On another site I have been involved with a debate on life after death. My opponent, the excellent Dr P kept insisting that we go on about souls -- I mentioned i "had no need of that hypothesis", and that I actually felt it very unhelpful to do do. Just in case it's of any interest (dubious) here is an extract -- I'm the person writing here
"If you want to call that a soul, fair enough. The term soul is so loaded with metaphysical implications, and the notion of “a ghost in the machine” that I am loathe to employ it though. I prefer to talk about the self surviving post mortem. There are three main reasons why...
Firstly, probably the majority of afterlife believers on the planet believe in reincarnation (I'm not sure on the exact figures.) May forms of Hinduism and Buddhism share this notion, as do many other religions including some indigenous North American ones to my certain knowledge. Now if a “soul” is reborn there is not normally any continuity of sense of self in most reincarnationist beliefs -- and all of the things Dr P offers as identical with the notion of a soul, that is Memory, personality, sense of self, sense of bodily identity are lost. Yet the soul is believed to continue, and in some sense one might argue that “you” survive death – that is certainly how reincarnation views it. Now I agree with Dr P's definitions, and feel if you do not have a sense of the self and continuity you are not the same self – so therefore the term soul fails as a synonym for self.
Secondly, many Christians based on the Bible believe that the death of the body means the cessation of self. At the End, God remembers and reconstitutes the body exactly as before, and the self is therefore recreated from the pattern of material and your conciousness reborn. Such a view, completely compatible with reductionist materialist beliefs was entirely orthodox in Early Christianity, and derives from the Jewish notion – this is what I refer to as “Reconstitutionalism”. It denies the possibility of a soul apart from a body, and indeed finds the idea impossible. Such Christians point to the development of the notion of the “ghost in the machine” as a pagan development from Greek and Persian thinking. Self here is dependent upon a pattern of matter, and conciousness entirely a by product of a highly sophisticated arrangement of atoms. I suspect DrP would have few issues with that – but would balk at the idea of this resurrection by Divine fiat. Yet Judaism, Christianity and Islam as far as I understand all teach bodily resurrection? If there is a God we might clearly hope for future existence even on a completely materialist reductionist level – if there is not, then death is permanent. Nonetheless this is far from the dualist notion of soul and body as somehow independent – on the contrary, this position means soul is but the epiphenomena of bodily activity. So again, soul fails as a synonym.
Thirdly, to those of us in the west soul does not merely signify “life after death”, but “immortality”. Saturated in our religious culture, we often assume the two are synonymous – yet in fact looking at the purported evidence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many psychical researchers developed an alternative and deeply pessimistic theory – that indeed consciousness may briefly survive in SOME cases bodily death, but then rapidly disintegrates and dissipates, and ceases to function. Death was they believed merely the first stage in the ultimate death of non-existence. It's not a very happy thought, but we must consider the possibility that life after death may be both conditional (it only applies to some individuals, for whatever reason) and temporary (though how long is unknown.) Once again I suggest the religiously loaded term “soul” is unhelpful.
I hope I have made my case plain. There is a pragmatic reason as well. While theologians and philosophers may endlessly debate the nature and purpose of this “soul”, we all experience all the time what it is to be ourselves. That is what I suggest survives death – this “soul” notion is pretty nebulous, as neither you nor I have ever seen one.
Never? Ah, but I hear you object, you claim to have seen a ghost! Yes I have. Yet that in no way means “ghost” and “soul” are synonymous, as you seem to suggest in your post – perhaps I misread you though. Many researchers believe ghosts are not sentient in any way, but recordings of past events, somehow perceived by our nervous systems, and there are many many other explanations from hallucination to daemonic beasties. Let it suffice to say that an uncritical acceptance of apparition and “dead guy” would get laughed at in pretty much any psychical research community – even the Spiritualists committed to the notion of personal survival have their idea of “residual energy”, that is a memory or recording or earlier events, but not a spirit or “soul”.
We don't know what a soul is, and the concept may be meaningless or misleading, but we know what our sense of self is, because we all experience it. Ironically perhaps I'm far happier to stick with the empirically observable and evidentially demonstrable but wander off in to spooky metaphysical reflections on things like “souls”. "
I know this may seem an odd perspective for a Christian, but by soul when I do employ it i just mean Memory, personality, sense of self, sense of bodily identity - the bits I regard as "me".
cj x
