[lariattra]

The problem is 400 years ago people would have said exactly this about the soul.

It seems very possible the mind is just a superstitious artifact but this idea persist in various forms because to let go of it truly means the lights go out at death. We seem incredibly good at telling ourselves stories to deny that reality.

[BoxOfRain]

There's no 'I think therefore I am' equivalent for the notion of a soul as there is for the notion of a mind though, it's easy to say there's no such thing as a soul for lack of evidence but I don't think you can relegate the mind to same category as trivially. If the mind is a mere illusion then what is the nature of the thing being deceived by that illusion for example?

I don't think it's necessary a fear of death which makes theories that eliminate the mind unappealing to many either, personally I find the idea of oblivion a lot less unsettling than many of the proposed afterlifes!

[fsckboy]

>The problem is 400 years ago people would have said exactly this about the soul.

that's not a problem. you have proof there is no soul? if there is another "physics-cal" ingredient for the mind that we don't know about, and it is discovered in a particle accelerator, "it" could even be the soul.

I was an atheist from my earliest beginnings (when my 5 years older sister tried to teach little-me what she learned in Sunday school, I did not believe it, at all), and I have never believed, and still don't. HOWEVER, intellectually it freed my mind to figure out/learn/realize that "scientific materialism" is based on just as much pure FAITH as religion; only it's generally accompanied by less doubt so it comes off as, forget about arrogant, blind. I try now to no longer to say things that are based on assumption.

Correlation is not causation, right? you know what the implications of that is? We have no evidence of causation of anything anywhere in the universe, all we have is very good correlation, even through our popperian refutable hypotheses, "well, it's worked every time we've made a prediction and tried it" is not causation any more than just correlation.

so what people said 400 years ago about souls, and what they say today about minds, you still should not claim to know the answer to, simply because you don't. And I know this from the perspective of holding the same BELIEFS as you.

and before anybody writes to tell me I'm wrong, be prepared to answer these questions: what is the mechanism for gravity? what is the mechanism for momentum? what is the mechanism for electric charge? you won't be able to say anything except "it's a property we observe"