Musings on
the Soul January
17, 2018
My reflections on consciousness
conger up ideas of the soul. I do not use the term “soul” much because I do not
have clear idea of what it means. I understand and like the idea of the soul as
described by St. Thomas, but I think it is incompatible with contemporary
science. In the introduction to my 2007 book, The Soul of Classical American Philosophy, I wrote that the issues
that were treated under the name soul in
traditional philosophy included: “the meaning of whatever we call our ‘self,’
especially in regard to our bodily existence, free will, moral values,
community, and our relationship to the Transcendent.
In the world view that I have been
describing as a “teleological view” as opposed to a “materialist view,” these
issues would have a definite meaning. But is the human soul an entity that must
be taken into account to explain these things. Right now, I don’t know. Josiah
Royce, who was no materialist, advised that we do not use the term “soul” to
explain spiritual realities, because it is just a word and does not explain
anything. In the following I will briefly describe the soul as found in St,
Thomas, first explain why I like it and then why it is not compatible with
modern science. Can we rethink the idea and keep its valuable insights while
making it compatible with modern science?
St, Thomas, following Aristotle,
believed that every material object was composed of matter and form; matter is
the indefinite stuff of which all physical things are composed, and form is
what makes a thing what it is. In the case of a living thing, the form is
called a soul, in Latin, anima. Plants
have a vegetative soul, animals have a soul that is sensing as well as
vegetative, and a human is an animal whose soul is also rational. The soul of
an individual human being provides his or her body the structure that it has
as, as well as making it living, sensing, and rational.
Our rational soul enables us to comprehend
universal ideas and thereby know thing that do not exist in our world of
immediate sense. This ability enables us to love and choose things differently
from what is given to our sense, and hence, free will. For example, while we
can only see and talk to a relative small number of people at any given time,
we can think realistically of more universal communities such as our local
geographical community, the community of those who share our history and our
hope for the future, our nation, and the whole human race. The sharing of
non-material ideas and values makes community possible. We can gain some
understanding of the actual conditions as well as possible desirable and
undesirable futures.
Also, we can reflect on our own consciousness and thereby have
a sense of self. We can understand our current habitual way of living, discern
our best potential, and work to achieve it. St. Thomas, again following
Aristotle, held that a human being is essentially a rational animal. To achieve
our purpose in life we must each become the best rational animal that we can
be. We do this by developing habits of living rationally; temperance, courage,
prudence and justice. St. Thomas called these habit virtues and living a life
of virtue enables us to be the best that we can be. In short, we can think of a
better self and a better world and therefore nourish moral values. The ability
described here requires that we possess the qualities of reason and free will. The
unity of the soul enables us to develop virtues, which provide for a healthy
body, control our senses and appetites, and allow us to work for social harmony
Also, we can yearn for whatever we think of as the
Transcendent, something not given in our senses, although signs of it are. I don’t
know if St. Thomas ever said this, but Josiah Royce and Charles Peirce describe
thinking as the ability the ability to read signs. Glimpses that we have of
love and understanding in our own lives can serve as signs. I will leave the
issue of the Transcendent aside for now except to make one observation. As we
live our lives we can see that our consciousness expands. For example, there
may be people whom we once despised, hated, or feared because they differed from us in such things as skin
color, religious practices, birth place, or sexual orientation, but whom we
have since learned to tolerate, understand, and appreciate. We can imagine a
consciousness who understands, appreciates, and loves everyone. Such a
consciousness would be what most religions and philosophes would mean by the
Transcendent, or God. The ability to think of and imagine an infinitely
expanding consciousness was traditionally attributed to the soul.
As stated above there are problems with the notion of the
soul as the principle of life. One problem that I think is insurmountable is the
reality of stem cells. (To avoid veering off into the controversy of pre-natal
life, we can think of adult stem cells.) These are alive and human, but I don’t
think anyone could argue that each one has what is traditionally called a
rational soul. If the cells can be injected into an accident victim to restore
muscle function, they become part of that person. To emphasize the conclusion,
we can have human life at the cellular level without a rational soul. So to
think consistently of a rational and spiritual soul, we have to think of the
soul, contrary to St. Thomas, as something different from whatever makes a
living thing alive.
We might think of the soul as the organizing principle of
consciousness in a unique biological individual. Consciousness in this case
would extend from the most basic sensation to the highest flights of reason,
aesthetic awareness, and contemplation. The only consciousness that we are
aware of can be found in living things. Whether there is a non-material
consciousness on the one hand, or a consciousness in non-living matter on the
other hand, is beyond our knowledge.
I can think of three models to
explain the relationship between consciousness and our biological make-up –
there are probably many more besides these three. First, we can think of the
dualistic model in which consciousness is immaterial, matter is unconsciousness,
but when a living material being reaches a level of complexity it becomes conscious
and thereby overcomes the dualism by uniting matter and consciousness in one organism.
According to the second model, the materialist model, matter is unconsciousness
but at a certain level of complexity, consciousness arise briefly but without
power to influence the flow of material processes. The third model would hold
that consciousness is present in all material things, at least in a rudimentary
form, and becomes manifest only in living animals. A sub-set of three is that
there is a non-material consciousness toward which living things are evolving,
and the consciousness found in matter is a dimmer expression of that
consciousness.
Neuro-biologists can find
correlations between brain states and states and conscious experience, but it
is and error, an error often made, to conclude that conscious experience is “nothing
but” brain states. As living organisms
evolve to higher levels of complexity, the range and depth of consciousness
also expand until we come to the human mind that can be consciousness of
realities not given in immediate senses experience. This give rise to science,
art, language, and everything that makes up our human culture.
Whether there is an incipient consciousness in all matter,
there is certainly consciousness at the level of animals. We humans know that
our consciousness can be affected by such things as fatigue, illness, injury,
and drugs. If consciousness is simply a product of brain states, then the death
of the brain implies the death of consciousness. But consciousness might be
greater than earthly biological matter. And the little bit of consciousness
that our human brains pick up may be a participation in something infinitely
beyond what we can grasp at this stage of our evolution. The organization that
permits this participation may be what we mean by the “soul.”
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