Module 3: J
IN DEFENSE OF THE SOUL J.P. MORELAND
I.
Introduction – Why This Matters Today A. The history of Christian teaching supports the view that the soul is not identical to the body. 1. When we die, the soul continues to exist and will be reunited with the resurrected body. Examples: Jesus, Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, and Paul’s teaching that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord 2. Yet, today many Christian scholars have given up on the existence of the soul. a. Some say that the soul in the Bible is just something the body can do. Hence, it is a behavior of the brain. The resurrected body is recreated out of nothing. b. Some say that the concept of a soul was just read back into scripture from Greek and pagan philosophy. c. Many hold these ideas since they are pushed by the claims of science and the evidence for evolution. So, some adopt theistic evolution. Plus, evolution makes the soul highly unlikely, since evolution typically is understood as just a physical process. d. Result – people lose confidence that heaven and hell exist.
II.
Background Issues A. Definitions: 1. Property: A characteristic or attribute (e.g., being brown) a. Can ask, “what has the property?” b. Physical properties are ones used in the hard sciences, which can be described in the language of chemistry and physics. c. Examples: Mass, being in motion, being rigid or brittle, spatially located, or having a certain shape 2. Substance: a. Has properties, but nothing has it (e.g., a dog) b. Can gain or lose properties, but still is the same substance (e.g., electron, myself, dog, God, tomato) B. The mind-body problem: Are humans 1 kind of thing, or 2? 1. Strict physicalist: Humans are one kind of thing (physical) 2. Dualist: Humans are two kinds of things
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a. Property dualist: Humans are one physical substance, but they have two kinds of properties (physical and immaterial, or non-physical). b. Substance dualist: Humans have two kinds of properties, and each kind has its own possessor. C. Identity (Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernability of Identicals): 1. Definition: For any X and any Y, if X = Y (i.e., X is identical to Y), then for all properties P, P is true of X if and only if P is true of Y. 2. Illustration: a. X = Jim McCann b. Y = the first president of ISOT c. If X=Y, then any property P (e.g., being 5’ 10” tall) will be true of Jim McCann (X) if and only if being 5’ 10” tall is true of ISOT’s first president (Y). d. That is to say, if X and Y are identical, then they really are the same thing. e. But if there is a property true of X that is not true of Y, then X does not = Y. 3. Application to the brain (X) and the mind (Y) a. Science cannot help, for this is not even a question of science. b. All science can do is show that X causes Y, or that Y depends on X. c. Key question: Are there things we know are true of mental properties that are not true of physical properties, or vice versa? III.
Arguments for at Least Property Dualism (i.e., that mental properties are not identical to physical ones) A. Preliminary question: What are mental states? 1. They are sensations of two kinds. a. Perceptual sensations: These are states of sentience, awareness, or consciousness that are produced by one of the five sense organs. Examples: an awareness of color, sound, or taste, and these awarenesses are present in me b. Non-perceptual: These are the same, except they are not produced by one of the five sense organs. Examples: a feeling of pain; a sensation of fear, love or anger; thoughts (these exist only while occurrent, and they are mental content that can be expressed in whole sentences and can be true or false) B. Initial claim: There are things true of these that are not true of physical properties, and vice versa, so they are not identical. 1. Mental states/properties do not have size, shape, electrical charge, nor are they spatially located. 2. Physical states cannot be true or false, but thoughts can.
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3. Some sensations are pleasurable, while this not the case with physical properties. 4. I can hallucinate a pink elephant (a mental state), but you cannot see that in the brain. C. First argument: Exhaustive knowledge of matter by science does not exhaust all that there is to know. 1. Example a: The deaf scientist who suddenly hears something for the first time will experience something new, namely, what it is like to hear. These new facts she will learn are not physical. 2. Example b: If we have exhaustive scientific knowledge of a bat, it still would be new to know what it is like to be a bat. This is not knowable by an outside observer. Rather, the point of view is that of the first-person subject. 3. Example c: A scientist may have more knowledge about my brain than I do, but he or she cannot have more knowledge than I do of my thoughts, emotions, etc. I alone have a first-person, private awareness. D. Second argument: Intentionality is not a physical feature. 1. Intentionality is an ofness or aboutness of my sensations, beliefs, and thoughts. Intentionality points to things. a. Thoughts can be about cars, God, etc. b. Beliefs are about World War II, etc. c. Sensations can be of the desk, the sound of a record, etc. 2. All conscious mental states have this feature, but physical ones do not. 3. I know what my thoughts or feelings are of just by paying attention to them. I can inspect them. 4. But a scientist cannot do that; all he or she can do is monitor brain states. That alone is not sufficient to tell what my thoughts are of or about. 5. Furthermore, computers do not have thoughts, read data, or play chess. They do not have intentional states or any awarenesses. E. Conclusions to be drawn so far 1. At least property dualism is true. 2. What is it that has these mental properties? a. Either it is the brain that has two kinds of properties (in which case only property dualism is correct). b. Or, we have a body and a soul that each possesses its respective kind of properties (substance dualism is true). IV.
Arguments for Substance Dualism A. No amount of information about my body or my consciousness will tell anyone who or where I am.
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1. If I am just a brain, then others ought to be able to tell just by describing my brain which person I am. Yet, it still is an open question to ask, “Which one is mine?” I have to be immediately acquainted with my own ego to know these descriptions are true of me. 2. Example of the split-brain operation: One-half of person 1’s brain is put into a body (call this person 2), and the other half is put into a different body (call this person 3). Suppose that persons 2 and 3 have all person 1’s memories and personality traits. Where is person 1? a. Option 1: Person 1 was annihilated and two new people came to exist. b. Option 2: Person 1 = person 2, and person 3 is just a mental double, but not a new person. c. Option 3: Like option 2, but here person 2 is the mental double and not a new person, and person 1 = person 3. d. Option 4 will not work: You cannot split persons in half, where person 2 = ½ person 1, and person 3 = ½ person 1. e. Solution: While we know where person 1’s body and brain are, we don’t know where person 1 is. Yet, we would, if person 1 = person 1’s brain (i.e., the physicalist view). And we would know if person 1 = just all his or her personality traits, memories, and conscious life (on a property dualism view). But, one person cannot be two people. f. No amount of information in the story can solve the question. We are missing the information about person 1’s ego, so there is more to person 1 than just his or her brain, or his or her personality traits, memories, and conscious life. B. I have the property of being possibly disembodied, but my body does not have that property. Thus, I am not identical to my body. 1. Even if life after death is false, it is at least possible that I am the kind of thing that can exist in a disembodied manner. If so, I am not identical to my brain. 2. Near death experiences involve an immaterial self that can look at one’s body. C. The reality of free will 1. If I am a brain (even if with consciousness), then all my behaviors are fixed by my brain, genes, and environmental inputs. Physical objects behave by natural laws and inputs. 2. Free choices, however, require that I am more than just my body. 3. Thus, I am a body and an immaterial mental substance (which poses big trouble for naturalistic evolution, which cannot explain where immaterial egos come from).
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V.
The Structure of the Human Soul A. We have many capacities (potentialities, abilities) that we do not exercise at the time. Example: When sleeping, I have the capacity to speak English, see colors, etc. B. We also have the capacities to have capacities. I have the capacity to speak English, but not Russian, but I have the capacity to develop that capacity, too. C. This has implications for discipleship and how we overcome, e.g., lustful habits. D. Capacities fall in natural groupings, such as to smell or to see. E. Faculties of the soul are families of resembling capacities. Examples: 1. Capacities of seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, and hearing 2. The mind is my set of capacities to reason, think and believe. 3. Emotions are another set of capacities. 4. The will is a set of powers to choose. 5. The spirit is: powers to be aware of God and be related to Him F. I am essentially my soul. I have my body, and I have a mind (does not mean I am identical to my mind). I see by means of properly functioning eyeballs and the relevant faculty of sight (while some animal souls so not have that faculty, e.g., bats).
VI.
Comments on Animal and Plant Souls A. They are simple in comparison with human souls. 1. Example: Dogs can have thoughts and engage in means-end reasoning, but we can have thoughts about our thoughts and ponder them. 2. With desires, we try to change ours. 3. With beliefs, we can have beliefs about our beliefs. 4. Yet, animals cannot: a. Engage in moral deliberation or form moral judgments. b. Draw distinctions between universal generalizations and statistical ones. c. Experience a conflict between desire and duty (but they can have a conflict between two desires). There is no need to appeal to duty to explain their behavior. 5. They do not use language. a. They do not have the concept of a symbol, like a symbolic representation of a banana). b. Yet they can of a sense-perceptible sign (the word “banana” stands for a banana). B. Plants have vegetable souls, which grow teleologically toward an end, but they lack consciousness.
I.
Introduction – Why This Matters Today A. The history of Christian teaching supports the view that the soul is not identical to the body. 1. When we die, the soul continues to exist and will be reunited with the resurrected body. Examples: Jesus, Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, and Paul’s teaching that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord 2. Yet, today many Christian scholars have given up on the existence of the soul. a. Some say that the soul in the Bible is just something the body can do. Hence, it is a behavior of the brain. The resurrected body is recreated out of nothing. b. Some say that the concept of a soul was just read back into scripture from Greek and pagan philosophy. c. Many hold these ideas since they are pushed by the claims of science and the evidence for evolution. So, some adopt theistic evolution. Plus, evolution makes the soul highly unlikely, since evolution typically is understood as just a physical process. d. Result – people lose confidence that heaven and hell exist.
II.
Background Issues A. Definitions: 1. Property: A characteristic or attribute (e.g., being brown) a. Can ask, “what has the property?” b. Physical properties are ones used in the hard sciences, which can be described in the language of chemistry and physics. c. Examples: Mass, being in motion, being rigid or brittle, spatially located, or having a certain shape 2. Substance: a. Has properties, but nothing has it (e.g., a dog) b. Can gain or lose properties, but still is the same substance (e.g., electron, myself, dog, God, tomato) B. The mind-body problem: Are humans 1 kind of thing, or 2? 1. Strict physicalist: Humans are one kind of thing (physical) 2. Dualist: Humans are two kinds of things
JP Moreland
2
a. Property dualist: Humans are one physical substance, but they have two kinds of properties (physical and immaterial, or non-physical). b. Substance dualist: Humans have two kinds of properties, and each kind has its own possessor. C. Identity (Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernability of Identicals): 1. Definition: For any X and any Y, if X = Y (i.e., X is identical to Y), then for all properties P, P is true of X if and only if P is true of Y. 2. Illustration: a. X = Jim McCann b. Y = the first president of ISOT c. If X=Y, then any property P (e.g., being 5’ 10” tall) will be true of Jim McCann (X) if and only if being 5’ 10” tall is true of ISOT’s first president (Y). d. That is to say, if X and Y are identical, then they really are the same thing. e. But if there is a property true of X that is not true of Y, then X does not = Y. 3. Application to the brain (X) and the mind (Y) a. Science cannot help, for this is not even a question of science. b. All science can do is show that X causes Y, or that Y depends on X. c. Key question: Are there things we know are true of mental properties that are not true of physical properties, or vice versa? III.
Arguments for at Least Property Dualism (i.e., that mental properties are not identical to physical ones) A. Preliminary question: What are mental states? 1. They are sensations of two kinds. a. Perceptual sensations: These are states of sentience, awareness, or consciousness that are produced by one of the five sense organs. Examples: an awareness of color, sound, or taste, and these awarenesses are present in me b. Non-perceptual: These are the same, except they are not produced by one of the five sense organs. Examples: a feeling of pain; a sensation of fear, love or anger; thoughts (these exist only while occurrent, and they are mental content that can be expressed in whole sentences and can be true or false) B. Initial claim: There are things true of these that are not true of physical properties, and vice versa, so they are not identical. 1. Mental states/properties do not have size, shape, electrical charge, nor are they spatially located. 2. Physical states cannot be true or false, but thoughts can.
JP Moreland
3
3. Some sensations are pleasurable, while this not the case with physical properties. 4. I can hallucinate a pink elephant (a mental state), but you cannot see that in the brain. C. First argument: Exhaustive knowledge of matter by science does not exhaust all that there is to know. 1. Example a: The deaf scientist who suddenly hears something for the first time will experience something new, namely, what it is like to hear. These new facts she will learn are not physical. 2. Example b: If we have exhaustive scientific knowledge of a bat, it still would be new to know what it is like to be a bat. This is not knowable by an outside observer. Rather, the point of view is that of the first-person subject. 3. Example c: A scientist may have more knowledge about my brain than I do, but he or she cannot have more knowledge than I do of my thoughts, emotions, etc. I alone have a first-person, private awareness. D. Second argument: Intentionality is not a physical feature. 1. Intentionality is an ofness or aboutness of my sensations, beliefs, and thoughts. Intentionality points to things. a. Thoughts can be about cars, God, etc. b. Beliefs are about World War II, etc. c. Sensations can be of the desk, the sound of a record, etc. 2. All conscious mental states have this feature, but physical ones do not. 3. I know what my thoughts or feelings are of just by paying attention to them. I can inspect them. 4. But a scientist cannot do that; all he or she can do is monitor brain states. That alone is not sufficient to tell what my thoughts are of or about. 5. Furthermore, computers do not have thoughts, read data, or play chess. They do not have intentional states or any awarenesses. E. Conclusions to be drawn so far 1. At least property dualism is true. 2. What is it that has these mental properties? a. Either it is the brain that has two kinds of properties (in which case only property dualism is correct). b. Or, we have a body and a soul that each possesses its respective kind of properties (substance dualism is true). IV.
Arguments for Substance Dualism A. No amount of information about my body or my consciousness will tell anyone who or where I am.
JP Moreland
4
1. If I am just a brain, then others ought to be able to tell just by describing my brain which person I am. Yet, it still is an open question to ask, “Which one is mine?” I have to be immediately acquainted with my own ego to know these descriptions are true of me. 2. Example of the split-brain operation: One-half of person 1’s brain is put into a body (call this person 2), and the other half is put into a different body (call this person 3). Suppose that persons 2 and 3 have all person 1’s memories and personality traits. Where is person 1? a. Option 1: Person 1 was annihilated and two new people came to exist. b. Option 2: Person 1 = person 2, and person 3 is just a mental double, but not a new person. c. Option 3: Like option 2, but here person 2 is the mental double and not a new person, and person 1 = person 3. d. Option 4 will not work: You cannot split persons in half, where person 2 = ½ person 1, and person 3 = ½ person 1. e. Solution: While we know where person 1’s body and brain are, we don’t know where person 1 is. Yet, we would, if person 1 = person 1’s brain (i.e., the physicalist view). And we would know if person 1 = just all his or her personality traits, memories, and conscious life (on a property dualism view). But, one person cannot be two people. f. No amount of information in the story can solve the question. We are missing the information about person 1’s ego, so there is more to person 1 than just his or her brain, or his or her personality traits, memories, and conscious life. B. I have the property of being possibly disembodied, but my body does not have that property. Thus, I am not identical to my body. 1. Even if life after death is false, it is at least possible that I am the kind of thing that can exist in a disembodied manner. If so, I am not identical to my brain. 2. Near death experiences involve an immaterial self that can look at one’s body. C. The reality of free will 1. If I am a brain (even if with consciousness), then all my behaviors are fixed by my brain, genes, and environmental inputs. Physical objects behave by natural laws and inputs. 2. Free choices, however, require that I am more than just my body. 3. Thus, I am a body and an immaterial mental substance (which poses big trouble for naturalistic evolution, which cannot explain where immaterial egos come from).
JP Moreland
5
V.
The Structure of the Human Soul A. We have many capacities (potentialities, abilities) that we do not exercise at the time. Example: When sleeping, I have the capacity to speak English, see colors, etc. B. We also have the capacities to have capacities. I have the capacity to speak English, but not Russian, but I have the capacity to develop that capacity, too. C. This has implications for discipleship and how we overcome, e.g., lustful habits. D. Capacities fall in natural groupings, such as to smell or to see. E. Faculties of the soul are families of resembling capacities. Examples: 1. Capacities of seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, and hearing 2. The mind is my set of capacities to reason, think and believe. 3. Emotions are another set of capacities. 4. The will is a set of powers to choose. 5. The spirit is: powers to be aware of God and be related to Him F. I am essentially my soul. I have my body, and I have a mind (does not mean I am identical to my mind). I see by means of properly functioning eyeballs and the relevant faculty of sight (while some animal souls so not have that faculty, e.g., bats).
VI.
Comments on Animal and Plant Souls A. They are simple in comparison with human souls. 1. Example: Dogs can have thoughts and engage in means-end reasoning, but we can have thoughts about our thoughts and ponder them. 2. With desires, we try to change ours. 3. With beliefs, we can have beliefs about our beliefs. 4. Yet, animals cannot: a. Engage in moral deliberation or form moral judgments. b. Draw distinctions between universal generalizations and statistical ones. c. Experience a conflict between desire and duty (but they can have a conflict between two desires). There is no need to appeal to duty to explain their behavior. 5. They do not use language. a. They do not have the concept of a symbol, like a symbolic representation of a banana). b. Yet they can of a sense-perceptible sign (the word “banana” stands for a banana). B. Plants have vegetable souls, which grow teleologically toward an end, but they lack consciousness.
