Yesterday's post concluded with this series of questions:
"But why think we have a soul or mind in the first place? Why not apply Occam's razor and assume that we are merely physical beings made of matter and that there's nothing non-physical about us? Why not assume that our brain accounts for the entirety of our cognitive experience and that what we call a mind is simply the functioning of the brain, much like what we call digestion is simply the functioning of the stomach? And how would an immaterial substance like soul or mind interact with the material substance of the physical world, anyway?"
I'll tackle the question of evidence for the soul today and hold the question of how disparate substances like mind and matter can interact with each other for later.
One evidence for the existence of the soul is that we have a sense of being a self, of being something other than our body. My body is not me. I have a body. So who or what is this me that has a body?
A person could theoretically lose much of his or her body, but still have a sense of being the same self. Persons retain that sense of personal identity even though their body changes, perhaps drastically. Someone who undergoes a sex change operation emerges from it with a sense of being the same self with a different body. So if our body can change while our sense of self remains, the self is not the same as the body.
Further evidence for the soul is found in Near Death Experiences (NDEs). As the ability to resuscitate patients who have flat-lined has improved over the last three decades, credible accounts by medical personnel of patients who describe having had verifiable out of the body experiences have rapidly increased. There are hundreds of such reports in the medical literature.
I've given some examples of these in other posts two of which can be read here and here.
A third group of evidences for a soul (or mind) are the phenomena of consciousness. Those who believe that we are just material beings, i.e. materialists, usually argue that our brains can account for all of our cognitive experience, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
On materialism, the brain is like an advanced computer made of neurons which converts electro-chemical inputs into the outputs of thought, memories, and sensations like pain and pleasure. This analogy to a computer, however, fails to fully capture what's going on in human experience. There are a host of cognitive capabilities and experiences of which humans are capable but computers are not.
For example: Human beings are aware, they know, they have beliefs, doubts, regrets, hopes, resentments, frustrations, worries, desires and intentions. They experience gratitude, boredom, curiosity, interest, pleasure, pain, flavor, color, warmth, compassion, guilt, grief, disgust, pride, and embarrassment. None of these, as far as we can tell, are possible of machines made of silicon.
In addition, humans appreciate beauty, humor, meaning, and significance. They can distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong. They can apprehend abstract ideas like universals or math. They’re creative.
They have, as we mentioned above, a sense of being a self, they have memories which seem to be rooted in the past, either of recent or more remote origin. They have a sense of past, present and future. They have ideas and understand those ideas. Computers do none of this.
There's a vast chasm separating physical matter and conscious human experience. The robot Sonny in the movie I, Robot notwithstanding, computers don't feel. A computer can be programmed to tell you it loves you but it doesn’t feel love.
And, we might point out that there's a vast chasm between the capabilities of a living human being and a dead brain. If the brain is like a computer, a dead brain is like a computer with the power cord unplugged. It has no capabilities at all. What fires up the computer is electricity. What fires up a brain is mind.
Moreover, if the brain were all that's involved in thinking and our sensations of color, sound, fragrance, pain, etc. it should be theoretically possible for a researcher to peer into a subject's brain and witness the subject's thoughts and sensations. Yet no matter how thoroughly a brain is examined all that a researcher would find are electro-chemical reactions occurring along neurons, but electrical pulses moving along a nerve fiber are not the same thing as a memory, or the sensation of red, or of pain, or the thought of sending a text to a friend.
In order to get from the electro-chemical phenomena to the experience of a particular thought or sensation something else must be involved, just as something else must be involved besides just the television in producing the visual image on the screen. The television is somewhat like the material brain. What's done to the television - changing the channel, adjusting the volume, etc. - affects the visual and auditory experience of the viewer, but the television alone cannot produce those experiences. In addition to the tv there has to be an electromagnetic signal for the tv to interpret, and altering the television does nothing to alter the signal.
Furthermore, if there's no signal there won't be anything on the television screen, but even if the television is destroyed, the signal, with the information it carries, still exists.
In a somewhat analogous way the mind or soul is a necessary component of the thoughts and sensations we experience. Our brains would be dead without the mind, yet the mind continues to exist even if our brains do not.
But what difference does it make in my life or yours whether we believe we have a soul or don't believe it? I'll address that question and the question of how a soul could interact with a material body tomorrow.
