Why your soul is dead

In response to the esteemable sarah goode, I have decided to stimulate interesting, insightful discussion so that she'll stop telling me what a loser I am. If anyone would care to respond to this, I'd be most grateful.

Anyhow, this is something which I have discussed with a few of my friends, and it would interest me to see what various other people (re: you) might think about it. A few years ago, a scientifically-minded firm called Neurometrics attempted to market a device called the IQ Cap. Basically said device consisted of a computer and sixteen electrodes which would go on the subject's skull and within sixteen seconds determine with stunning accuracy (within one-half of a standard deviation, I believe) what the subject would score on the standard Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale tests. In short, the subject's IQ could be divined simply from brain waves. Ergo, intelligence appears to be purely derivative of physical and chemical elements making up the physiology of a given man-- there is no 'mind' apart from the solid grey matter sitting in your head.

This links to naturalism-- if what we are as rational beings is merely a result of biology and, eventually, the mysterious Origins of the Universe (the Big Bang or whatever they're calling it nowadays), then reason is merely a hoax, an old wives' tale that we tell ourselves to feel better. In other words, thought, as conceived of in the common nomenclature, is not actually possible, because it would imply a chemical independence from the nature that created the brain. Thus, reason is self-contradictory.

Now, according to cartesian philosophy (i.e. cogito ergo sum), the only certainty of life is self-realization. If, as seen, thought is really a byproduct of biology and not truly a function of the self, then we are not only merely hunks of matter, but we cannot truly be certain of even that.

Any thoughts?

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is snuggly