalism or panpsychism over dualism. Frankly, many arguments in the video are of this form: "We can´t prove it, but we can´t disprove it either. Therefore dualism". Nah, the correct approach is "therefore agnosticism".

The strongest argument in favor of dualism is (of course) that thoughts simply doesn´t seem physical, which has led most humans throughout history to be intuitively dualist (in some sense). On the other hand, our intuitions are often disproven by modern science or even by philosophy. So I suppose my current take on the problematique is somewhat, shall we say, dual... 

Maybe we´ll get the answer in a googolplex years.