As I noted in my previous post about how belief in a human "essence" is almost certainly wrong, Julian Baggini goes on a search for such an entity in his book The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean To Be You?
Everywhere he looks, using a blend of neuroscience and philosophy, the search comes up empty. He persuasively argues that an unchanging essence can't be found in the body and it can't be found in the mind — since both body and mind are changeable with no sign of an essence.
Then Baggini expands the search to include the religious sphere, where soul is considered by both Western and Eastern religions to be an unchanging, even eternal, essence that survives the demise of body and mind.
Sorry to break this news to those who are staking their life, as well as their afterlife, on the notion of soul, but this is his final paragraph in the book's "Soul searching" chapter.
There are other arguments for the existence of souls, of course. But if you're looking for gold, there has to come a point where you stop digging fruitlessly in one spot and move on to another. To switch metaphors, if the soil is not proving to be fertile, it is better to plant elsewhere than to continue on in the hope that persistence will bear fruit.
In all my years of reading and thinking about soul and self, I've yet to come across a single argument that is left standing after even a little serious scrutiny. As an idea, the immaterial soul is dead, and it's time we buried it, along with any other dreams we might have had about finding the pearl at the heart of our identity.
What preceded Baggini's mention of "other arguments for the existence of souls" is a discussion of how the idea of the traditional soul has been defended by Richard Swinburne, who used to be a Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford.
Baggini says that while Swinburne is a Christian, his arguments in favor of soul are claimed to be purely rational and don't rest on his faith.
One of Swinburne's arguments is that a physical account of a person's life fails to explain everything about them. This does indeed seem like something most of us would agree with, that there appears to be something extra that makes each of us who we are aside from the physical goings-on in our body and mind.
The conclusion is that a physical account of the world is not a complete account of the world. Therefore, there must be more to the world than the physical.
However, Baggini has a convincing response.
So it is true, as Swinburne says, that a physical account of the world is not a complete account of the world. But it does not follow that the world is comprised of more stuff than physical stuff. Rather, it simply follows that a complete account of the world is more than just an account of physical descriptions of the movements of stuff.
This should not be a difficult thought. In the same way, a proper account of a game of football is not an account of the changing co-ordinates of the twenty-two players and the ball. If you knew enough about the game, such a description might enable you to infer what was going on, but nothing in it would entail that this was a sport with certain rules and a certain result.
…It is true that wholes are greater than the sum of their parts, but that is not because wholes are additional, different kinds of parts. Persons are no exceptions. We are greater than the sum of our parts, but not because there is some further part left out of the sum. We are nothing but our parts, but we are more than just our parts.
Baggini also dissects another argument from Swinburne that won't appeal to most believers in soul, but is creative. So I'll give Swinburne an "A" for effort on this argument, even though it makes as little sense as his other arguments for soul. I'll quote Baggini at length on this point, because it's an interesting argument and counter-argument.
Swinburne's commitment to the truth seems to be genuine, whatever his ability to arrive at it. So it is that, having argued that souls must exist, he thinks through the implications for this in rigorous detail, accepting them, no matter how bizarre they might seem.
For instance, Swinburne insists that it is essential to start from the facts, and it has not escaped his notice that one cast-iron fact is that functioning brains and bodies are necessary for consciousness, at least in this life.
It may be a logical possibility that there could be forms of consciousness in other worlds that do not depend on organic matter, but that doesn't seem to be the case in this one.
In this we need to add another compelling fact: if you have a sufficiently complex brain and body, you will be conscious. Combined with the first fact, most people would conclude that brains and bodies are both necessary and sufficient for human consciousness: you can't think or feel without them; and with them, as long as they're working properly, you can't but think and feel.
Having committed himself to belief in souls, however, Swinburne can't accept this position. On his view, the non-material part of us is as essential as the material. No matter how complete our nervous systems are, without souls they couldn't think. But he also accepts that such bodies and brains are necessary for thought, so souls could not think without bodies either — at least not in this life.
What God in his goodness might decide to make possible in the next life is anyone's guess. 'What I have argued,' he writes, '… is that without a functioning brain, the soul will not function (i.e. have conscious episodes) — not that it will not exist.'
Swinburne uses the analogy of a light bulb to explain this. 'The soul is like a light bulb and the brain is like an electric light socket. If you plug the bulb into the socket and turn the current on, the light will shine. If the socket is damaged or the current turned off, the light will not shine. So, too, the soul will function (have a mental life) if it is plugged into a functioning brain.'
But, like a magician, it is always possible that God could cause an unplugged bulb to light up if he so wanted: 'maybe there are other ways of getting souls to function than plugging them into brains'.
This analogy shows how far materialist conceptions have come, since it is the mirror image of a much older view: that it is the body which requires animating by an immaterial soul… That even a dualist today accepts that bodies power souls and not vice versa is indicative of widespread belief in the materialist basis of the world.
…Swinburne's view is a prime example of the limits of the virtue of consistency. He does work very hard to make sure that all its bits fit together. But so many of those bits are just wildly implausible. There is no good reason to think that functioning brains and bodies need souls plugged into them if they are to give rise to thoughts.
There is no good reason to believe that our inability to provide a simple answer to the question of who the results of a split-brain operation are means that there must be some non-physical fact that would answer it.
And there is no good reason to suppose that the facts about the world that cannot be fully described in the language of physics means that there are substances in the world that are not physical.
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The soul may indeed be real, but not yet detected by science. We know far less of reality than science has currently measured. So to say one has come up empty today is like a scientist three hundred years ago claiming “In all my years I’ve not found any evidence for this theoretical ‘Atom’. Certainly none to prove that light has any maas.” Etc…
You could make that statement for all of the unknown which is still far greater than the known reality.
We didn’t know enough about sixth things then and we still know nothing today about most of reality.
One clear truth from science is that when we do learn, when science finally unveils something we thought was inconceivable, it will be in a form no one imagined before.
Suffice it to say that to even think about something one must conceptualize at least close enough to reality to measure, and have a means of measurement.
Today the concepts of soul and god are too loose for measurement and too far from it.
Take a hint from science, and proceed from available data to describe what can be measured. Not to make wild conjectures about what we have no basis to understand. That has been a path to false claims for many many years.
@ Spence
>> The soul may indeed be real, but not yet detected by science. We know far less of reality than science has currently measured. So to say one has come up empty today is like a scientist three hundred years ago claiming “In all my years I’ve not found any evidence for this theoretical ‘Atom’. Certainly none to prove that light has any maas.” Etc…<< https://www.bernardokastrup.com/
He discusses how difficult it is for even great scholars to let go of “pysicalism”.
Whether al these men, pro and contra are right, and if they use the right arguments is not my piece of cake …or .. brand of coffee….but some of you might be able to digest what he writes.
Anyway … humans have made themselves replica of means of transport available to other species, animals like the bird the fish the horse.
Has anyone ever let it dawn upon him how clumsy these replicas are and moreover how they are without life?!
– airplanes can fly but are no birds and “dead”
– boats can swim but are no fish and “dead”
AND….
– computer are a replica of the brain but are not alive and conscious they are too “DEAD”
Read to understand this The works of Federico Faggin the founder of the microprocessor who tried to do it and failed and let his words explain WHY.
Qualia, what makes human humans and live worth to be lived,writes Kastrub can never be quantified
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEo6eN9ZVnM
For those that tend to grind their teeth ..do put something in between when you look and listen to F[r]ederico Faggin
Hi Um
Whether directly or indirectly you are bringing up a fundamental requirement to make a claim on scientific grounds: It must be reproduced under entirely controlled conditions in a lab to claim we understand it and all the forces that make it up, including the potential “soul” and “God” . Life has not yet been reproduced artificially, nor has the human brain’s functioning, and therefore we are not in a position to make scientific statements about such larger and less understood issues of soul and God.
One day we will, as testable information becomes available. Then we will have a basis for a true “Science of The Soul”.
And we should be ready, as we should be about the future of all science, to continue to be astounded!
Brian used to conflate this with the God of the Gaps argument, which basically claims God might exist in the gaps of our knowledge.
The gaps in scientific knowledge are actually chasms. They are the majority of reality. What science knows is actually the pieced-together gaps with clever, often brilliant conjectures, though often proved wrong over time, about what is not yet known.
Science teaches us that what we don’t yet experience, what we can’t yet measure is an area where guesswork is usually incredibly erroneous, once information starts coming in.
@ Spence
Well Spence I live with the conviction / believe that there are things that can be measured and other things not …and … that science is by its theory, practice and execution RESTRICTED to what CAN be measured.
You can look at this through the eyes of a scientist the like of Federico Faggin and have inner experiences, but one does not need to
“Old” science will for the reason I pointed at NEVER been able to produce as you call it testable information …not only not for the soul but for all everyday experiences as all these experoences are … UNIQUE variation of the same.
Neither the uniqueness is beyond science but also the sameness as both cannot be calculated.
Again there is no scholar needed to become conscious of that fact and explain it to the world in terms of Quantum mechanics like Federico Faggin nor a brilliant analytical mind of Bernardo Kastrup.
Those that are alive KNOW what it is to be alive …they do not need anybody or anything to know that and what is said by scholars, artists and even mystics does not add to that simple fact nor does it change anything.
But beyond that ..the reduction starts, the effort to controll what cannot be controlled
@ Sant64 e.o.
The late Mcs stated time and again, that the practice had to be done with “love and devotion”.
Nowhere it says that there are ways to created that love and devotion
ALL books on this or that psychological therapy or counseling practice starts out with saying that there has to be an “therapeutic relationship for the therapy to work”
Nowhere is says how such and relationship can be established.
There are so many other things that follow these “rules” …something has to be there BEFORE something else can be had executed etc etc etc.
THAT … that what makes everything going, that what produces everything ..THAT …is beyond making
Hi,
What is love and devotion?
I don’t think there is one right answer to this question.
Is authenticity or sincerity minus the emotional highs a form of love and devotion?
I’ve been wondering about this for a while now, how can one know if one has love and devotion? What do they mean anyway?
I smile at the thought that when I was doing my “research” on Sant Mat, I thought that Science of the Soul Research Centers as they are called, had meditators meditating in a controlled environment with equipments measuring their brains or “progress” on the path. Like what you would imagine a real science Laboratory would do.
I quite liked the electricity analogy for the soul, although I don’t feel there is a single source for the electricity (though I might be wrong here). I do feel that this universe is made up of electrical energy, and that our bodies also have these electric energies powering it. Like electricity, or light, that is formless and self-less, just light things doing what light or electricity does. Light playing up light, electricity playing upon each other to create more electricity. If that makes any sense. There is electric energy that survives death in my opinion, call it light body or soul or whatever. (Giving proof or finding proof for this is another story, way out of my league for now.)
Hi Um
Your points reflect another argument, and that is the one that says there are multiple ways to know, to have understanding. There is information that can be derived from collated data, and there is information that comes from sources outside what can be collated.
There is understanding that that arrives as the distillation of rational thinking.
And there is understanding which is not a distillation but the result of merging into the whole, into the direct experience. Or more accurately, expanding our consciousness beyond me and mine into the greater whole, where me and mine don’t actually exist.
I have found that when trying to translate one form of experiential direct wholistic understanding into another form of understanding, that of calculated rational thinking, the process is fraught with the potential for error. Still, it’s nice when these things line up perfectly, even if it is in no condition to prove or communicate to anyone else.
As for error I would say personally that rational thinking is extremely limited and filled with flaws daily that cannot be resolved and must be accepted by resignation.
But the whole of reality is itself, and not an image or informational copy of anything else. It is flawless.
Rational thinking, as a product of logic, extrudes from data and information into distinct, parsed and lifeless, noble and static units. These are stable and disectabe units of information packaged for inspection and consumption.
But reality actually is not separated into parts, nor is there anything outside of reality to inspect, dissect or consume it.
Reality is entirely one and always in motion through time, even if entirely complete and motionless outside of time.
@ Spence
Why would one want to translate the in into the other?
Maybe there is a psychological reason buried under that desire, one that prefers one above the other or believes one is closer to the truth than the other.
Personally I was never impressed about what scientists had to say about life …and ..yes, it might surprise you … not even what mystics had to say or better are made to have said.
Maybe that was the reason why I loved always to listen and converse with the late MCS, …he never tried to justify spirituality by leaning on science nor did het use spirituality to explain science.
Live is there to be lived. .. not explained
@ Spence
An on to the second, shorter message …
One time the late MCS said to the audience:
“look we are gathered here together, if what is happening now, is recorded, something is missing in the recording” he went on to sayd that with every next step something got lost from
– film to sound record
– sound record to transcript
– transcript to translation
– translation to explanation
How than he rhetorical asked do you think you can know the original from what has come to you?
it is all about experoence
Hi Um!
Nice! Thanks for that.
@ Spence
You are welcome.
Next time you see him inside, say hello to him on my behalf and tell him not to be angry that I still speak that “strange language of love that he did not manage to understand”.
Yes, we indeed habitually invest everything with an essence and identify it as that. A tree becomes an object with the observer being the subject. A tree is no longer a dynamic living process interacting with the air, soil, microbes, insects, birds and animals and us, thought makes it into a thing separate from me.
The same goes for ‘me’, my ‘self’. Thought assumes that I am a separate, autonomous being. Ignoring or unconscious of the fact that what I call ‘I’ only exists in relationship to everyone and everything else. Modern neuro-research and (some) Buddhist thought clearly points out that what we call ‘me’ is simply a moment-to-moment dynamic ever-changing physical process continually interacting with the environment and thereby updating the concept of ‘me’. My ‘self’ then is an on-going construction, a construct that is empty of any permanent essence.
Bluntly put, there is no ‘essence’ to anything, whether that is a tree, a rock, a bird or a human. For the sake of convenience, communication, personal security and generally through habit, we divide life up into this and that, thereby separating ourselves from each other and the world in general. This isolation becomes the root cause of much of our conflicts and consequent suffering.
Regarding the idea of having a soul (often synonymous with a self), no doubt the soul concept is a result of mistaking (or lack of understanding) the brain’s mental processes. Naïve thinking, or just plain wishful thinking, would interpret mental processes as emanating from some mysterious source simply because unlike the observable function of physical organs, the mental functions cannot be seen.
Much like the ancients allocating little understood natural phenomenon and disasters to Gods demons and the like, similarly with no understanding (or interest) of how mental phenomenon arises from the brain and neural processes, the soul myth endures. So much so, to a great degree it has be-come deeply embedded within many cultures.
The mind can also elicit mystical or supernatural qualities and shares some of the attributes allocated to self and soul. Psychology and self-inquiry tell us that the mind is the information manifested in and processed by the nervous system.
No need at all to invest what are perfectly natural (physical) processes in a thought projected mythological reality.
From above Bagini is quoted as writing
“It may be a logical possibility that there could be forms of consciousness in other worlds that do not depend on organic matter, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in this one.”
He is inferring that body causes consequences without an understanding of what animates body. As mentioned above, we cannot yet create life in a lab from parts absent of life.
Therefore we cannot draw casual conclusions about where consciousness, or any measurable quality, actually starts from, only how the body attenuates that quality. Even here it may be argued that the quality, whether intelligence or physical strength, may actually be the cause of the features that translate that quality into measurable action. The pre-existng quality of strength may have determined the physically strong body, etc.
This is all because we don’t know what actually causes life, only the qualities we see in every example of life: how that life force and intelligence are translated into physical examples.
That invisible life force may have all sorts of intelligence and other qualities. But today it is simply unknown.
Scientifically, we can’t say we know what causes life or any of the qualities we can measure because we don’t know enough to reproduce life under controlled conditions without using life to begin with.
It’s unknown. Why is that so hard for some people to grasp?
Isn’t trying to prove what we don’t actually know the very thing we are arguing against?
How is an atheist any different from a zealot when both have failed to acknowledge the mystery of the unknown?
Every scientist loves the unknown, respects her, and is drawn to her, for she is the source of new knowledge.
As long as you can wholly agree with the beliefs of at least one other human around you, you will feel somewhat complete. But as soon as you lose that person, you will feel a complete sense of emptiness—a void that cannot be rationally explained or filled.
@ Fragile
Do you mean with “loss” “the passing away””?
and
What do yo mean with “somewhat complete”?