Monism

Critically assess the claim that human beings have an immortal soul. (40)

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The claim that human beings have an immortal soul is certainly ancient.  It is clear that Plato’s dualism was built on the foundation of Socrates’ belief in immortality and possibly reincarnation.  In addition, evidence from the Bible suggests that belief in an immortal soul predated Christianity – though the belief is not represented consistently in the Old Testament – and became increasingly important as hopes for an immanent eschaton faded with the 1st Century. Further, the idea that personal identity can survive trauma, aging and ultimately death fits with human experience and supports both morality and hopes for life after death which many of us want if not need to maintain.  Nevertheless, despite the persistence and appeal of these beliefs, claims that human beings have immortal souls lack credibility in the 21st Century.

Firstly, as Aristotle observed, “the soul is inseparable from its body” [On the Soul, Book II] He used the analogy of wax and a seal impression to make his point, writing “we must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.” [Aristotle “Psychology” translated by E. Wallace, p. 61, 1882]  While he accepted that human beings have PSYCHE, and that these come in three parts, unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle rejected the idea that this could ever be separated from the body or survive death.  As Brian Davies OP has noted, just because I consider myself to be sober doesn’t mean that I am. The fact that I feel separated from my body doesn’t mean that I am.  GEM Anscombe agreed, arguing that the feeling of having a separate soul is not a proper argument for the soul’s separability.  Further, as Gilbert Ryle suggested, the soul is the product of the parts and functions of the body operating together.  When we speak of “the soul” it is much like speaking of “the university” in Oxford or “team spirit” in cricket… these things are an undoubtedly part of our experience, but they cannot be separated from the components which make them up.  As Ryle wrote in “The Concept of Mind” (1949) Chapter 1, belief in a separate, separable and possibly immortal soul is the result of “that a family of radical category mistakes”… continuing, this “is the source of the double-life theory. The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a machine derives from this argument”. To claim that human beings have separable souls, which – not least given our certain scientific knowledge that bodies decompose – is a precondition of having immortal souls, is to build assumptions on top of gut feelings in spite of the evidence, to make a “category mistake” and to take what is essentially a metaphor literally.  

Secondly, as Richard Dawkins has argued, the theory of evolution can account for the impression of consciousness which contributes to the claim that human beings have immortal souls.  In The Selfish Gene (1976) he wrote “we are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” In 1993 he speculated that the impression of consciousness and a separate soul has become an essential part of being human because it confers a survival advantage to our genes, suggesting that “brain hardware has co-evolved with the internal virtual worlds that it creates. This can be called hardware-software co-evolution.” The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)  Dawkins’ reductive materialism is supported by the famous case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and then experienced a complete transformation of personality and identity as a result.  The mind, consciousness or “soul” is nothing more than the impression given off by the normal operation of the brain.  Change the brain, change the “soul”.  Kill the brain, destroy the soul.  Basic biology shows that the soul is far from being immortal and that any claim that human beings have an immortal soul lacks credibility in the 21st Century. 

Further, Peter Geach agreed with the evolution argument, arguing that human beings are sophisticated animals and that our belief that we are somehow different is no more than “savage superstition” [God and the Soul (1969),quoted by John Haldane in Anscombe and Geach on Mind and Soul (2016)].  It is undoubtedly convenient that human beings claim to have a “soul” where other – genetically similar – animals do not.  For Christians, the existence of the soul explains the unique connection between human beings and God, in whose Image they are made.  Further, the existence of a soul both justifies our preferring members of the species homo sapiens in moral decision-making and supports the religious principle of the Sanctity of Human Life.  If human beings have no separable soul or any claim to immortality then it becomes more difficult to justify decisions which ignore the claim of tribes of orangutans on Indonesian rainforests or which deprive blue whales of their habitats for the benefit of a few human capitalists with financial interests in palm oil or Krill.  As far back as the 18th Century Immanuel Kant highlighted the importance of believing in immortality for moral philosophy.  As he argued, without believing in God, freedom and immortality it would be impossible to explain our duty to follow the moral law as there would be no reason to suppose that the law which appeals to us has authority, that we have the ability to do what we feel called to do or that there could be any ultimate point in doing so.  Without the possibility of immortality, which the separable soul supports, there is little reason to do what is right in a world where goodness is rarely rewarded in this life.  Nevertheless, the undesirability of the alternative conclusion is not a proper argument for the existence of an immortal soul in human beings, so the claim that human beings have an immortal soul lacks credibility.  

Clearly, there are arguments in favour of dualism.

Plato used his famous slave-boy in the Meno to argue that we have memories of the forms, either from past lives or from our soul’s previous home in the world of the forms, which best explain our ability to “learn” mathematics and logic quickly.  For Plato, learning is really remembering.  Today, Noam Chomsky’s work on language acquisition makes this idea more interesting  than it might have seemed a few decades ago, however even nativist accounts of language and research evidence indicating that the human brain is somehow “hardwired for language” does not take away from the possibility that this hard wiring could be explained by evolution, without the need to hypothesize the existence of an immortal soul.  

In addition, Descartes built on Plato’s scepticism about sense-data, pointing out the many ways in which the evidence of eyes and ears turns out to be mistaken.  A stick put in water surely does appear to bend.  Nevertheless, Descartes’ radical conclusion, that the only thing of which I can be certain is “cogito ergo sum” seems to go well beyond the evidence.  In 1968 Norman Malcolm poked holes in Descartes reasoning on a technical level, however even in the most obvious way it is apparent that while the senses do lie, conceptual analysis just as often deceives us.  As Aristotle himself pointed out, “if, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail…” [Metaphysics Book 1:1]  Further, Descartes’ arguments for substance dualism, with the seat of the soul in the Pineal Gland, can only in the light of 21st Century science, be seen as uninformed speculation.  Descartes is far from being justified in his conclusion that “it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.” [Meditations Book VI, 54] and the claim that human beings have an immortal soul continues to lack credibility.  

Finally, paranormal experiences and particularly Near Death Experiences have been used to support claims that human beings have immortal souls.  For example, in 1991 American singer-songwriter Pam Reynolds had a powerful experience of being separated from and looking down on her body and of spending time in “heaven” during a stand-still operation for a brain aneurism.  Nevertheless, most of these experiences fail to stand up to careful scrutiny.  Susan Blackmore described her own journey to this realisation, writing

“It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic” The New Scientist (2000)

Further, those experiences which resist explanation in simple physiological or psychological terms, such as those highlighted by Dr Sam Parnia in his Aware and Aware II studies, are few in number and may still be explained by scientific progress.  Just because we cannot explain a few experiences with current scientific models doesn’t give us a reason to ditch scientific materialism and regress to a primitive dualistic world view predicated on supernatural entities for which there is no evidence.  

In conclusion, the claim that human beings have immortal souls lacks credibility in the 21st Century.  While the claim speaks to the experience of being human and supports the convenient belief that human beings are ontologically different from animals, there is no proper evidence or sensible argument to support substance dualism.  Those with religious faith will, of course, continue to make the claim that human beings have immortal souls.  The claim is central to their world-view and it is difficult to imagine how Christianity in particular could function without it.  Yet in making the claim believers emphasize how far in faith they are willing to stray from what can be supported through evidence and argument.

Bibliography

  • Class Notes on Soul, Mind & Body
  • Gilbert Ryle “The Concept of Mind” Chapter 1
  • Susan Blackmore “Consciousness: An Introduction”

“Religious faith requires belief in a separate soul” Discuss (40)

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Assuming that the statement refers to Christian faith, through the history of Christianity there have been Christians who have believed in a separate soul (e.g. Descartes) and others who have not (e.g. St. Matthew) but the crux of the issue is whether such a belief is required.  This begs the question “by who or what standard?”  Obviously, belief in a separate soul is not required by the Creeds; the Apostles’ Creed affirms “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” which suggests that Christian faith requires not a dualist but an avowedly monist position.  Further, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church 1059 affirms that “The holy Roman Church firmly believes and confesses that on the Day of Judgment all men will appear in their own bodies before Christ’s tribunal to render an account of their own deeds”.  It is clear that no belief in a separate soul can be required by orthodox Christian faith, although I will argue that belief in a separable soul might make it easier to sustain faith in the face of life’s challenges and apparent inequities.

Christian faith promises salvation; union with God and restitution for the injustices apparent in this life.  Nevertheless, the New Testament is unclear about how this salvation will come about and whether the afterlife will entail bodily existence or be purely spiritual.  The Synoptic Gospels suggest an immanent eschatology; descriptions of heaven and hell are earth-like and seem to suggest that people will have resurrected bodies to experience reward or punishment much as we experience these in the coming Kingdom of God.  Matthew 25 (the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) suggests that the evangelists expected that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead and supports a physical understanding of hell ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41)  Luke 16:23-24 also supports this view “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ Other references to the final judgement are similar “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) and this vision of the end-times seems consistent with Old Testament references, such as those in Ezekiel and Isaiah.  Christian faith supported by references in the synoptic gospels would require no belief in either a separate or a separable soul, only a belief in physical resurrection. Nevertheless, belief in physical resurrection is difficult to sustain in the modern world.  There is a complete lack of supporting evidence and it is difficult to see how it could deliver the promised reward (or punishment) in a fair and just manner.  Surely, those who died hundreds or thousands of years before the final judgement would be at greater risk of their bodes having disintegrated.  Surely, those who died as infants, after losing limbs, in extreme old-age or whose bodies were destroyed utterly would seem less likely to get their just deserts.  While “all things are possible with God” (Matthew 19:26) and Christian faith requires a belief in God’s omnipotence, it is clear that this cannot extend to God doing the logically impossible, or else most theodicies would collapse and God could not also be all-good. While God resurrecting people out of nothing by reassembling them from dispersed dust into their ideal form may not be logically impossible, it comes close to being so in some cases.

It is obvious why many 21st Century Christians prefer to believe in an eternal life, reward or punishment which begins soon after each person’s death.  A belief in immediate reward and punishment would work either with dualism, belief in a separate soul, or with a belief in re-creation into a parallel dimension.

Immediate reward or punishment through dualism, in a purely spiritual sense, is superficially easier to reconcile with science and reason.  There have been many reports of Near Death Experiences which, if credible, would to support belief in disembodied existence immediately after death.  Pam Reynolds’ experience during standstill surgery in 1991 is often seen as one of the best documented cases. More recent research conducted by Dr Sam Parnia at the University of Southampton might suggest that the soul could continue after death without a body.  In addition, a spiritual interpretation of the afterlife would be more rationally defensible than physical resurrection.  It is easier to see how a soul could survive eternally; a risen body would still be physical and so subject to aging, sickness, disability and other associated limitations.  It is easier to see how a soul could come “face to face” with God, who is not normally seen to have a physical existence as human beings do. Further, parts of John’s gospel, the Johannine letters and Paul’s letters seem to support a more spiritual interpretation of eternal life. Verses such as “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) and “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:8) seem obviously Platonic in their influence and are closest to dualism. However, although faith with a purely spiritual eschatology seems easier to reconcile with science and reason, it comes with significant problems and has been relatively rare through the history of Christianity. Belief in a separate soul – dualism – is difficult to defend in philosophical or scientific terms and suggests other beliefs and practices which are incompatible with Christian theology. Descartes argued for a Christian dualism, but struggled to provide a coherent account of why the soul would be enfleshed, how soul and body interact and how a disembodied soul could experience reward or punishment in the way that would be necessary for Christian promises of eternal life to be meaningful.  The Catholic Church never accepted the idea that eternal life could be purely spiritual and disembodied because this might seem to dilute the punishment of hell – annihilation or distance from God would scarcely seem a disincentive to people who have decided to commit mortal sins after all.  Further, by the Middle Ages the Church realized that dualism supports an utter contempt for the physical body, which can lead people towards extreme and unhealthy asceticism or towards a disregard for the sins of the body and the belief that its sins – sexual sins included – are less significant.

Belief that the body can be re-created in a parallel dimension after death to receive reward or punishment is far preferable.  Seeking a middle-way between the difficulties of basing faith on a future physical resurrection and basing it on dualism and a purely spiritual eternal life, St Thomas Aquinas developed his Theology on the basis of Aristotle’s Philosophy.  Rejecting the dualism proposed by his teacher Plato, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle had set out how all beings have four different types of cause; material causes (physical ingredients), efficient causes (agents), formal cause (what makes something what it is, its definition) and a final cause (the purpose or end to which its existence pertains). Aristotle understood that the soul is the formal cause of the human being, what makes it what it is and defines its existence.  Unlike Plato however, Aristotle did not see the form of a being having any separate metaphysical existence.  The form depends on the materials it specifies, and the end towards which it works.  The soul is, in effect, the function of the body – what Gilbert Ryle later described as “the ghost in the machine” – it gives the impression of being a separate entity but in fact it depends entirely on the physical body for its existence. This is where Aquinas departed from Aristotle; he argued that on death the body is re-created in a parallel heavenly dimension and that the new unity of soul and heavenly body is subject to punishment and reward.  Arguably, this idea of re-creation has a basis in scripture; references such as “They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) can be interpreted as Biblical support for Aquinas’ “modified dualism”.  Further, John Hick developed a defense of re-creation into a parallel dimension through the “replica theory” which he developed in Death and Eternal Life (1976).  As Hick argued, provided that the replica retains the memories of the original, difficulties with spatio-temporal continuity can be overcome.  When Captain Kirk said “beam me up Scotty!” there was no doubt that Kirk remained Kirk although there was a break in his spatio-temporal existence. Aquinas’ theory of re-creation supports Christian faith far better than either monism and physical resurrection or dualism and purely spiritual reward/punishment.  It avoids both the challenges presented by science and reason to belief in physical resurrection and the theological pitfalls of dualism, while straining credulity to a lesser extent because it requires only that the soul could be briefly separable, not that it must be sustained in a separate state.  For this reason, Aquinas’ theory was adopted into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th Century.

In conclusion, it is clear that orthodox Christian faith does not require belief in a separate soul.  Christian faith can be sustained through a belief in physical resurrection, either in the future starting with the final judgement as the Synoptic Gospels, Creeds and Catechism suggest, or through re-creation into a new body in a parallel dimension as St Thomas Aquinas suggested.  Re-creation does not require belief in a separate soul, but does suppose that the soul is separable.