An interesting article... I'm reminded of something I read earlier about how humans have an "intuitive" physics, biology and psychology--- evolved to cope with the world--- which turns out to be completely wrong in interesting cases even at the macro-scale.
However, I dispute Dr. Bloom's assertion that religion somehow "cannot survive" the immaterial soul. As Daniel Dennet writes,
And curiously enough, your current embodiment, though a necessary precondition for your creation, is not necessarily a requirement for your existence to be prolonged indefinitely. Now, if you were a soul, a pearl of immaterial substance, we could "explain" your potential immortality only by postulating it as an inexplicable property, an ineliminable virtus dormitiva of soul-stuff... If what you are is that organization of information that has structured your body's control system... then you could in principle surive the death of your body as intact as a program can survive the destruction of the computer on which it was created and first run... [If] it is potential immortality you hanker for, the alternatives are sipmly indefensible. ("Consciousness Explained", p. 430.)
Now, on Sunday in church, I and millions of other Christians profess a belief in the "resurrection of the body", but very little about the necessity of mysterious soul-stuff to keep us around. The belief that humans are bodies and were in fact meant to be bodies is in no way inconsistent with the resurrection promised us. Scary or nonintuitive, maybe. But I find it preferrable to the questions raised by introducing soul-stuff into the picture: if God is so fond of soul-stuff, why are we not entirely souls? Are souls necessarily immortal or only contingent on God's sustaning power? (In either case, how are souls demonstrably any different than matter?)
I also find arguments about linguistic choice uncompelling, as we certainly say "my soul" or "my spirit" in addition to "my brain".
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Date: 2004-08-31 07:46 am (UTC)An interesting article... I'm reminded of something I read earlier about how humans have an "intuitive" physics, biology and psychology--- evolved to cope with the world--- which turns out to be completely wrong in interesting cases even at the macro-scale.
However, I dispute Dr. Bloom's assertion that religion somehow "cannot survive" the immaterial soul. As Daniel Dennet writes,
And curiously enough, your current embodiment, though a necessary precondition for your creation, is not necessarily a requirement for your existence to be prolonged indefinitely. Now, if you were a soul, a pearl of immaterial substance, we could "explain" your potential immortality only by postulating it as an inexplicable property, an ineliminable virtus dormitiva of soul-stuff... If what you are is that organization of information that has structured your body's control system... then you could in principle surive the death of your body as intact as a program can survive the destruction of the computer on which it was created and first run... [If] it is potential immortality you hanker for, the alternatives are sipmly indefensible. ("Consciousness Explained", p. 430.)
Now, on Sunday in church, I and millions of other Christians profess a belief in the "resurrection of the body", but very little about the necessity of mysterious soul-stuff to keep us around. The belief that humans are bodies and were in fact meant to be bodies is in no way inconsistent with the resurrection promised us. Scary or nonintuitive, maybe. But I find it preferrable to the questions raised by introducing soul-stuff into the picture: if God is so fond of soul-stuff, why are we not entirely souls? Are souls necessarily immortal or only contingent on God's sustaning power? (In either case, how are souls demonstrably any different than matter?)
I also find arguments about linguistic choice uncompelling, as we certainly say "my soul" or "my spirit" in addition to "my brain".