BODY and SOUL
March 15th 2000
It is commonly supposed that a living person comprises two parts - body and soul/spirit. People taking this view are termed dualists. It is held that the 'higher things' in life cannot be accounted for on the basis of body functions alone and that, if it be the case that people can make after-death appearances to living witnesses then that fact, if fact it be, confirms, indeed requires, a dualist view of human life. It is not only crackpots who believe in ghosts; Otherwise sane Christians, after all, believe at least one ghost story - that of the alleged after-death appearance of Jesus to various people, notably Thomas.
The purpose of this essay is to suggest that dualism is a needless hypothesis and remains so even if after-death appearances to still living witnesses are objectively possible. The main thrust of the argument is based on the doctrine of Occam's Razor - the notion that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".
Let us consider a simple scene - a warm sunny day in a place that we humans would describe as scenically beautiful ..... with three living beings present .... a flowering plant in bloom .... a placid old dog .... and the present writer. (If you wish, you may imagine this latter being as wearing a straw hat on his head and holding a jar of beer in his hand).
The three beings have something in common - as well as all being alive; they are all responding to the warm sunlight ..... the plant's flower is facing the sun with its petals open, the dog and the old man are at peace in a way that they would not be were they in, say, a torrential rainstorm driven by a Force 8 gale. Indeed, in such conditions, the plant would be in bad way too.
But there are differences between the responses of the three beings to the conditions in which they are placed.
The old man is 1) responding, in part automatically, to his surroundings - he cannot help himself but to allow his body's thermostat to function - if he gets too hot he will perspire, if he gets too cold he will shiver: 2) he is aware of the feeling of pleasure that he is experiencing and he wishes, circumstances permitting, for the pleasurable sensation to continue: 3) he is moved by the beauty of the scene and he may well feel unease at the thought that some ugly building development might impair its future beauty. He remembers previous instances of beauty being destroyed to no truly great or good purpose.
The dog's responses do not, presumably, include those in category 3) but they do, also presumably, include the canine versions of responses in categories 2) and 1).
The plant's response to its surroundings is, presumably, wholly in the category 1).
Dualists might describe this state of things as follows.
Man has both body and soul; the body is capable of automatic response and, moreover, it experiences the carnal pleasure of warmth from the sun while the soul is the appreciator of beauty, the bearer of positive feelings about the worth of what is good and what is true and of negative feelings about the perishability of beauty, goodness and truth.
At the other extreme, the plant has body only. Even carnal pleasure is beyond its scope - let alone any of the 'higher concerns' held to be only within the remit of the human soul.
What of the dog? How does dualism cope with this question? The classical answer is that dogs have no souls; the canine response to surroundings is restricted to the automatic and the consciously carnal. 'Higher things' are outwith canine life.
But the dog problem is not simple. Dogs are capable of participating, albeit at a canine level, in much of what is thought of as 'higher' - affection, loyalty, remorse, bereavement. They are also capable of highly selective individual dislikes, suspicions, even notions of revenge perhaps. Dualist theologians have wrestled (an occupational hazard of theology) with the self-inflicted problems of 'do animals have souls' and even, so help us ..... 'do women have souls ?'
The phrase "self-inflicted" is used deliberately; if you do away with dualism then you can say, coherently, that the plant, the dog and the man are all living beings but of very different degrees of complexity and very different scopes, to match. There is no need to postulate an entity, distinct from body, called the soul or spirit or whatever. The perceived compulsion to postulate such an "entity beyond necessity" arises simply from an a priori assumption that bodies have, of necessity, limitations such that the 'higher things' are beyond bodily reach In short, it is mere circularity to say that the 'higher things' require us to postulate the soul and it is the soul that handles the 'higher things'.
Now for ghosts!
I live in an old house that has, for well over a century, been the home of many people - some of whom, by all accounts, I would not care to meet on a dark night. There is a story that, in my kitchen and on rare occasions, there appears a Victorian lady who vanishes as soon as she is approached.
I stress two things : one is that, although I have lived in the house for eighteen years and have spent many hours quietly alone in it, I have seen no such apparition: the other is that I cannot see any means whereby such a thing might be possible. I also have to say, in due humility, that my not having seen a thing does not, in itself, render that thing non-existent and my not understanding something does not, in itself, make that thing impossible. Let me therefore concur with Aristotle who is reported to have said something like "a mature mind can entertain an idea without accepting it". So I will suppose that my homely ghost is real - even if I have not seen her and cannot account for her existence.
There is an immediate problem - how can I know that she is Victorian? The answer has to be by her clothes. This leads to the interesting conclusion that inanimate things (clothes) have associated ghosts just as animate things (women) have associated ghosts.
If people generate ghosts, while inanimate things do not, then the Victorian lady would appear naked - and how then could anybody 'know' that she is Victorian? Clothes fashions change rapidly; a naked white Victorian is just like a naked white person from more or less any epoch.
On the dualist theory of ghosts ...... clothes must have souls just as people have them ...... and the whole point of dualism (which is to account for 'higher things' of life as being peculiar to soul-bearers) is thus simply out of the window.
If ghosts there be - and it is a very big 'if' - then ghostly phenomena must have a material explanation - unless we are prepared to reject dualism and revert to animism.
My kitchen is not on my list of no-go areas; I will now proceed thereto and fix myself a cup of coffee.
E.S.
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