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Re: History of the Soul

Your little 'history of religious belief' sounds like some conspiracy theory. It's not as if "some blokes with beards" sat down one day and decided that they would invent God in order to curb the lawless activities and excesses of their own societies. The idea of God (or gods) has been around since there have been civilisations for archeologists to unearth or anthropologists to record.

Many primative peoples worshipped the sun. Surely it is more sensible to suppose that those individuals, who were seen as the strongest amongst the first groups of humans, were considered to possess part of the "sky god's" power? From there, a hierachy of social relations developed based, at first, on strength alone. As culture established itself, those in power could invoke the authority of the gods in order to establish and maintain order and civil obedience. (In more modern times we see this happening in the Catholic Church, and with the 'Divine Right of Kings' doctrine in England before 1688.)

I wasn't aware, however, of the Latin origins of the word 'religion' -- I'll have to ask my mum about that one (she went to a posh school). As far as 'Existentialist agnst' is concerned, I think that is a fairly recent 'innovation' in philosophy (no more than about 150 years old, I would say). God may give those who believe in Him a structure with which to order their lives, but I don't think that He needed to be created first in order that life itself could be seen to have meaning or purpose.

I can't comment on the origins of the concept of 'destiny', but I do know that both 'morality' and the 'soul' are concepts that do not require either a god or gods for their existence. The 'soul' is spoken about a lot in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle, without their tying the concept to the existence of any gods (although the 'soul' in that sense is very different from our modern understanding of the word). Perhaps someone else here with knowledege of the pre-Socratics (or even Eastern philosophy?) could tell us about what people before Socrates thought about the soul? As for 'morality', although the concept (as we today, in the west, understand it) developed from Judeo-Christian origins, its existence goes much further back. Usually, 'moral authority', without gods to support it, stems from custom and tradition: what is good is so because it has aided our survival over time.

"I believe that the mind is to the brain is what numbers are to the objects they quantify..."

I'm not quite sure what you're saying in the above, but (moving on) 'physicalism' (although no doubt a word coined more recently) existed in ancient societies where dualism was also present: both the Greek atomists and Epicurius taught that everything in the universe was ultimately physical. So societies were exposed to the two doctrines; it just appears that dualism has had more of a lasting appeal (until more recently) than physicalism.

Today, although most people (as you say) are drawn towards the phyiscalist hypothesis, this is not so in all areas of life. (The rise of religion both in the US and the Middle East, shows that metaphysics still has 'mass appeal'.) And not all philosophers are unanimous in their support for physicalism. Just to take my own philosophy year-group as an example: most are physicalists through and through, but two people are die-hard dualists. Myself? Well I'm not sure how I would classify myself. I certainly would not consider myself a dualist, but I wouldn't consider myself a physicalist either (and as for metaphysics, that label really sits uncomfortably with me). Perhaps as you suggest it is better to be agnostic about these things, in the absence of solid evidence either way.

As for the future? Well in the West, I think that physicalism will rise to become the dominant theory (as it is in most fields of the natural sciences). At the moment most people fall back on some form of the dualist hypothesis because it is more familar to them -- embedded as it is in folklore and tradition. As you pointed out, almost all of the difficult questions in philosophy can be 'solved' by resorting to some sort of dualism -- in the public conciousness at least. (Though that is not to say that dualism is not a credible philosophical theory. It may have its own difficulties, but so does physicalism.)

However, as science is made more accessible to everyday people and non-specialists (through improved education and the advance of technology), I think that physicalism will become the dominant public conception as regards man's 'being' -- and notions of the 'soul' and the other metaphysical notions will gradually fade away (within mainstream circles at least). However, in the US and the Middle East... who knows? As I said before, with the upsurge in religious belief (and the metaphysics that go with it) perhaps we shall also see a corresponding rise in new forms of dualism within philosophy and the public sphere? Is this cause for alarm or a chance for all of us to re-examine standpoints and beliefs that we were previously convinced were established truth?

Whatever the future holds, nothing is ever dull in philosophy!

--- Edward Grefenstette
wrote:
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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