In Defence of Immaterial Souls

Soul good, man

I recently gave a brief case for reincarnation, and mentioned some other beliefs of mine that other people think are a bit “spooky” - including my belief that we have souls. Or, I should say, are souls. This raises eyebrows in 2024, because it’s seen as a somewhat antiquated view. People associate it with religion, ancient tribal cultures, and The Blues Brothers - but not the scientific empiricist culture we live in now. I think The Blues Brothers had it right though; I am a soul (man)

What is a soul?

I know, I know, boring philosophy articles always spend ages at the start defining terms, so I’ll try to make it as swift and simple as possible - this isn’t an academic journal, and if you don’t wipe soon you’ll get piles. Still, for me to make sense, you’ll need to know exactly what I’m arguing for. When I talk of us being immaterial souls, I’m talking about the nature of conscious experience itself. What is it? What is it like? There’s two conditions that I think consciousness needs to fulfil in order to be considered a soul.

1. It needs to be immaterial.

2. It needs to be a substance as opposed to a property (I will elaborate).

You may think there are other things needed for consciousness to be considered a soul. Maybe you think they need to be immortal, originate from God, or something else. If that’s the case, that’s fine, just imagine I’m arguing for the existence of “schmouls” then. I don’t care so much about the words, I just think consciousness fulfils those two conditions - and that sounds pretty soul-ey to me!

Now, you might wonder what I mean by a substance and property. A simple definition is that a substance is an entity that could in principle exist on it’s own, whereas a property relies on something else to exist. To use an example, my laptop is made of different substances and has different properties. It’s keys are substances because they could in principle exist separately from the laptop. However, it’s colour, grey, is a property, because you can’t have greyness without an object that is grey. It’s greyness relies on there being a substance that is grey in order to exist.

So, I think consciousness is immaterial, and it’s a thing that could in principle exist on it’s own, rather than a property which can’t.

Why is Consciousness Immaterial?

I’ll start by saying off the bat, it seems obvious that consciousness is immaterial. It’s the example of an immaterial thing. Like, if consciousness is physical, I’m not even sure what the word “physical” means anymore.

Sometimes people hear that and think I’m saying that consciousness isn’t somehow related to the brain, but that’s a misconception. Brains obviously have a relationship with conscious experience. If you damage your visual cortex, you’ll lose your sight. If you damage your pre-frontal cortex, you’ll lose cognition. If your brain grows comically big, you become really smart (I’m pretty sure that’s how it works).

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“You should see our balls”

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However, you can accept all that, and still not posit conscious experience is literally the neurons firing in your brain. It seems like neurons firing is giving rise to some subjective experience, but not that the brain is the subjective experience. When people say that the consciousness is literally neurons firing, it sounds so bizarre to me. It’s like saying lions are 64. No, not that there are 64 Lions, but that Lions are literally 64. Confused? Me too. So, I’m pretty unsympathetic to physicalism to begin with.

Mary’s Room

To start a more formal argument though, let’s talk about Mary’s Room. There’s a genius woman, Mary, who’s lived her entire life in a black and white room. She’s never seen colour, but she spends all her time watching a black and white TV learning about the physical facts of colour. She learns about wavelengths of light, how they interact with the eye, how those signals light up the brain, and so on. If you’re thinking “Wait, wouldn’t the light of the TV light up her skin, so she could see colour then?” just imagine her skin is literally white. It shouldn’t be hard, just request a beach photo of me if you’re having trouble. After learning about all the physical facts of the world, Mary steps outside and sees a red rose for the first time. Has she learned something? Answer: Yes. She’s learned what it’s like to see red. She now knows what the conscious experience of seeing red is. But, if she knew all the physical facts prior, and has just learned something new, that must mean the conscious experience of seeing red isn’t physical.

Philosophical Zombies

Here’s another argument - Zombies. No, not the kind you see in movies, or on your hometown’s Facebook page. A Philosophical Zombie is a hypothetical being that is identical to us in almost every way. They share all the same physical characteristics, have all the same biological processes, and walk around doing all the same things we do - even talking about being conscious. There is one difference, however; they are not conscious. There’s no lights on inside. There’s nothing that it’s like to be a philosophical zombie. Now, it might be the case that philosophical zombies aren’t physically possible, and that whenever a brain is constructed that way, a conscious experience arises. However, is it conceivable that they could exist? That is, can you imagine them, and comprehend them without your brain doing the Windows XP error sound? I think yes, I can very clearly conceive of them. In fact, you might all be them! I might be the only conscious guy here and I’m talking to a bunch of lifeless husks (In which case, I suppose it’s not that big a deal to finally admit I crapped my pants at the end of the school day 21 years ago, and blamed it on the kid sitting next to me. Sorry Ellis). What’s the importance of this? Well, if there’s no change in the physical facts, and consciousness is physical, then a change in consciousness should be inconceivable. It would be like saying, imagine a blue car that has all the same physical characteristics as this red car. What? How? Colour is a physical characteristic ya rube! So, either philosophical zombies are inconceivable (which they aren’t), or consciousness isn’t physical.

Why is consciousness a substance?

So, we’ve made it across the finish line to thinking consciousness is immaterial, but the job is only half done. Why think that consciousness is it’s own substance, and not just some strange and unique property of some physical things?

Reincarnation

Quick one to start! Like I said, I think reincarnation is likely true. Were reincarnation true, I feel like consciousness would have to be a substance. Otherwise, what’s the entity that’s doing the reincarnating? Can properties reincarnate? Is every hair on my head a reincarnation of “redness”? I don’t really know how to make sense of that, so conditional on reincarnation, my credence in consciousness being a substance increases.

Conceivability

Now let’s go back to the zombies. We spoke earlier about conceiving of a being that shares all the same physical facts as us, but has no lights on inside. Ralph Weir advances an inverted version of this argument in his book The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance (nice title, Ralph, really rolls off the tongue). Ask yourself this question - can you conceive of consciousness existing without a physical body? Again, I think the answer is yes. When I dream, for example, my “body” in the dream doesn’t actually exist, and yet there is still consciousness. What if waking reality is like that, and there’s no physical world “out there”? I don’t think that’s true, but it’s conceivable. However, if we can conceive of consciousness existing without a physical body, it must be a substance, because we cannot conceive of properties existing on their own. At least, I can’t. I can think of round things, but I can’t make sense of just “roundness”.

Personal Identity

Lastly, let’s talk about Personal Identity. Huemer (did you really think I’d get through an article without mentioning Huemer?) has a section on this in his book Knowledge, Reality, and Value. Side note: That book is great, fun to read, and totally accessible - so if you want to start learning philosophy, you should read it.

There’s this problem in philosophy called the Problem of Personal Identity. That is, what is it that makes you you, and me me? What’s spooky about it, is that it sounds like an easy question to answer, but there’s nothing close to a consensus on it yet, because most views have obvious counter examples. For example, let’s say that you think what makes you you is having your body. What happens if you wake up one morning, in your own bed, with the body of Ronnie Coleman? You have all the same memories, beliefs, physical location, etc - you can just now squat 800kg for reps.

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“Yeah buddy!”

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Are you no longer you? Have you literally become Ronnie Coleman? I think no, you just have his body, but you’re still whoever you are.

Another answer some people give is psychological continuity. You are you as long as you have the same memories and mental features. This is getting closer, I think, but what about people with amnesia? Do they cease to be themselves because they’ve lost their memories? Again, I think no, if I got amnesia I would still be me, I’ve just forgotten a bunch of stuff (such as, mercifully, the time I crapped my pants 21 years ago).

Sometimes people think identity is a matter of social convention. You are you, because we all say that you’re you, but it’s not like it’s grounded in objective truth. The problem with this is that it’s obviously false. Were it true, it would mean that if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, you would have a really strong reason to get everyone to start acting as though someone else were you. Find some baby, give them your name, and you’d carry on living! But you don’t have strong reason to do that, so personal identity must not be a social convention.

I’m not going to go through every theory, but I hope you’re starting to understand that it’s quite a hard question to answer. There is one answer, however, that doesn’t have obvious counter examples, and that is that we’re souls. Some being is you, just as long as it is your soul that’s being embodied. Huemer has a list of rules for personal identity that any good theory should abide by:

1. Identity is a one-to-one relation: Every being is identical with exactly one being; no one is ever identical with two beings.

2. Identity is transitive: If x is identical with y and y is identical with z, then x is identical with z.

3. Identity is intrinsic, not extrinsic: Who a given being is depends solely on facts about that being; it does not directly depend on facts about other beings. You cannot, for example, end a person’s existence solely by creating another person with certain characteristics who never interacts with the original person.

4. Identity is objective: If A is a person and B is a person, there is an objective fact as to whether A=B. It is not subjective, indeterminate, or a matter of convention whether, for example, I exist in any given possible scenario.

The problem with non-soul theories is that they all violate at least one of these rules (at least as far as I have seen). So, either we need to reject one of these, or we need to accept that we’re souls - and I so don’t want to reject one of these. They’re just about as obviously true as something can get.

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So, good news! We have some reasons to think we’re not just our ugly, fleshy bodies, but immaterial (and maybe immortal?) souls. This is good news, not only because it should strengthen our belief that death isn’t the end, but also because it means it’s not literally me that can’t run for 30 seconds without gassing out. It’s just that dumb meat-suit I’m attached to. Hooray! I hope we all have abs in the next life.