1. Soul & body: a survey of the basic positions
Background on the soul-body problem (see Brown, Murphy, & Maloney 1-29)
Main historical & logical positions on the soul-body problem
1. Substance dualism
Plato ( B.C.), Augustine ( ), Descartes ( ) - the soul is a different kind of reality than the body; it is a spiritual substance and is the seat of the self.
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2. Soul & body: background
Plato - the soul properly belongs to the otherworldly realm of Ideas or Forms
Comments & problems:
Provides a clean solution to scientific criticisms of the notion of soul by putting soul out of the bounds of science. Independence position.
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3. Soul & body: background
If so dissimilar, how can they interact?
If humans have evolved from matter, we would expect mind or soul to be similar to matter.
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4. Soul & body: background
Is not substance dualism required for the Jewish & Christian notions of afterlife?
Many contemporary biblical scholars argue that dualism is not present in the Hebrew and Christian bibles
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5. Soul & body: background
Hebrew nephesh, often translated as “soul,” does not mean an immortal soul but the life principle or the self as the subject of appetites & emotions & willing
Notion of afterlife in late books of the Hebrew bible (Daniel 12:2 - ca. 165 B.C., II Maccabees 14:46 - ca. 140 B.C.) & in N.T. is resurrection.
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6. Soul & body: background
Notion of immortality also appears in late book of the Hebrew Bible. Wisdom (of Solomon) 3: st century. “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them they are at peace there hope is in immortality.” Probably written by a Hellenized Jew.
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7. Soul & body: background
The notion of afterlife in the N.T. is resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15: & II Corinthians 5: 1-10.
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8. Soul & body: background
Resurrection
Acc. to Oscar Cullmann, resurrection is the recreation of the whole person by an act of God at some future time (“in the last days”) (Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? (NY: Macmillan, 1958).
Is a gift of God, not anything natural.
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9. Soul & body: background
Cullmann’s famous comparison of the deaths of Socrates & Christ
Cullmann’s comparison of immortality & resurrection
Immortality Greek, spatial, natural, requires dualism
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10. Soul & body: background
Resurrection Hebrew, temporal, special creative act of God, compatible with a psychosomatic unity
Overview of immortality & resurrection
Dualism was embraced by early Christianity under the influence of Greek thought, especially Platonism and Neoplatonism
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11. Soul & body: background
2. Matter-form dualism - the soul is not complete by itself; it is complete only with the body; but it is capable of existing without the body
Aristotle ( ), Aquinas ( )
Problems:
Has many of the same difficulties of substance dualism, but perhaps mitigated a bit.
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12. Soul & body: background
The metaphysical baggage which goes with this theory
Strength
It has a much more positive appraisal of the body than Platonic dualism
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13. Soul & body: background
3. Physicalism, or “materialism,” or “reductive materialism”
Mental events are identical with brain processes.
Francis Crick in The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)
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14. Soul & body: background
“The Astonishing hypothesis is that ‘you,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’” (The Astonishing Hypothesis 3)
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15. Soul & body: background
Some criticisms:
Crick sets up the problem as if there are only two alternatives: strong substance dualism or reductive materialism. Is this fallacious?
At best a research programme
It cannot account for the privileged position of the subject
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16. Soul & body: background
4. Multi-level theories
Ian Barbour & Nancey Murphy - Reality is organized into a variety of levels, each with its characteristic types of activity. The mind-brain problem is a particular case of the more general problem of the relation between levels.
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17. Soul & body: background
Advantages:
Is congenial with an evolutionary viewpoint
According to Barbour, it is compatible with the biblical view of humans
Nancey Murphy’s position is a version of the multi-level theory
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18. Soul & body: background
Why science seems to make any version of strong dualism problematic
1. The continuity between humans and other animals
Our closest cousins in the animal world are chimpanzees--c.99% of the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is the same
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19. Soul & body: background
Hominids & chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor c. 5 to 7 million years ago (Ayala 33)
One of the lines of these early hominids evolved is Australopithicus.
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20. Soul & body: background
The genus Homo evolved from Australopithicus c. 2.5 million years ago.
Of the many species in the genus Homo, Homo sapiens sapiens emerged c. 120,000 years ago.
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21. Soul & body: background
2. Modern psychology & neurology
Brain localization research
Murphy: “Nearly all of the human capacities or faculties once attributed to the soul [language, emotion, decision-making] are now seen to be functions of the brain” (1).
See Malcom Jeeves, “Brain, Mind, and Behavior,” in Whatever Happened to the Soul?
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22. Soul & body: background
Specific mental processes have been shown to be tightly linked to particular regions or systems of the brain
Examples
The hippocampus -- remembering names or events
Writing prose and reading it are linked to different parts of the brain.
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23. Soul & body: background
Recognizing faces
Damage to the right temporal lobe results in obsessional behavior
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