Clarke's Extended Soul

Vailati, Ezio

doi:10.1353/hph.1993.0052

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To try to write down a local field interaction broadly consonant with modern physics, it is natural to treat souls as spatially located and extended, denying some aspects of the Cartesian view asserted by Foster ( 2001 ) and criticized by Fodor ( 1998 ). Spatially located souls are both mildly fashionable nowadays [at least as souls go (Eccles 1987 ; Hasker 2001 ; Zimmerman 2007 )] and closer to the historical mainstream than one might have thought (Vailati 1993 ; Zimmerman 2007 ; Reid 2008 ; Brown 2012 ). “For even if philosophers today very often take for granted that immaterial entities have no location, this is in fact quite an extraordinary view, historically speaking” (Pasnau 2011 , p. 328).…”

Section: Mental Causation: Carroll’s Foundling Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

Pitts

2020

Erkenn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-nineteenth century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether's theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity (GR) has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there is nothing for minds to violate. This paper is motivated by two ideas. First, one might take seriously the fact that GR formally has an infinity of rigid symmetries of the action and hence, by Noether's first theorem, an infinity of conserved energiesmomenta (thus answering Schrödinger's 1918 false-negative objection). Second, Sean Carroll has asked (rhetorically) how one should modify the Dirac-Maxwell-Einstein equations to describe mental causation. This paper uses the generalized Bianchi identities to show that General Relativity tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation. In the simplest case, Cartesian mental influence must be spatio-temporally constant, and hence 0. The difficulty may diminish for more complicated models. Its persuasiveness is also affected by larger world-view considerations. The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in GR (taking pseudotensor laws seriously). Such realism also might help to answer an objection to theories of causation involving conserved quantities, because energies-momenta would be conserved even in GR.

show abstract

Section: Mental Causation: Carroll’s Foundling Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

Pitts

2020

Erkenn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the early modern period, pace Descartes, some authors such as More and Samuel Clarke did take immaterial souls to be spatially located and to occupy a finite rather than point volume (Vailati 1993;Zimmerman 2007). (Recently doubt has been expressed whether Cartesians really held the views now commonly ascribed to them (Reid 2008).)…”

Section: Minds and Space?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Recently doubt has been expressed whether Cartesians really held the views now commonly ascribed to them (Reid 2008).) While More's and Clarke's spatially extended souls differ from the scholastic view, all these authors (would have) rejected Descartes's nonspatial soul interacting with matter at one point in favor of a soul in some fashion related to a region of space (Vailati 1993). Locke ascribed location and mobility to souls, and ascribing finite spatial extent seems to be quite compatible with his views (Brown 2012).…”

Section: Minds and Space?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Laws and the Philosophy of Mind: Opening the Black Box, Finding a Mirror

Pitts

2019

Philosophia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. (Non-epiphenomenalist property dualism is analogous.) Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is local, holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately. The energy (or momentum, etc.) in any volume changes only due to what flows through the boundaries (no teleportation). Constant total energy holds if the global summing-up of local conservation laws converges; it probably doesn't in reality. Energy (momentum) conservation holds if there is symmetry, the sameness of the laws over time (space). Thus, if there are time-places where symmetries fail due to nonphysical influence, conservation laws fail there and then, while holding elsewhere, such as refrigerators and stars. Noether's converse first theorem shows that conservation laws imply symmetries. Thus conservation trivially nearly entails the causal closure of the physical. But expecting conservation to hold in the brain (without looking) simply assumes the falsehood of Cartesianism. Hence Leibniz's objection begs the question. Empirical neuroscience is another matter. So is Einstein's General Relativity: far from providing a loophole, General Relativity makes mental causation harder.

show abstract

“…To try to write down a local field interaction broadly consonant with modern physics, it is natural to treat souls as spatially located and extended, denying some aspects of the Cartesian view asserted by Foster (Foster, 2001) and criticized by Fodor (Fodor, 1998). Spatially located souls are both mildly fashionable nowadays (at least as souls go (Eccles, 1987;Hasker, 2001;Zimmerman, 2007)) and closer to the historical mainstream than one might have thought (Brown, 2012;Zimmerman, 2007;Reid, 2008;Vailati, 1993). "For even if philosophers today very often take for granted that immaterial entities have no location, this is in fact quite an extraordinary view, historically speaking."…”

Section: Mental Causation: Carroll's Foundling Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

Pitts¹

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-19th century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether's theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity (GR) has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there is nothing for minds to violate.This paper is motivated by two ideas. First, one might take seriously the fact that GR formally has an infinity of rigid symmetries of the action and hence, by Noether's first theorem, an infinity of conserved energies-momenta (thus answering Schrödinger's 1918 false-negative objection). Second, Sean Carroll has asked (rhetorically) how one should modify the Dirac-Maxwell-Einstein equations to describe mental causation. This paper uses the generalized Bianchi identities to show that General Relativity tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation. In the simplest case, Cartesian mental influence must be spatio-temporally constant, and hence 0. The difficulty may diminish for more complicated models. Its persuasiveness is also affected by larger world-view considerations.The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in GR (taking pseudotensor laws seriously). Such realism also answers an objection to theories of causation involving conserved quantities, because energies-momenta would be conserved even in GR.

show abstract

Clarke's Extended Soul

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

Conservation Laws and the Philosophy of Mind: Opening the Black Box, Finding a Mirror

General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About