Conservation of souls?

We have two opposing theories of consciousness here.

1. Consciousness is an emergent property of a physical system, namely the biological nervous system. In human beings, consciousness emerges from the extremely complex web of connections and communication that happens in the brain. According to this theory, "you" and "your brain" are indistinguishable.

2. Consciousness is produced by an immaterial "soul" that is coincident with a particular biological system for the period of that living thing's lifespan. According to this thread, "you" and "your brain" are separate entities that communicate. In particular, the soul can drive the brain to control the body, and the brain (perhaps) provides some kind of sensory input to the soul. I'm not actually sure whether religious people believe the soul needs physical input, or whether there's some kind of soul magic at work that does the same job.

Now, theory #1 is clearly grounded in the known material world. There is no suggestion that mysterious processes are at work. Consciousness, in this picture, relies on known laws of physics. The neural network of the brain operates via known chemical and electrical processes. The only "problem" is that it's very difficult to examine exactly what this complex network is doing from moment to moment, at the level of fine detail. Having said that, we do have a large amount of knowledge about things like the specialisation of certain areas of the brain. We know that sight and hearing and memory depend on specific regions of the brain, for example. Remove one of those brain regions, and the corresponding ability vanishes from the human being. Damage the brain and you can damage the consciousness, in predictable and repeatable ways.

Theory #2 posits an undetectable entity that is supposedly in control of things. No scientific test can detect the soul, apparently. Believers in the soul have not proposed any mechanism by which the immaterial soul can interface with the material world. In the soul picture, for example, my soul wills my arm to raise, and my body complies. Science can detect nerve impulses going from my brain to my arm when I carry out the action. It can also detect neural activity both in the motor cortex of my brain and in the areas of my brain that are known to handle planning and decision-making. But those who believe in a soul posit that, at the least, the soul is what causes this chain of events to happen. And yet, those people cannot point to any mechanism through which an immaterial soul could possibly start a chain of electrical or chemical processes in the brain, such as eventually results in my raising my arm.

Going in the other direction, it is also the case that when I look at the world, science can detect activity in the visual cortex of my brain, in the temporal lobes that reference and story memories, and so on and so forth. Those who say there is a soul posit, in addition to this, that images, memories and the like are somehow communicated from the physical brain (or perhaps directly from the world) to the immaterial soul. But, again, none of them ever suggest a mechanism by which this could possibly occur. A photon of light landing on my retina produces electrical and chemical signals that science can detect in my brain. But where is the signal that goes to the soul? What kind of signal is it? Electrical? Gravitational? Some other thing unknown to science?

The question that we should ask ourselves is the usual one that rational people always ask: what evidence do we have that tends to support theory #1, and what evidence supports theory #2? Based on the accumulation of evidence, which theory is more likely to be correct? The one that merely extends (slightly) known scientific findings, or the one that posits invisible, undetectable entities and unknown forces? It seems to me that there is only one rational conclusion that we can reach here.

Why do so many people accept theory #2, then? First and foremost, I think they accept it on the basis of appeal to authority. Religious leaders, religious texts, parents, friends and relatives, all say that we have souls. We get that message for early on in childhood. The belief in immaterial souls dates back centuries. Moreover, we seem to be predisposed to hold such beliefs, for complex reasons that science has only recently begun to investigate. It is worth reminding ourselves that the scientific method itself has only become prominent in the last 250 years or so, and science only started to seriously examine the brain and the mind about 100 years ago.

Belief in souls is traditional. It is embedded into our culture. Most people accept it without question. And that, right there, is another fact that is worth bearing in mind. If a person never questions the idea of souls , then of course it won't even occur to them to doubt it. It's not, in general, a social disadvantage to believe in souls. In fact, probably the opposite is true. It's easy to follow the crowd and just believe what you've been told. But this isn't the path to real knowledge.

 

Musika:

Are you saying that the soul has no independent agency, then?

Jan Ardena would have it that your soul is you, and that without your soul there would be no conscious you. Both you and he say that you believe that souls migrate from one body to another, retaining some ongoing essence of a person that defies the death of a physical body.

Now you speak as if the soul is merely a passenger in a body, with no ability to affect anything in the body, at least as far as causing action goes. Like clothes, the soul is merely an adjunct, with no independent agency.

What does this soul of yours do, in practical terms? From what you have written, I get the impression that the soul's one and only role is to provide a "spark of life" to a body. You assume that without a soul there is no life. Or, to put it another way, it seems to me that when you say "soul" you are using it essentially as a synonym for "life essence" or some equivalent metaphysical concept. Is that correct?

Such as?

I'm inclined to disagree. I doubt that there are many biologists, for example, who think that the processes of life cannot be reduced, at the lowest level, to chemistry, then physics. This is not to say that the organisation of biological systems is not immensely complex. Chemists and biologists are specialists with special expertise, but that does not mean that chemistry and biology aren't grounded in physics.

You just told me that souls have no agency, did you not?

I don't think I understand how this example is relevant to your argument. Probably I don't understand why you think this example is a good analogy for the soul in a body. Could you explain further?

This is why I get the impression that you believe that a soul is a magical "spark of life".

If your view is that having a soul merely means that something is alive, then I have no particular issue with that view. You can call "life" a "soul" if you want to; it doesn't particular bother me if you prefer to use a circumlocution instead of talking directly about what you want to talk about.

But I'm fairly sure, based on other things that you have written, that you actually believe that a soul is more than a mere "spark of life". In particular, you said you believed in reincarnation, which implies a continuity of an individual soul from one life to the next.

I agree with you that whether something is alive or dead is detectable, as a general principle. Of course, there are many marginal cases where we could argue the question "Is it alive?" But let's stick to talking about human beings, who are usually fairly clearly either alive or dead.

If "the soul" is merely a substitute term for "living", then "the soul" is detectable. On the other hand, if the same soul is supposed to migrate from one body to another, then I'd say that is completely undetected - and undetectable, as far as I am aware. Correct me if I'm wrong.

My concern is with how the rubber meets the road when it comes to your "transcendent" soul.

If, as you seem to be saying now, the soul is merely a passenger with no agency, then I guess it is not surprising that actions such as raising my arm do not require the soul to act to cause the action. The soul just sits back and watches, like the clothes do, I suppose.

On the other hand, Jan, at least, claims that your soul is the real you - the one who makes the choice to raise the arm. In that view, the soul is not a mere passenger, but the prime causal agent in the action that results. Do you agree with Jan on this, or is your view different?

Assuming Jan's position, my question is how the desires or plans of the soul are translated into action in the physical world. What is the chain of causes that goes from the soul wanting to raise the arm, through to the arm being raised?

You complain that I am demanding a "material mechanism". The raising of an arm is a material action, with undeniable material causes, up to a point. If we cannot trace material causes back to the soul that you posit, then at some point in the chain there must be a "trancendent" cause of a material effect. But how would that work? I imagine the best you can come up with is that's it's an unknowable magical mystery given by God, or something equivalent. I don't find that particularly satisfactory, but I assume it works for you.

In case you're not clear on why I'm not satisfied with the soul (or God) magic, it's because as soon as you introduce magic like that, real understanding stops right there. All you can do is to have faith that, somehow, God makes it all happen. And I don't want to have to accept that something as basic as raising my arm can't be explained without invoking the magic of an unevidenced deity.

I wouldn't. I don't much like the idea of living in that kind of world. In such a world, human beings are reduced to impotent puppets of the transcendent processes which we can never hope to understand. I have better hopes for human potential than that. It's a depressing and fatalistic kind of world view.

Of course, I admit that this objection is purely philosophical and is based on my own personal values, just as your position is purely based on your philosophical world view. Neither of us can be proven wrong.

 

(continued...)

That's not exactly true. A lot is known at a high level of detail about these mechanisms you speak of. We know about electricity and chemistry. We know about how those things work in nervous systems and the brain. We know which neurons are firing in the brain.

I really don't know how you can say that. I put my explanation of raising my arm in terms of neurons firing, muscles contracting in response, etc. etc. I can describe the chemical and electric processes in the neurons to a fine level of detail.

In contrast, your "soul" explanation for how my arm is raised takes us precisely nowhere. It starts and ends with "God does it, somehow". I'd say that it is you who is not in the least bit equipped to meaningfully discuss what processes occur, not me.

How do you ever hope to make any progress in understanding?

See my point above regarding where and how the soul manages to effect change in the physical world.

In my world, it is not rational to believe in things for which there is no evidence. Rationality, by definition, implies that one has demonstrably good reasons to believe things.

I appreciate that your belief in souls hinges on the idea that there must be something special that gives living things the "spark of life". Probably you would argue that because science can't (yet) definitively explain life, therefore you have reason to appeal to the transcendent for an explanation. I don't regard that as a good reason to believe in souls - at least not with all the religious baggage that goes along with also believing in reincarnation etc, as you do.

You appear to be saying that I need transcendent tools to discover the nature of transcendent reality. I suppose if I had a magical God sense like Jan says he has, and which I suspect you also think you have, then I might be able to get to where you are. Unfortunately, I seem to lack that, and so I have only the evidence of my mundane senses to help me.

No. As I wrote in another thread, from the point of view of science, it's okay not to know, right here and right now. There's no need to pretend that we understand what causes life, as people who believe in souls do. We can just continue to chip away at the problem, using tools that have proven time and again to yield productive and progressive insights. Science isn't based on authority, unlike religion.

No. I've said I currently see no evidence of transcendent agencies in our world, and I see no need to invoke any such agency to explain anything that I do see in the world.

That's right. The idea is constructed specifically so as to be immune to empiricism. The very word "transcendent" that you keep using gives the game away. It implies that there are things that are literally beyond human understanding. The only way to believe that such things exist is to give up on reason, because reason is something that leads to understanding. The substitute is faith - belief in that which is unseen.

Science is the study of the natural world. It is understood that there are persons who see science as irrelevant, because they regard "transcendence" as far more important than mere facts and reason. Those people inevitably end up saying more about politics and ideology than science.

No matter whose crowd is bigger, it is best not to give up on thinking for yourself. I hope you agree.

 

Musika:

One more question occurs to me. Hypothetically, let's suppose that scientists manage undeniably to create life from non-life in a lab tomorrow. Would you then give up on your belief in the soul as the "spark of life"? Or would you merely say that somehow the scientists had encouraged one of those "spare" souls that are floating around in the ether to enter the lifeform they created?

If it were to become commonplace for scientists to produce "custom organisms" in the lab, from scratch, would that in any way impact your belief in souls? I'm assuming that the scientists would have a recipe that says, in effect, "Start with non-living incredients A, B and C. Put them together in this particular way. Now you have a living thing, X." If this works every time, and clearly it is based on some underlying scientific theory of why A, B and C leads to X, what then for the soul?

Or do you assume that this scenario will prove to be impossible (because only God has power over life and death, or similar reason)?

 

Does it matter? Assume it's a designer rat, if you like.