It is possible that at some point in the future someone will make a scientifically workable definition of the concept of the soul, and this concept will be verified by experimentation.
If it is possible, could you speculate on a method which would make it a possibility? If not, then what justification do you have for claiming the possibility?
On the other hand, it is clearly impossible that anyone will ever disprove all possible definitions of the concept of the soul.
Again, there is no need to disprove "all possible definitions". Possibilities only exist as possibilities once they have been clearly defined. Claiming "possible possibilities" is nonsensical.
What is the meaning of the color red to a blind person? Perhaps the soul does have intrinsic meaning to some very small fraction of humanity who are able to directly experience it.
Particular instantiations of phenomenal experience lack substantive meaning (what exactly does the color red mean to you?). The only conceptualization that avails itself to us is the nearly universal presence of the common sense intuition regarding the basic existence of phenomenal experience as a condition of subjectivity (Nagel’s “what it is like”). Interpretations will vary, but once the subjectivist intuition is personally embraced, making the corresponding inference of ubiquitous phenomenal experience is inescapable.
So, based on the above line of reasoning…despite a person being blind, the fact remains that s/he still represents a subjective perspective with the common sense intuition of phenomenal experience. The exact same inference would then follow. This person would have no valid reason to doubt the likelihood of a phenomenal state existing which corresponds to a properly functioning human eye perceiving 650 nm wave length EM radiation – just as s/he would have no reason to doubt that “it is like something” to be a bat with echo location.
Please note that nothing I have stated so far has anything to do with empiricism or the scientific method. I am making the logical inference of correspondence, or “supervenience”, based on my interpretation of my own subjectivity (which, as I’m sure you’re aware, is beyond the purview of science). However what I can verify, through the methods of science, is the physical states which correspond with experience and have measurable effects. Blind individuals may not have the experiential knowledge of “the redness of red”, but this doesn’t prevent them from confirming a seeing individual’s capacity to detect 650 nm wave length light and making the corresponding inference. In contrast, when individuals claim beliefs which have no observational effects I am under no obligation to agree that their beliefs are veridical,
or even logically coherent. I’m only obliged to take seriously the fact that these individuals believe
something. From that point it becomes an exercise in problem solving.
LongeCity
