You're welcome. I hope you get more votes this way!

In reply to this comment by Psychologic:
Thanks for the tag update. =)

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
QualiaSoup is great at these basic ideas of reason. Good stuff.

Thanks for the tag update. =)

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
QualiaSoup is great at these basic ideas of reason. Good stuff.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'QualiaSoup, critical thinking, rationality, scientific method' to 'QualiaSoup, critical thinking, rationality, scientific method, reason' - edited by gwiz665

Tags for this video have been changed from 'QualiaSoup' to 'QualiaSoup, critical thinking, rationality, scientific method' - edited by gwiz665

QualiaSoup is great at these basic ideas of reason. Good stuff.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'science, incomprehension, emotion, understanding, bias, learning, knowledge' to 'science, incomprehension, emotion, understanding, bias, learning, knowledge, QualiaSoup' - edited by EDD

Tags for this video have been changed from 'anecdotes, evidence, illusion, paranormal, explanation' to 'anecdotes, evidence, illusion, paranormal, explanation, QualiaSoup' - edited by EDD

I am very tired, so this post may be extremely error-ridden.

Notes as I proceed through the video:

Uh-oh. QualiaSoup's first point seems quite wrong-headed. He claims that "non-physical substance" illegitimately smuggles in the physical concept of "substance." But here I think he's problematically confusing our everyday colloquial use of the word "substance" with the philosophical meaning(s). To speak of a substance in philosophical jargon is merely to say that the "substance" is that which underlies all other properties of a thing and make it what it is. Thus, Spinoza was able to say that there is only one substance, underlying all materiality but not itself material. Leibniz made a somewhat similar claim, but allowed for the existence of an infinite number of substances called monads.

Second, even if it's true that speaking of a "non-physical substance" requires an analogy from physical substance, it's not at all obvious that this is problematic. Insofar as the non-physical shares some subset of properties with the physical, or has similar but somewhat different properties, one may legitimately borrow physical language to speak of it. The substance dualist might easily accept that there is some shared subset of properties.

Next, QS claims that substance dualists often conflate mind, soul, and consciousness without substantiating argument. This is either a straw man or an attack on the very weakest defenders of substance dualism. Waste of time making this point.

Next, QS offers an apparently coherent account of the public and private access of "physical" and "mental" events respectively, as against the dualist argument that such an account seems impossible. However, it is not at all obvious that he genuinely succeeds. A robust dualist argument would proceed under the assumption that the contents of the mind can be inferred perfectly from the contents of the brain (this is acceptable even under substance dualism). Even under such conditions, it is not obvious that the processes so identified are identical to my conscious experience. It has been argued even by atheist physicalists like Thomas Nagel that there is something in subjective experience uncaptured by physical accounts. As Nagel says in his most famous essay, even the most robust physical theory seems incapable of telling us what it would be like to be a bat. A dualist account might provide us with a coherent way to deal with this problem in a way that physicalism is incapable of.

Next, some nonsense about split brains. Yawn. No ground is going to be gained or lost for dualism on these grounds; the most QS can show is that a monist account is equally capable of accounting for such phenomena. I suppose he's correct that this can't be used as a good argument against

Next, a discussion of replacement of all one's cells every seven years. Not only is it not the case that this happens, but this would be a particularly bad argument for dualism. Is QS just going after the easy objections to his position and leaving alone the strong ones?

Next, damage to the body causing changes and/or damage in mental functioning. So what? Under substance dualism, there must be reciprocal causal relationships between the brain and the mind. This kind of thing is just what one expects under substance dualism.



This may be QS's most poorly argued video. At the most compelling point in the video, QS offers an apparently coherent account of private and public access which, if the dualist position is correct, should not be at all likely, if even possible. And, to be sure, there are philosophers of mind who will agree with him, such as Daniel Dennett. Yet there are just as many who will not, including very prominent philosophers like David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. At every other point, he is either wrong or irrelevant.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'science, critical thinking, explanation' to 'science, critical thinking, explanation, QualiaSoup' - edited by fissionchips

Is that not what he is doing? He looks at the motives of theists, deconstructs them, and uses them as a platform to criticize their behavior. He presents an exaggerated and stilted strawman. "Theists do X & Y bad things, so they are wrong..." complete with 'mean' pictures for theists. Such behavior mirrors the emotional blackmail of some theists. "You do X & Y bad things, so you are wrong..." My conclusion was more of a tongue in cheek tweak of that rather amusing hypocrisy. Where the arguments are passing each other in terminology is the metaphysical level on which the subject matter rests.

That's such a distortion of QualiaSoup's video that I have to wonder if we watched the same one.

Let me be clear. I am not an atheist or agnostic. My disagreements with the video and with QualiaSoup's overall philosophical position run very deep. In fact, my first comment lays out a number of them and avers to others. Ideologically, we are opposed. I have every reason to point out flaws in his video.

Yet it is not flawed in the way you claim. He does not say that theists are wrong because they do X & Y bad things. Rather, he claims that they are wrong, lays out his argument as to why theists are wrong, and then proceeds to criticize the bad behavior of a subset of religious believers.

I don't recall having erroneously mixed those issues - but if you interpret it that way then for the sake of clarity I'll address it. I was pointing out the hypocritical nature of the argument in this vid, and then made a general bemoaning complaint about why atheists keep feeling the need to slap religion in general, blanket terms. I make no commentary on why atheists reject religious truth claims. My comments are wholly confined to the topic of 'why do people feel the need to behave badly when dealing with other schools of thought?" The final bit in this vid could be directed as much to atheists as theists... "If you attack someone because they don't share your beliefs, you're invited to consider what that says about you and the values you claim to embrace."

How is it that you think QualiaSoup is behaving badly? If this were a political discussion, this video would be seen as markedly civil compared to most debate and commentary. He is not blindly asserting his opinion or venting his spleen. He lays out his arguments in a calm, logical manner. He doesn't obfuscate or make it difficult to figure out on what premises his arguments stand or fall. This is not a piece of demagoguery or propaganda. As far as I can tell, the video falls well within the bounds of civil discourse.



I accept that premise. I also point out that I never stated it was 'unmitigated good'. I said, "They do great good". That cannot be denied.

If you mean that "American and US religiously based charities do great good in the early 21st century," then maybe that's a supportable position. I have great reservations about it--I do not think that attempting to destroy indigenous religions in Africa and South America or fighting condom use in Africa are anything like goods--but the cultural and legal restrictions on acceptable church behavior act as a deterrent against the abuses seen past and present when churches have significantly greater power--as, for example, in the rampant child abuse in Catholic boarding schools in Ireland up through the 80's.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Hmm - I'm more curious about INTENT here than anything else. Let's suppose for a moment that Joe Q. Theist sees the video and says, "Hmm - well he made a couple decent points." What then?
1. It could be simple self-righteous shadenfrued. Such persons may simply enjoy wagging their finger at what they consider to be the quaint, anachronistic, and occasionally foolish behaviors of their fellows.
2. Another goal could be recruitment. He may be seeking to convince others to abandon religion and faith completely so that they can join together as a larger group of similarly minded persons.
3. Possibly fame & money are his goals. He may simply be trolling for attention by attacking establishment morality. Or, if he's got a website with advertisers, then he could just be interested in hiking his own profits by addressing a controversial topic and garnering traffic.
Hey - this sounds familiar... Self-righteousness... Prosoletyzing... Attention... Money... This guy is a missionary for his church. Ah - nice try there pal. I've got 7th Day's and Jehovah's hitting me up to join their churches already. Not interested in hearing your particular spiel.

Your fictional average theist (what the heck is that supposed to mean, anyway? I don't even know what an "average Christian" would look like) would be using very poor reasoning skills in making such a judgment. Not only is such speculation about his motives entirely ungrounded, but it is irrelevant. To claim that, simply because his motives could be questioned, his argument and conclusion must be false, is to commit a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy.

QualiaSoup's arguments stand or fall on their own.


Seriously though - what is with atheists anyway? Faith-based initiatives contribute to society and the world with massive charity, good works, and personal benefits. They're clearly not 'all bad' as some would have us think. And - if you don't want to have 'faith' then none of them are forcing you to do anything. What's so awful about just taking personal satisfaction in your own beliefs privately?

If only it were the case that no one was forcing beliefs on people! Sadly, that's not the case, and it is through faith-based initiatives that it is done.

All too often, Christian and Muslim missions and charities make participation in religious services mandatory if one is to receive the benefits those organizations distribute. This is done all over North and South America.

Further, in outside the Americas and in the poorer areas of the Americas, the people who run Christian hospitals and charities all too frequently deny services to people who refuse to convert. Some of the workers are in fact proud to reveal this fact; they consider it their duty.

The people who go to these charities usually have no other options. And in many cases, the consequence of not receiving their benefits is death. They must literally convert to Christianity or die. Islam is, of course, not immune to this sort of thing; the Taliban holds its grip on Afghanistan by similar means.

Even in milder cases, the message is clear: you owe us, and the best way to pay us back is to convert. Charity provided by evangelistic, monotheistic religions comes with strings attached. It is not clear at all to me that their giving is a social good.

QualiaSoup and TheraminTrees are both great. Check them out on YouTube.

>> ^Almanildo: There, you said it yourself. Treating God as a scientific hypothesis is simply a sophisticated way to say that you demand a reason to believe in it. This reason has to be either some sort of evidence or some logical or philosophical argument. As QualiaSoup points out, the philosophical arguments are flawed. So skeptics seek evidence for God.
It seems like you are trying to evade the question by having it both ways. First you assert that God does have an effect on our daily lives, through points of contact with our world. Then you refuse to treat these effects as potential evidence requiring analysis.


Sure, we have to provide some reason why we believe in something. That does not mean that the reason has to be construed in strict scientific terms. It may need to be in some sense empirical, rational, and all that, and hence capable of being grappled with intellectually, but that does not mean that what is being investigated is open to scientific inquiry in the way that rocks and bacteria are.

Science relies on a rather narrow kind of reason--instrumental reason--and not reason totally or simply. There are other forms of inquiry--such as the phenomenological investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty--which depend on very different kinds of reason.

>>HadouKen24
Thank you for a well-reasoned point of view from the opposite side. We're seeing way too little of that.

1) It's a bit erroneous for QualiaSoup to claim that the spiritual or supernatural realms proposed by various religions are conceived as realms we have no connection to or ability to contact or explore. If that were the case, then all religion would be a non-starter. Rather, the claim is that there are points of contact--specifically, those central to the particular religion, such as the temples and oracles of ancient Greece, or the revelation of Holy Scripture in Christianity. These give us an "in" for something like an empirical analysis.

QualiaSoup does indeed assume that the spitiual realms or deities of religions are unknowable. I'll show you why:

2) Skeptics treating God concepts as scientific hypotheses is getting a little tiring. It's not intended as a scientific statement; why should we expect it to conform to the standards of a scientific epistemology? It is, in fact, the primacy of such an epistemology which is under contention.

There, you said it yourself. Treating God as a scientific hypothesis is simply a sophisticated way to say that you demand a reason to believe in it. This reason has to be either some sort of evidence or some logical or philosophical argument. As QualiaSoup points out, the philosophical arguments are flawed. So skeptics seek evidence for God.

It seems like you are trying to evade the question by having it both ways. First you assert that God does have an effect on our daily lives, through points of contact with our world. Then you refuse to treat these effects as potential evidence requiring analysis.

There are a few things about this video that I feel I should comment on.

1) It's a bit erroneous for QualiaSoup to claim that the spiritual or supernatural realms proposed by various religions are conceived as realms we have no connection to or ability to contact or explore. If that were the case, then all religion would be a non-starter. Rather, the claim is that there are points of contact--specifically, those central to the particular religion, such as the temples and oracles of ancient Greece, or the revelation of Holy Scripture in Christianity. These give us an "in" for something like an empirical analysis.

2) Skeptics treating God concepts as scientific hypotheses is getting a little tiring. It's not intended as a scientific statement; why should we expect it to conform to the standards of a scientific epistemology? It is, in fact, the primacy of such an epistemology which is under contention.

3) QualiaSoup's point about the inconclusiveness of miracles is well-received--but it is on the same continuum as arguments that we can't know if we are just brains in vats being fed stimuli by mad scientists. If an image of the Japanese Sun goddess Amaterasu were to materialize and defuse all our nuclear weapons, I don't think it would be unreasonable to take as our starting hypothesis that Amaterasu really did just finally prevent a nuclear holocaust. To be sure, scientific investigation may then question that claim and open it to further scrutiny which may or may not confirm the hypothesis, but that does not mean that, prior to such disconfirmation, we do not have at least some good reason to believe in Amaterasu.

All empirical judgments must be made in terms of our background knowledge. Part of that background knowledge is our knowledge of popular religious beliefs. If we have an independently verifiable experience which matches well with the religious beliefs of our--or perhaps another--culture, then we would have grounds to at least provisionally accept at least some of those beliefs--if only in modified form.

4) Finally, it is certainly the case that the kind of demanding pushiness that Soup criticizes is thoroughly unpleasant and unreasonable. Private reasons to believe in a God or gods do not justify that sort of behavior. His words on the problems with that particular attitude toward faith are perfectly appropriate. I worry a bit that the problems with the video will make it difficult for reasonable Christians and Muslims (since those are the two groups I see engaging in that sort of "dialogue") to perceive where he does in fact hit the mark.

If he's not going to phrase things in a manner that such people will respond to, it would be nice if he could present a few comments on the aspects of those two particular religions that encourage such attitudes and behavior. It seems to be strongly linked to monotheism--Judaism has less of such problematic attitudes, but they are still present, and seem to have been much more present in ancient Judaism. In polytheistic traditions, one tends to find a much higher respect for debate and diversity of thought. One need only look at the vigorous debates between Greek philosophers, who could agree on the subject of the gods no more than in any other areas, or the staggering profusion of religious practices and beliefs to be found in India. It is misleading to speak of such traditions as "tolerant;" the word implies that it takes some effort of will to maintain civility, when in fact polytheists tend to accept such diversity as a matter of fact.