In a couple of my rants I’ve made reference to a thing, that when taken as a metaphor, is completely uncontroversial. However, when taken literally, it is something that has been debated and contested since its inception as a concept. Herein you will not find anything strikingly original or revolutionary, I honestly believe all that needs to be said on the matter has been said, and is well documented. So the point of writing this at all is simply to lay out the problem and explicate my thoughts on it. Today I will address the problem of the soul.
In many theologies there exists a concept of the soul, an incorporeal thing which gives man the spark of life. Taken literally, the soul is an answer to a couple inevitable philosophical questions. Those being: “Why does man think?” and “What happens when we die?” The soul answers both of these questions easily. First, we think because something which is akin to that of the god or gods we believe in resides within us. Second, when we die our souls continue to exist somewhere else in much the same way we exist today. This second answer is extremely important; it gives us hope, and consoles us of the fear of our inevitable demise. So why the idea of a soul exists is relatively uncontroversial. It does what all aspects of religions do: answers a question that couldn’t be answered by any other means at the time. It is with this understanding, however, that another problem arises.
As I said before, the soul is the answer to some questions. For it to be an actual answer deserving of any real attention, the soul must be real. This is simply because if we take the soul as a pre-modern answer to complicated problems for which there were no other means of acquiring answers, then we undermine the soul’s validity. We place it in a context wherein it is seen as an invention of a people with a simple world-view. No, for it to be a real answer, that is, one that a person can rely upon, then the soul must actually exist. This is where the real problems lie. Assuming the soul is real, what is it made of? How does it even work? If we are to take the soul seriously, the answer to either of these questions cannot be: “Magic.” That just isn’t good enough when it comes to metaphysics.
Descartes was an early philosopher who attempted to tackle the problem of the soul. He understood that if the soul was not made of matter that it could have no extension, that is, it didn’t take up any space. In his theory he equated the soul with mind, what we thought and remembered were all controlled by the soul through the intermediary of the pineal gland. That notwithstanding, the fact that this is widely accepted, that the soul is without form or mass makes it even less believable. The only thing that it could then be made up of is energy. Energy has no extension or mass, so that works. The issue with this is that if the soul were energy, we would be able to measure it. We have devices sensitive enough to detect energy at the lowest and highest of spectra both near and extremely far away. We have mapped the spectrum of energy from radio waves all the way up to gamma rays, and none of these frequencies have displayed any ability to either give life or store memories… Now, I’m being completely serious here, if we are to take the soul seriously, then there should be serious answers about its composition. Furthermore, how it works should be addressed. Assuming it’s some kind of energy that we just don’t have the ability to measure yet (and assuming it’s a frequency below radio waves, otherwise it would kill us), how could it do what it does?
I’m not even sure where to begin with how it gives life, so let us just move on to its other commonly held attribute: the ability to store our personalities. Because that’s exactly what it must be able to do if it is to be “us” when we die. We now understand that our brains–wholly material objects–are the containers of our memories and personalities. They are also the generators of our thoughts. Many would argue that we, as people, are no more than our brains, for one can lose limbs and organs without necessarily affecting one’s personality or personhood. However, one swift kick to the head by a horse could forever alter one’s memories, personality, and even one’s personhood. As a physical structure the brain does all that. So what then does the soul do? It is not the originator of thought, for if that were true, had you been kicked in the head why would that affect your ability to think? Surely a thing that has no extension cannot be harmed by physical objects. And if it stored your personality and memories, why then would those be affected after some other trauma to the head? Surely it would act as a backup. Some of you may be thinking, “But that’s not how the soul works. It only can do something once the body dies!” This thought only brings about more questions. Are the soul and body separate but still, somehow, connected then? How does the soul acquire its memories? How does it acquire your personality? If it merely copies what the brain has within it in real-time, then is it really you when you die? Wouldn’t it just be a carbon copy of you which isn’t really you? If it is just a carbon copy, don’t you still cease to exist when you die, even if some ethereal carbon copy continues to exist postmortem?
For the soul to be you when you die there must be continuity between it and you. Your personality must be the same within your brain as within your soul, not merely two identical copies, they must actually be one in the same. Since they must be one, and since we know the brain holds this information, then the soul must be the brain. If this is true, then the soul cannot be made of energy or without extension. Finally, if this is true then there is no need to even posit the soul because it would serve no purpose other than the brain and would be superfluous.
Really the soul is just what I said earlier, an answer. But it is an answer which has long outlived its usefulness. Our understanding of the world, and the universe as a whole, is so much greater now than it was however many thousands of years ago that it was when man needed the idea of a soul to answer his important questions about reality. But that is not to say that there is no place for “souls” in this world. One place they continue to be useful is in metaphor. As a metaphor, the soul brings a lot of meaning to an idea in just a single word. It expresses the essence of a thing–any thing–with both simplicity and depth. Many ideas that have outlived their usefulness as literal objects now live a second, perhaps more fulfilling, life as metaphor, augmenting the way we divide and describe the world around us. What’s important is to realize when an idea’s time has come to leave the realm of reality, and, instead, to simply describe it.
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