Sender Spike
2 min readDec 9, 2023

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Frankly, your reply is the very definition of a word game. On one hand you say that map is not the territory (with which I agree) and say that arguing about interpretations is meaningless. But on the other hand you still interpret (your) experiences in a "promissory spiritualistic" way. That's, if nothing else, rather inconsistent. At worst, it's intellectually dishonest.

Case in point, and even going by your own standards, no one ever experienced God or met ghosts. Those are just interpretations of (our) experiences. And that's all what physicalism says. Sure, and as I said, there *are* dead end strains of physicalism that simply dismiss some experience without trying to look deeper into it, but it still does not invalidate said observation. Furthermore, that observation is a point where physicalism and self-inquiry come to an unprecedented consensus. Hence, science does not label delusional those who have extraordinary experiences, only those who give those experiences unfounded interpretations (and then act on them).

With all that being said, I would say that if there was a soul, science would already sniffed it out. It would be obvious by now, what it is that translates into the subjective interpretation of soul. Exactly as it found out that pheromones, which you've mentioned, translate into subjective experience of sexual (romantic) infatuation we call love. Alas, there is no soul as it is believed in, hence, it's not a surprise that science didn't find it (also, ask Buddhists what they think about soul :D). And that's the same problem as with God vs. science.

As I see it, and whatever the reason, you are afraid to commit and try to keep some backdoors to your preferred interpretations open, despite that they are clearly already closed. Your argumentation is pretty clever, but I'd say that in this case you are too clever for your own good.

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