A poll was taken in class today as to whether we believed in something in us that is not simply our bodies (a soul, or something similar). A large number of people raised their hands to indicate that they didn't believe they had an immaterial soul. The question of how one can know if one has a soul or not was, I thought, a good one to write about.
The gospel is coming up against some rather unusual attacks in recent decades. One finds, more and more, that people do not believe themselves to be sinners, and that if they do, they don't admit it. It is a serious problem for the presentation of the gospel as a means of life if people don't believe they're dead. But another criticism of what was once presupposed to be self-evident is physicalism.
Physicalism simply means that the physical is all there is, and that all there is can be explained in terms of physical means. The consequence of this is elimination of souls (sometimes minds) and the supernatural in general. How can a Christian defend against this?
I think the first thing to do is to present the physicalist with some examples of things which are self-evidently true without physical instantiation, or things which must be true in all possible worlds. For example, the fundamental laws of logic are not only true in this world, but must be true in any possible world. They require no physical evidence for us to see their truth, and do not depend in any way on the physical world for their truth. Once you admit that something cannot exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense, you will have established that there are things which exist independent of the physical universe (and if you take the case of mathematical propositions, an infinite number of things, at that).
So we are agreed that the soul is immaterial, and that immaterial things exist. But what exactly is a soul, and how do we know that that particular immaterial thing exists? I would define the soul as the (immaterial) seat of reason, intelligence, and personality. Some would argue that all of these can be explained physically, but Lewis shows in his argument from reason that rationality cannot be purely explained by physical causes without removing the basis for rationality itself. I do not have the space here to make a full account of his argument, but it can be found throughout his book Miracles.
I am not saying that there is no physical element in the explanation of these properties, only that it is not the full explanation. If we can even only establish that reason or our capability to comprehend truth cannot (and never can be) fully explained in terms of physical causes we have a large hole in our view of self, something which the Christian faith (and others) offer to fill.
Christianity gives us a theory regarding that gap in our selfhood, and at that point the question becomes probabilistic to a certain extent. If there are no other satisfying explanations, and Christianity (or any other religion) offers an account which provides one, we must weigh which of these accounts seems most likely, and we will be epistemically justified in believing that account.
Someone posted a comment on my facebook link regarding this, so I'll reproduce it here, along with my response:
ReplyDeleteThough I have not read the book you mention, the fact that we can conceive nonphysical concepts doesn't really offer any more basis for the existence of a soul than it does for the existence of the Force or any other immaterial idea. Also, a hole in our current knowledge of the human mind doesn't constitute the need for a soul at all - I concede ... Read Morethat one cannot totally rule the soul out as a possibility at this juncture, and yet all current evidence strongly supports the existence of physical processes and emergent properties that we simply don't have the capability to map out and understand at this point.
Just trying to stir some conversation/debate I guess, I'm personally more a fan of the metaphorical soul; that is, the product of all the wondrous "emergent properties" I mentioned. Maybe I'll check out Lewis's rationality arguement sometime and see if it changes my mind a bit.
I responded:
A point I may not have emphasized enough in my post, but which is covered in the book, is that it is not a matter of not having discovered or understood the functions which we call soul, but that it is fundamental to the nature of the soul/rationality that it cannot be explained in terms of pure physical processes. And the first step of the ... Read Moreargument, you're right, does nothing toward proving the soul over any other immaterial concept, but it does show that such concepts are feasible (and in fact actual), thus removing the foundation of naturalism/physicalism, namely, that there is nothing which is not physical or explained by physical causes.
How does the existence of logical relationships necessitate the existence of non-physical entities?
ReplyDeleteThat we "know" or "understand" logical relationships does not elevate those concepts to some kind of non-physical Platonic paradise. We "know" or "understand" things through the operation of our quite physical brains. The fact that the underlying logical or mathematical truths that underly this knowledge could (and do) exist apart from our perception, knowledge, or acceptance of them is, if anything, proof that they exist in the world in the same, quite literal, way that other physical properties (color, shape, size, location, charge, etc.) exist. What's more, you've shown no reason to believe that a dualistic metaphysics would be any better at explaining FOL than a materialist metaphysical view.
Even if you had made that point convincingly, which I don't think you have, there's no reason to believe that the existance of a priori, non-physical mathematical and logical truths would lead us to believe that the soul is non-material, or that it even exists. All that you would have dones is made a very specific claim about logic. It's a huge leap from that to the existance of souls and from that to the necessity of these souls being non-physical.
I also have problems with your definition of the soul as the seat of rationality and personality, but I'm boring myself.
I think you're quite right about some of these points, as I'm not really satisfied with the argument myself--to be honest, it was more of an experiment on my part than an actual argument. I will, nevertheless, try to defend it.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the first point, you're completely right that logical relationships do not exist in the same way that souls exist. But what I was trying to point out is that the fact that we can perceive and understand something which is not only true for this world, but MUST be true for all possible worlds (something which, it seems, pure physicality could not account for) gives evidence that there is something out there which is, well, out there. It does not arise from the "whole system" of physicalism. Perhaps some of my language was unfortunately chosen.
From that I argued (and this is regarding your second point) that given my definition of the soul there are some things which physicalism cannot explain. I admitted that from there it was all on a case by case basis, evaluating the claims about what could in fact explain that gap. The argument does not, and was not really trying to, go the whole way, only to point in the right direction (so my title was, admittedly, named too boldly).
I am genuinely curious what your definition of the soul would be. I asked around and most people said it was something like that which cannot be explained by the body, which was rather obviously begging the question. The definition seems fine to me, but I would like to hear others.
Does that do anything to redeem the argument, or should I abandon it as a hopeless morass of equivocation?