Various religious traditions and philosophers invoke the notion of a soul. It may be that I am to be identified with a particular soul and that when my body stops working properly my soul will ascend to Heaven. But what exactly is a soul? Many philosophers argue that souls must not be physical and that souls are the "subjects of consciousness." This simply means that my soul is the thing doing the thinking, but it's not a "thing" in the traditional sense. It's not a physical thing like a pen or gland in my body. OK. So it's a non-physical, thinking thing. But what exactly are we talking about here? I think there are some non-physical things like, perhaps, concepts (e.g., justice and multiplication) and fictional things (e.g., Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker). But souls appear to be something quite different from the sorts of things that I think are real and which are non-physical. My soul isn't just a concept and it's presumably not a fictional thing. Does anyone have any thoughts about what a soul is exactly? It would help if there were an analogous immaterial thing that would help shed light on souls, but it's difficult to come up with a satisfying example.
UPDATE 12/8/11: A kind reader of the blog emailed this short peice written by Bertrand Russell.
23 comments:
Ever read the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman? It's a young adult series, but really good and explores this concept.
I haven't read any of these. Thanks for letting me know about them. Can you say a bit about how souls are explored in this series?
Oftentimes (colloquially speaking) I have heard religious peoples talk about souls in regard to metaphysical context: While encased in physical flesh, it is a separate entity that is 'released' when you die.
One way to think about this concept would be a balloon: you cannot see the air inside the balloon, you only see stretched synthetic rubber. However, when the balloon pops, you still do not see the air molecules even when the rubber starts to deflate. I imagine a soul in this respect. When a person dies, his/her "soul" dissipates. You never actually see it but we assume it is there.
This is different from consciousness, which is an ultra complex web of electrons. Actually, its the most complex structure in the known universe. A soul is presumably different because while it encompasses your consciousness, it also has a metaphysical quality in that it can 'ascend' or 'descend' to different planes on existence (this is described in every major religion on earth). Also, because your soul encompasses a physical structure, this does not make your soul a physical structure as well.
My notion, unsubstantiated as it may be, goes something like this...the soul is a non-physical thing but it doesn't 'think' in the traditional sense. It is passive, perhaps most closely associated with a what we refer to as our 'conscience' but without all the guilt.
Oh by the way, I don't think the soul goes to heaven, or anywhere else for that matter. There may be an endless supply of 'soul' making up the cosmos though.
Joshua,
Thanks for commenting. I have to admit that I'm perplexed by your balloon example. We know a great deal about air from experiements. Gasses might be quite different from solids, but we still consider them part of the physical universe. They're subject to physical laws, empirically analyzable, etc. Souls, on the other hand, are traditionally thought to be not part of the physical universe. Again, souls are considered to be non-physical. So I don't see how the balloon example helps in explaining what the nature of a soul is exactly. Maybe I'm missing something in your example, however. Please feel free to say more about this in another comment.
What you say about consciousness is interesting. You seem to be presupposing that consciousness is really just the brain/central nervous system doing what it does. This is indeed a popular theory. But many people that believe in the existence of souls think that consciousness/the mind is not to be identitified with the brain. Instead, they say that the soul is the thing that thinks, doubts, loves, hopes, etc. I'm planning on posting on the relationship between the mind and the brain in a month or two, so we'll have to table that (very interesting) discussion for later. At this point, I'm just concerned with the nature of souls. What ARE they?
Anon-Thanks for sharing your thoughts about souls. Why do you think souls think only in a non-traditional, "passive" sense? Can you say more about your picture of what souls are exactly?
Anon here...Joshua said what I attempted to say with far better articulation. While you responded in part by saying air is a physical substance we can easily measure, abides by physical laws, etc., couldn't the balloon analogy still work where it doesn't portend the soul IS air, rather an invisible, immeasurable force (as opposed to a substance)? Y'all get deep so I'll just dip into this blog now and again but thanks for the opportunity to think more deeply.
Anon-Thanks for your input.
I think you're right that we shouldn't say that a soul IS air. Further, I think we shouldn't say it's even like air. As you say, a soul is invisible and immmeasurable (but air obviously can be observed and is measurable).
You added something really interesting to your characterization of souls. You suggested that a soul is a force (as opposed to a substance). But forces like gravity and electromagnetic forces are measurable and are subject to the laws of nature. Your conception of souls is a departure from the traditional one, where souls are seen as a seperate kind of stuff/substance than the physical stuff in the world. You might be onto something with this new approach, but it's not clear to me why we should think of souls like we think of forces. One worry I have is that we have very good reasons to believe that forces like gravity are real and this has to do with measurements from empirical investigations. But we don't have anything like this for souls. What reasons do we have for thinking that souls are a kind of force?
Maybe souls are not physical forces but forces of a different kind. Could they be like a "life-force?"
I'm a different annon, btw.
Souls may be a different kind of force (I'm not really sure what this means) and they might be more aptly identified as a "life-forces." But this doesn't help us in determining what souls are exactly. It seems to me that all this does is analyze souls in terms of something that is equally mysterious and difficult to understand. What are life-forces and how are these forces different from the standard kinds of forces we know quite a bit about? I think your suggestion is an interesting one, anon, but until we can flesh it out, I don't see how it really helps us get a better grip on the nature of souls.
We have a number of experessions that might be used to help shed some light on the nature of souls: life-force, spirit, the self, immaterial conscious substance, etc. But, as I've said, I don't find these very illuminating. I want to know what exactly it is that we are talking about when we speak of souls.
This is something I wrote on the matter. I find this topic very interesting!
what is a soul?
No one knows. But we know it isn't the body, and it is the part of us that thinks and loves and hopes....(and)....is invisible.....But if I write what my soul thinks , then it will be visible , and the words will be its body.
I (boring athiest view, sorry) think the soul is synonmyous with the psyche. It's in the metaphore/concept category, and not a literal thing, seperate from the body.
I have been following this blog and find it quite fascinating. Everyone (except Jesse) seems to want to try give some sense to the notion of a soul rather than question the very sense of the term.
What if I said that there is such a thing as an 'psychic aura' that is attached to each person, but at the same time stipulate that it is not a physical thing, is not visable, and cannot be measured or counted. In making such a stipulation, have I really taken away the things that can give sense to the notion?
What I'm getting at is that the meaning of a term is closely related to the criteria for applying it. For example, if I said, "I sleep twice as fast as you do," would you know what I mean? I don't think so. But if there was some way of MEASURING how rested a person is, then we could say that if I sleep for 5 hours and you sleep for 10 hours, and we both are found to be equally rested, then it could be said that I sleep twice as fast as you do. But the critical thing is that there is some way to measure or test whether what I said was true. I would suggest that without a test for truth, statements don't really have a meaning.
Arpad-Thanks for the comment. I don't think the athiest view is boring, but it seems to me that we should all (even atheists) consider what souls are supposed to be. I don't believe in Santa, but I know what sort of thing Santa would be if he were to exist. You might not believe in souls, but what should a person who does believe in them say that souls are exactly?
Anon 12/11-Thanks for the comment. The view you advocate at the end of your post sounds like a theory called "verificationism." This was a popular theory for many years. It's not so popular now, but taking a poll is probably not a good test for the truth of a theory. You might want to look up some of the issues that have been raised against verificationism--there's some really interesting stuff on this.
What I think your oponent needs is an example that will aid in lending some credence to the concept of a soul. Is there something that is real and yet non-physical that will help us understand what it is that we're talking about when we talk of souls?
Thanks Jesse for your comment about verificationism.
Whatever the criticisms of this theory are (and I will will check into this), I would urge that it is clearly the case that if you propose and want to discuss a seemingly meaningful concept, you need to define or operationalize it!
In scicnce, we would call this sort of term a "construct," and to give it sense there would need to be criteria for when to apply it and when not to. That is, there would need to be criteria for determining the sorts of things to which the concept applies and the sorts of things to which it does not apply. That seems to be a bare minimum for having a meaningful concept.
I'm not saying that you would need to PROVE that the concept has an application (or that you would need to VERIFY that there is that sort of thing), but rather that you would at least have to have an idea of what it would be like to find a thing that fits the concept. And that means telling me when to use it.
If this is verificationism, then I plead guilty.
Anon, I agree completely with what you say in your first paragraph. What I'm seeking is really the beginnings of a definition of 'soul.' Much of the language that people use is misleading and, I think, not appropriate. For example, people often remark that my soul is IN my body, that my soul will ASCEND to heaven, that my soul is ATTACHED to my body, etc. But these terms are all physical sorts of relations. It baffling to think about how an immaterial soul could be within a body when the very notion of "being within" is a spatial one, involving (seemingly) two material objects, one inside the other. What is it for an immaterial thing to be inside a material thing? So because of this set of issues, I've been thinking about what sort of example might shed some light on the nature of souls. If I understand you correctly, you think that if this can't be done, then the very notion of a soul is nonsense.
I was raised Catholic and the entire concept of a soul creep-ed me out!! I feel that there is a gray area between a persons conscience and their "soul." I believe the concept of a soul was created to keep people "in check" here on earth. Take a quote that is made about serial killers or rapist, "he is so horrible he has no soul" For a millennium having a soul was associated with good and or bad behavior on earth and your ticket to everlasting life a great concept for a rulers push(church, government, monarchy) to enforce their sometimes ludicrous rules. If you screw up your "soul" (don't do what I say) you automatically burn in hell or suffer after your dead and can't do anything about it. So, a soul is a conjecture. It has been used as a control mechanism of the weak and the masses. Who's with me on this?? :)
After reading the comments about what is a soul I don't think there is a definition of what a soul is. I think to every person their own, we all have a different definition. When I think about how to explain soul I think about other things that are hard to measure like for example love. What is love really? Everyone describes love differently. I for the most part all of us have a different definition of what a soul is, I mean that is if we all believe we have a soul. I think that there is no way to define what a soul is. I believe that the meaning of a soul can from a religious background and it is something that was made up by the religious groups and churches to scare the people of the congregation into believing they had to act a certain way or they wouldn't be allowed into heaven. I believe that a soul is something we were made to believe we had even though we can't see it, or measure it, or know what it does.
Hume would say the frequent placing of past perceptions in memory that resemble one another, and are related by causation, allows the imagination to glide from one link to another and make the whole seem like the continuance of one object which we fancy as the soul. The mind being nothing more than:
"...a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Out thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul which remains unalterably the same perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide-away, and mingle in an infinte variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propensity we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos'd."
Thomas Nagel, "The View From Nowhere", argues the mind is a mental aspect of a brain. Imagine a brain in a vat having thoughts. There's some interesting speculation on pan-psychism as well.
Rupert Sheldrake (haven't read him) has suggested that the mind is a lens. In this scenario, I imagine the soul existing off-site in another dimension and the brain acting as a medium, focusing the soul into reality. Perhaps to be ultimately resurrected into a new reality via a different lens.
It does seem counter-intuitive that thought could be caused by matter.
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