Dr MacDougall and the 21-gram Soul

[WalterTrull]

Proof of a soul is of no consequence to theists?

Ahm ... why is it a non-sequitur?

If you believe that you have a soul, and that it's real / has objective existence

My understanding of soul is that it has no physical existence, as most understand physical. So, physical measurements could offer no proof pro or con, thus non-sequitur-ish Any proofs would be metaphysical (that is if you believe in physical at all). Personally, I am conflicted about soul, mostly I suppose because of definition.

 

[Audie]

My understanding of soul is that it has no physical existence, as most understand physical. So, physical measurements could offer no proof pro or con, thus non-sequitur-ish Any proofs would be metaphysical (that is if you believe in physical at all). Personally, I am conflicted about soul, mostly I suppose because of definition.

Your understanding of something that cannot be
shown to exist at all?

IF the "soul" could be weighed, that would prove it
exists.

That would be kinda important, no?

 

[WalterTrull]

Your understanding of something that cannot be
shown to exist at all?

IF the "soul" could be weighed, that would prove it
exists.

That would be kinda important, no?

Unfortunately, these conversations don't tend to resolve as we seem to live on different planets. The measurement you propose cannot detect metaphysical properties.

 

[Audie]

Unfortunately, these conversations don't tend to resolve as we seem to live on different planets. The measurement you propose cannot detect metaphysical properties.

Metaphysical? How would you know that?

Based on evidence it is
"Non existent properties"

Best not to confuse "metaphysical" with "fantasy"
or, bs.

In the event, I said IF.

Since you nor me nor the man behind the
tree knows a blessed thing about the "soul"
other than that, like Batboy, they remain undetected,
my observation is at least as, if not more, probable
than your "metaphysical" thing.

(Watch "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" for more info
on the purported "soul" and its interaction with the physical.)

 

[WalterTrull]

"Non existent properties"

Case in point

 

[Audie]

Case in point

In the point of that there are no known points of difference
between properties of "soul" and "nonexistent".

Now go do your viewing assignment.

 

[ecco]

He was a doctor from 1901 for which four of his experiments had varied results. The four lost weight and two did not.

The two who did not lose weight were soulless heathens.

 

[viole]

X is about to die.

At the moment of death, his soul will depart from his body.

Since the soul is real, his body will lose weight as a result.

Therefore the mass of his soul can be determined by comparing his just-before-death weight with his just-after weight.

So reasoned Dr Duncan MacDougall, publishing his results in 1907. They showed that of six such experiments, one showed a loss of 3/4th of an ounce / 21.3 grams. Therefore not conclusive, said the doctor. >More here<.

But the question was essentially a good one, was it not? If the soul is real / has objective existence / is not imaginary then it will have real qualities such as mass, won't it?

So why haven't churches who think the soul is real pursued such experiments further? Surely they must have a healthy curiosity to discover what the facts are?

Or is there a tacit acknowledgement that the soul is imaginary (is 'spirit') and such experiments can only end in embarrassment?

I think that people who believe in a spiritual reality, and are so convinced that materialism is incomplete, would find it embarrassing if even souls would be subjected to the gravitational field by having a mass.
LOL.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Twilight Hue]

The two who did not lose weight were soulless heathens.

*Grin* I suppose so.

 

[blü 2]

Information in physics is a mathematical entity, i.e., a quantity. In the most non-technical sense, information is the resolution of (an) uncertainty. See: https://phys.org/news/2016-07-refutes-famous-physical.html All of the answers there are informative.

Thanks for that link ─ I hadn't heard of that debate, and I enjoyed reading about it.

It doesn't tell me the difference between 'information' and 'data', but let it pass.

In any case, in response to the question in your OP: information definitely does not possess mass.

Information and data are concepts, and don't exist in the absence of a brain holding those concepts ─ that is, in the absence of very particular instances of bioelectricity and biochemistry. It would be very difficult to point to eg the mass-energy of the brain state representing any particular concept, but easy to note that the brain state is a physical thing.

I don't know of anything relating to Bell's theorem that raises any difficulty in assuming the existence of phenomena smaller the Planck Length.

Yes, on reflection you're right. I was thinking that it ruled out EPR's view of 'spooky' quantum effects, but it wouldn't necessarily rule out a third system of sub-Planck physics. But more importantly, it would be impossible to make any meaningful statement about a system not only unknown but on our present knowledge unknowable in principle.

As the 2 sources linked to at my above post explain, phenomena smaller than Planck length have no location in spacetime and are inherently unmeasurable.

Or more accurately, if they existed, they would have no location in spacetime and would be inherently unmeasurable. Indeed, as I said, their very existence would be unknowable, let alone the rules by which they functioned.

Obviously there is no rational reason to impose the requirement of location for the psyche, soul, consciousness, etc., that one cannot impose on phenomena smaller than Planck length.

I'd say there's no important difference between 'entirely imaginary' and 'entirely unknowable'. Do you say there is?

Indeed, assuming the basic tenet of reductionism, in which causation arises from the smallest or most fundamental "level" of empirical reality, then causes would arise from those phenomena smaller than Planck length.

That depends on how 'cause' is defined. Certainly there are countless phenomena every second that are uncaused in the classical sense, and only explained statistically in QM.

Since sub-Planck physics would be unknowable, even as to its existence, we're free to imagine that it has a third option, distinct from classical physics and from QM, when it comes to the why and how of things happening. Indeed, we're free to imagine anything about it we like, since any statement about the contents of the unknowable (beyond its unknowability) is as worthless as any other.

 

[blü 2]

*Grin* I suppose so.

I think that people who believe in a spiritual reality, and are so convinced that materialism is incomplete, would find it embarrassing if even souls would be subjected to the gravitational field by having a mass.
- viole

To the point where they refrain from investigating their own claims in case the result is embarrassing?

I'm shocked, shocked.

 

[viole]

To the point where they refrain from investigating their own claims in case the result is embarrassing?

I'm shocked, shocked.

Well, yes. A soul with inertia, lol.
That looks like a very ridiculous claim, so I am not so surprised that they renounced to pursue it.

Ciao

- viole

 

[blü 2]

A soul with inertia

Beautifully put!

 

[Nous]

Information in physics is a mathematical entity, i.e., a quantity. In the most non-technical sense, information is the resolution of (an) uncertainty. See: https://phys.org/news/2016-07-refutes-famous-physical.html All of the answers there are informative.

Thanks for that link ─ I hadn't heard of that debate, and I enjoyed reading about it.

It doesn't tell me the difference between 'information' and 'data', but let it pass.

My bad! I pasted the wrong link. I meant give this one: What is information? I think #19 might be most helpful. But all of the answers are good.
[

Information and data are concepts, and don't exist in the absence of a brain holding those concepts

Au contraire. In physicist Jacob Bekenstein's 2003 article in Scientific American, Information in the Holographic Universe, he begins:

Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely to be told “matter and energy.” Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. The robot at the automobile factory is supplied with metal and plastic but can make nothing useful without copious instructions telling it which part to weld to what and so on. A ribosome in a cell in your body is supplied with amino acid building blocks and is powered by energy released by the conversion of ATP to ADP, but it can synthesize no proteins without the information brought to it from the DNA in the cell’s nucleus. Likewise, a century of developments in physics has taught us that information is a crucial player in physical systems and processes. Indeed, a current trend, initiated by John A. Wheeler of Princeton University, is to regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals.​

He goes on to note the finite but increasing information storage capacity of devices such as hard disk drives. Then he explains:

Shannon’s entropy does not enlighten us about the value of information, which is highly dependent on context. Yet as an objective measure of quantity of information, it has been enormously useful in science and technology. For instance, the design of every modern communications device -- from cellular phones to modems to compact disc players -- relies on Shannon entropy. Thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy are conceptually equivalent: the number of arrangements that are counted by Boltzmann entropy reflects the amount of Shannon information one would need to implement any particular arrangement.​

Or more accurately, if they existed, they would have no location in spacetime and would be inherently unmeasurable. Indeed, as I said, their very existence would be unknowable, let alone the rules by which they functioned.

Actually, phenomena smaller than Planck length might could be inferred, just as the existence of energy is inferred, and calculated. Energy is not any sort of object with a specific location in the spacetime a system. It isn't detected by any instrument. It's a quantity that's calculated.

 

[blü 2]

My bad! I pasted the wrong link. I meant give this one: What is information? I think #19 might be most helpful. But all of the answers are good.

The first coherent discussion I've seen on the subject. Thanks. It makes clear that part of the problem is that 'information' has different meanings in different contexts, Shannon (which I knew), QM (which I didn't), or more generally. And it's in that last category where I continue to see no difference between 'information' and 'data' eg if (as with one of their examples) I 'interrogate' a defined space with the intention of deriving a total description / definition of it, the 'answers' to my 'interrogation' are indistinguishable from data, no?

Au contraire. In physicist Jacob Bekenstein's 2003 article in Scientific American, Information in the Holographic Universe, he begins:

Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely to be told “matter and energy.” Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. The robot at the automobile factory is supplied with metal and plastic but can make nothing useful without copious instructions telling it which part to weld to what and so on.​

This raises an interesting question. 'Information' here has the original sense, 'that which informs', and in this context the thing to be informed must be capable of being informed. Is it a usual meaning of 'informed' to say that the cards 'inform' the Jacquard loom, or is it a metaphor? That is, is the Jacquard loom a (primitive) brain-like thing? Or does its inability to make decisions, doing only and exactly what it's told, disqualify it? My instinctive reply is the latter. But then we come to the computer, which can indeed make decisions, and may therefore be properly considered a brain-like thing that can, without any excess of metaphor, be 'informed'. I'm inclined to think so, but I'd be interested to hear the counter-argument.

A ribosome in a cell in your body is supplied with amino acid building blocks and is powered by energy released by the conversion of ATP to ADP, but it can synthesize no proteins without the information brought to it from the DNA in the cell’s nucleus.​

If I stay on the main line of my thinking above, the processes of the cell are all 'mechanical', that is, nothing is able to make to choice and nothing makes a choice. Like the Jacquard loom, the bits of the cell do what physics requires of them in their various biochemical situations. So I'm inclined to say neither the cell nor any of its parts is 'informed'; rather it is directed.

Likewise, a century of developments in physics has taught us that information is a crucial player in physical systems and processes. Indeed, a current trend, initiated by John A. Wheeler of Princeton University, is to regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals.​

And that doesn't involve Shannon or QM but simply the existence of physical situations from which we gather data and inform ourselves. That is, none of it is information unless and until one of us chooses to make it information ie sets out to be informed by it.

(And if, as he suggests, the physical world is made up of 'information', why do we need mass-energy at all? There's a kind of Platonism here, and Platonism is only possible by confusing concepts eg numbers with things that have objective existence.)

Actually, phenomena smaller than Planck length might could be inferred, just as the existence of energy is inferred, and calculated. Energy is not any sort of object with a specific location in the spacetime a system. It isn't detected by any instrument. It's a quantity that's calculated.

If I drop a brick on my foot, have I not demonstrated the reality of energy, located in the brick-under-acceleration? If I burn wood for my campfire, am I not demonstrating the reality of energy? And huddling by my fire, is it not the energetic perturbations of the air I perceive as the howls of the hungry wolves come nearer?

 

[Nous]

The first coherent discussion I've seen on the subject. Thanks. It makes clear that part of the problem is that 'information' has different meanings in different contexts, Shannon (which I knew), QM (which I didn't), or more generally. And it's in that last category where I continue to see no difference between 'information' and 'data' eg if (as with one of their examples) I 'interrogate' a defined space with the intention of deriving a total description / definition of it, the 'answers' to my 'interrogation' are indistinguishable from data, no?

Indeed, datum is often defined as a piece of information.

But then we come to the computer, which can indeed make decisions,

A computer makes decisions???!! Where did you get that idea? When I click on the name of a file stored on my computer, you're saying the computer decides whether or not to open it?

If I drop a brick on my foot, have I not demonstrated the reality of energy, located in the brick-under-acceleration?

So you have demonstrated the reality of a quantity E by dropping a brick on your foot? Cool! Mathematical realism is impossible to avoid, isn't it?

BTW, do you recall a discussion where you said or suggested that concepts are actual "physical" things that exist in brains? What happens to those concepts when a brain dies?

 

[blü 2]

A computer makes decisions???!! Where did you get that idea?

From the idea that humans make decisions as the result of long, complex and interacting chains of cause+effect, perhaps altered by random quantum events. In that case we're simply the far end of the spectrum from the Jacquard loom, which like us responds to stimuli in particular ways.

When I click on the name of a file stored on my computer, you're saying the computer decides whether or not to open it?

I was thinking more of the IF ... THEN functions, which are part of checking in the course of processing, and then branching / deciding one way or the other. But yes, for the moment at least, I'll stay with your example as a simple example of cause+effect (triggered, for the sake of color, not by you but by a burst of radioactivity striking the computer, thus bringing QM randomness in); and therefore in the same category as other chains of cause+effect, by which we too 'choose' our responses to stimuli. I put it like that because at the moment no alternative occurs to me.

So you have demonstrated the reality of a quantity E by dropping a brick on your foot? Cool! Mathematical realism is impossible to avoid, isn't it?

My swelling foot won't quantify it for me, but it will give me report such as 'hard impact, left foot, recommend say 'ouch' and remove shoe'. That's because what it detected, and what did the damage, was the transfer of energy from brick to foot. The impact is quantified relatively (slight, light, medium ...) rather than in units.

BTW, do you recall a discussion where you said or suggested that concepts are actual "physical" things that exist in brains? What happens to those concepts when a brain dies?

Ah, like asking where the light goes when you turn the light off! They're the product of the interactions of living neurons, so they're composed of particular biochemical and bioelectrical patterns ie exist physically. When I die, the set of systems necessary to sustain them will no longer exist, and they'll cease to exist too. Same with my memories, bad habits, ability to read, and everything else.

 

[Audie]

(Watch "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" for more info
on the purported "soul" and its interaction with the physical.)

 

[Nous]

From the idea that humans make decisions as the result of long, complex and interacting chains of cause+effect, perhaps altered by random quantum events. In that case we're simply the far end of the spectrum from the Jacquard loom, which like us responds to stimuli in particular ways.
I was thinking more of the IF ... THEN functions, which are part of checking in the course of processing, and then branching / deciding one way or the other. But yes, for the moment at least, I'll stay with your example as a simple example of cause+effect (triggered, for the sake of color, not by you but by a burst of radioactivity striking the computer, thus bringing QM randomness in); and therefore in the same category as other chains of cause+effect, by which we too 'choose' our responses to stimuli. I put it like that because at the moment no alternative occurs to me.

What are you claiming happens differently in a computer by which it "decides" to open a file than what happens in a stove when someone pushes a button to turn on an eye, or what happens in a faucet when one pulls a lever to make water flow from the spigot?

Do you claim that when you decided the content of your above post, you could not have possibly decided to write a different sentence at some point?

My swelling foot won't quantify it for me, but it will give me report such as 'hard impact, left foot, recommend say 'ouch' and remove shoe'. That's because what it detected, and what did the damage, was the transfer of energy from brick to foot. The impact is quantified relatively (slight, light, medium ...) rather than in units.

Define "energy" as you are using the term here and state your deduction by which you have demonstrated it existence by dropping a brick on your foot.

Obviously you cannot deduce a quantity that is useful to physics by dropping a brick on your foot. Correct?

Ah, like asking where the light goes when you turn the light off! They're the product of the interactions of living neurons, so they're composed of particular biochemical and bioelectrical patterns ie exist physically. When I die, the set of systems necessary to sustain them will no longer exist, and they'll cease to exist too. Same with my memories, bad habits, ability to read, and everything else.

So you're saying that "the systems necessary to sustain" your concepts and memories do not possess mass?

 

[blü 2]

What are you claiming happens differently in a computer by which it "decides" to open a file than what happens in a stove when someone pushes a button to turn on an eye, or what happens in a faucet when one pulls a lever to make water flow from the spigot?

In all these examples implicitly a human presses the key, turns on the gas, draws a beer. But what about non-volitional events (and what 'volitional' means is a work in progress in this conversation) like iron oxidizing in rain, lack of rain causing a plant to die or mold growing on a wall because it's damp?

Do you claim that when you decided the content of your above post, you could not have possibly decided to write a different sentence at some point?

Yes, since I can't see how any alternative could work. Simultaneously I have no emotional attachment to that answer ─ I feel about my decision essentially the same way I felt about them when I was a small kid, knowing they were personal to me, something "I" did.

How do you think it could work except as by chains of cause+effect plus the odd possible random input / stimulus?

Define "energy" as you are using the term here and state your deduction by which you have demonstrated it existence by dropping a brick on your foot.

I use 'energy' to mean 'mass-energy'. Mass-energy is what was in the Big Bang and what everything is made out of, and being made out of energy, responding to other properties of energy. (I can't rule out that the contents of the Big Bang were a salad of things, but Occam's razor tells me to stay with monist simplicity until I no longer can.)

Looked at another way, as with the falling brick, (mass-)energy is a quantifiable natural phenomenon present in all things with mass, and transferable between them, not freely, but as a transfer from a region of higher to a region of lower energy (whence the leveling out of energy gradients that is entropy).

Obviously you cannot deduce a quantity that is useful to physics by dropping a brick on your foot. Correct?

I'm not sure what you mean here. I can quantify energy in a number of ways, with a multitester, thermometer, balance, spring scale, accelerometer and so on. When I drop the brick on my foot, as I said, my senses report it in relative terms rather than pre-agreed units of quantity.

So you're saying that "the systems necessary to sustain" your concepts and memories do not possess mass?

I dare say there are plenty of massless photons mediating EM phenomena in my brain in their virtual way, but biochemical and bioelectrical phenomena such as constitute memory, concepts and so on have mass.

I'm not sure this is relevant to what you're saying but I'll put it in in case it is: the concepts in my brain exist as sets of phenomena in physics, but the contents of those concepts don't have to be real. If we liken our ability to form concepts to a drawing pad, then we can draw unicorns, zombies, Donald Duck, on the pad, just as we can draw a landscape or our dog, or our car on it; and we can form concepts of unicorns, zombies and Donald Duck just as we can form concepts of our local park, children, dog, car &c.