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Re: History of the Soul
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Anthropology is not my thing,. but I believe that the std line on this
is in terms of folk-biology. People needed to account for the difference
they saw between live things and dead things, and therefore (quite
reasonably) saw dead things as having lost some animating feature, eg a
soul/spirit.
Thought-provoking books on the origins of supernatuiral belief: Nick
Humphreys, Soul Searching, and Pascal Boyer (?)The Origins of Religious
Belief (title may be slightly wrong)
nick j
Edward Grefenstette wrote:
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BUPS-DIS@bups.org
I was talking about the whole "dualism vs physicalism" issue with a
first year who will soon be facing a philosophy of mind exam, and
found myself thinking about what could have lead to the emergence of
the dualist concept, if materialism were to be true:
It's unfortunately extremely easy for non-historians (and historians
alike) to oversimplify history (especially for anything over 50 years
old). Nonetheless my general hunch about the formation of the judeo-
christian religion is that in ancient times, chaos reigned and there
were little concepts of law, hierarchy (other than physical
domination) and organized society. So a group of men with beards
(remember this is a gross oversimplification) decided that they
needed to assert themselves, and what better tool than something that
is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, and most importantly
invisible and mysterious! Such a being (shall we call him "God"?)
serves quite a few purposes at once:
- Justifies the authority of a group of people,
- Imposes fairly rational laws for the survival of society (no
killing, no thieving, no sleeping with your sister, etc...),
- Sets down basic teleology,
- Thus, provides answers to existential angst by telling people why
they're around, and what happens when they die.
After all, religion comes from the latin "relegare" (to bind
together, bring back together) and indeed this primitive framework
for civilization did well in bringing men together in organized
society, and from it emerged a host of concepts of morality, good and
evil, destiny and fate, and the soul.
Let's set the above theorization aside for a second to focus on the
last element. Primitive civilization, with little knowledge of the
human body, seeks to explain the source of human cognition and
individuality. It needs to be compatible with the concept of
afterlife, therefore needs to be a component of the self that
survives physical death, therefore needs to be something more or less
separate from the physical body. This general concept has grown since
good ol' days of BC and evolved a bit, but it still very present in
todays world. Of course there are a few of us monists who maintain
that the mind is physical (although I believe that the mind is to the
brain is what numbers are to the objects they quantify), but the
concept of a soul is still - I dare say - dominant in 'folk
philosophy'. Thus it remains very present in popular culture and is
often referred to by the general public for a plethora of things,
from scientific problems to certain psychological issues, to 'every
day' concepts (love, sense of purpose, being good, etc) and is a bit
hard to separate oneself from. The question is, let's imagine what
would have happened had -for some reason- humanity been exposed to
physicalism instead of dualism in primitive societies. Would the
concept of a soul have made it out into the open anyway? Would we
have a completely different view of the self, of others, of unity of
personality, and of life and death?
Why wonder about such a "what if..."? Because I think that's were
society lies today. More and more people are turning towards
physicalism (sometimes through mere apathy, but more because of the
media attention being turned towards anti-cartesian scientists), so I
think it's not unhealthy to wonder where things will go from here,
and how things will be in 100 - 1000 years. Any thoughts on the matter?
Naturally my whole little theory on the creation of religion could be
(and probably is) wrong (to a certain degree, hopefully). But that
doesn't really matter here. Also, I'm not denying that certain
dualist theories aren't very appealing. I think it's a good thing to
stay slightly agnostic about these things. You never know what will
come around and convince you tomorrow (but that's fairly self evident).
-- Edward.
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