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In Search Of The Soul: Four Views Of The Mind-body Problem
Why a search for the soul? Many Christians assume that it is biblically faithful and theologically noncontroversial to speak of humans having a soul. Yet a wide range of biblical scholars are questioning whether we have correctly understood what the Bible means when it speaks of the "soul." And contemporary neuroscience is laying more and more questions at the doorstep of the church, asking whether our human sense of self is intelligible on the basis of soul. But for thoughtful Christians, following science on this point looks like caving in to reductionism, while denying science gives off the odor of obscurantism. In Search of the Soul provides a rare opportunity to listen in as four Christian philosophers set forth their best arguments for their distinct views and then respond to each other. While each of these views calls for careful framing and patient exposition, they are labeled as follows:
substance dualism (Stewart Goetz)
emergent dualism (William Hasker)
nonreductive physicalism (Nancey Murphy)
constitution view of persons (Kevin Corcoran)
Editors Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer introduce the debate by laying out the critical issues at stake, and wrap it up by considering the implications for the Christian life, particularly hospitality and forgiveness. This is a book of timely interest to philosophers, theologians, psychologists and pastors. Whatever conclusions readers may draw, they will find here an instructive and engaging discussion of a controversy that will not go away any time soon.
substance dualism (Stewart Goetz)
emergent dualism (William Hasker)
nonreductive physicalism (Nancey Murphy)
constitution view of persons (Kevin Corcoran)
Editors Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer introduce the debate by laying out the critical issues at stake, and wrap it up by considering the implications for the Christian life, particularly hospitality and forgiveness. This is a book of timely interest to philosophers, theologians, psychologists and pastors. Whatever conclusions readers may draw, they will find here an instructive and engaging discussion of a controversy that will not go away any time soon.
223 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 2005
11 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Joel B. Green
108 books52 followersJoel B. Green (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is professor of New Testament interpretation and associate dean of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Prior to moving to Fuller, he taught at Asbury Theological Seminary for ten years. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Theological Interpretation and has authored or edited numerous books, including the Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics.
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May 2, 2014
I have read this book concurrently with Robert Cummings Neville's Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context (SUNY Press, 2008). As I finish both books, I am struck by just how great a difference it makes to how one thinks philosophically and theologically, once one starts thinking comparatively. It is not through any great virtue of mine that I do think comparatively. I'm not even that sophisticated a comparative thinker. But as I read particularly the essays by Stewart Goetz and William Hasker in this book, I was shocked by just how insular their views were, and astonished by some of the claims they supposed to be fairly unobjectionable. Goetz is especially breath-taking at this, with his supposition that belief that I am an immaterial soul is entirely ordinary. He suggests the vast majority of people throughout history have shared this view of themselves, too. It's a bold and interesting suggestion, but it also seems to be made in remarkable ignorance of what, say, ordinary Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Daoists, and many others have thought about themselves, to the extent we can know at all what they believed. Hasker is strong in his critique of reductionist materialism, but then proposes an incoherent "emergent dualism" in which the mind/soul arises from and is sustained by bodily process - unless God miraculously intervenes to sustain it some other way (which of course we know God does from scripture). I kid you not: Hasker says this. And so what begins as an interesting bit of work in public philosophy and theology morphs into a doctrinaire God-of-the-gaps confession.
To be clear, Goetz and Hasker are probably far better philosophers than I, and indubitably better analytic philosophers than I. They surely also understand neuroscience far better than I, although I have been trying to get a little more up to speed. But what a difference a sense for human difference makes. I just do not believe I am mistaken in seeing their approach to the issue as damagingly distorted by their evident attachment to versions of Christian commitment that appear to judge, a priori, "non-Christian" wisdom as essentially uninformative to the field of philosophical and theological anthropology.
Equally problematic is their shared commitment to, as best I can tell, a nominalistic substance metaphysics of selfhood. That is, both Goetz and Hasker seem to imagine the self to be quite unlike the body. The soul is immaterial, created and/or sustained supernaturally, and thereby immortal, in contrast to the material, natural, and mortal body. Moreover, the soul just is what it is - a simple, self-identical substance, complete in its individuality and in no need of relation to anything else to be what it is. (I expect - hope - their views grow more complex in their respective bodies of work. Yet, to the extent the essays in this collection serve as distillations of each contributor's view, I find the pictures presented by Goetz and Hasker rather alarming.
So, what if the self is not a simple, self-sufficient substance? And have we then lost soul? This was where reading Neville's book was most illuminating of my reading of the present one. Neville gives a clear and, I take it, a valid interpretation of Chinese philosophical and theological anthropology. That anthropology explicitly eschews a substance metaphysics of selfhood, and certainly with its suspicion of individualism cannot be considered nominalistic. As Neville defines it, the self is "a structured continuum between a centered readiness to respond and the ten thousand things," a "continuum beginning from the inner center of responsiveness, that is, the intentionality of orientation, functioning specifically to take on orientations in body and mind to the close things of the intimate body, to things and persons of direct contact such as family, friends, and coworkers, and then to social situations, historical places, nature,and the vast cosmos - the ten thousand things each with its own discernible rhythm, dao, and discernible grain." (158, 159)
To my sense of things, this characterization of self rings true. It also enables greater continuity of inquiry between the natural scientific study of human being and our efforts at philosophical and theological self-understanding - a considerable virtue in my book. Hasker invokes emergence in natural processes as far as it suits him, but in the end premises the claims he cares most about on a supernaturalistic theology. I don't think that is playing fair, and I don't think it's necessary. It is a symptom of the intellectualism that limits so much of modern philosophical anthropology (which, tellingly, goes by the name "philosophy of mind"). So the latter two contributions to this book, by Nancey Murphy and Kevin Corcoran, are far more interesting to me.
Both Murphy and Corcoran defend monistic, physicalist views of personhood. Murphy calls hers 'nonreductive physicalism,' and Corcoran calls his the 'constitution view.' Exactly how much there is to choose between them, even they do not seem completely clear about in this volume, although they do give it a go.
Murphy accepts there is no soul as a distinct substance. Insofar as that soul has served to explain distinctive human capacites, then, an alternative explanation needs to be offered. Murphy proposes the explanation can be found in brain functions in part, but, she says, "their full explanation requires attention to human social relations, to cultural factors and, most importantly, to God's action in our lives." (116) Another way to come at this is to note that Murphy's physicalism is not mechanistic. Rather, it is a philosophy of organism. It is not dualism minus mind or soul, but a monism that relies on emergence of novel levels of organization and causation to account for "higher" capacities.
The sticky question for such a view concerns how a budding organism could get free enough from some basic kind of causation to allow a new kind to exert itself. Murphy answers by focusing on the phenomenon of "causal loops" which even the simplest organisms exhibit. Without going into detail, the point is that organisms can be said to behave, not just be caused, because causal loops permit "action under evaluation" that is, some regulation of more basic causal processes. (119) Later, Murphy goes so far as to call this "downward causal efficacy." (129)
Stacked causal loops are the key to the emergence of self-evaluative behavior, or what Murphy calls self-transcendence. (121) Sophisticated language capabilities exponentially augment this capacity and launch organisms into the incredibly rich medium of culture. Whether all levels of causation are, or need to be, so interlocked as Murphy seems to suggest in appealing to downward causation, I don't know. It seems to me that this may be a problem to worry about only if one already accepts a reductionist view. If Murphy's physicalism is genuinely nonreductive in its explanation of behavior, then downward causation is not necessary. Well, maybe.
For me the most interesting aspect of Corcoran's "constitution view of the person" is his attempt to explain personal identity not in logical terms, which goes along with the notion or persisting substance (Hasker exemplifies this approach), but in terms of causation. For Corcoran the monist, human persons are essentially and wholly physical; we are "constituted by our bodies without being identical with the bodies that constitute us." (157) Remember, like the other contributors, Corcoran takes a literal view of Christian doctrines about a life to come. This conviction lies behind the following passage:
"When it comes to the persistence of bodies, I suggest we think this way. Human bodies are like storms. A tornado, for example, picks up new stuff and throws off old stuff as it moves through space. Human bodies are like that. They are storms of atoms moving through space and time. They take on new stuff and throw off old stuff as they go. And a body persists in virtue of the atoms that are caught up in a life-preserving causal relation at one time passing on that life-preserving causal relation to successive swarms of atoms at later times. My body has persisted into the present just in case the swarm of atoms that are caught up in the life of my body now have been bequeathed that life-preserving causal relation from the swarm of atoms that were caught up in its life a moment ago." (166)
Corcoran names this condition of bodily persistence the "immanent causal condition." And although he never says it quite this way, it is this, I think, that we can say is what I am. I am the immanent causal condition through which my body persists. (Corcoran does not say it this way, I suppose because he is committed to the language that the body constitutes the person, and this seems - but only seems, I stress - to suggest the priority of the body. As I note below, this means that even Corcoran seems committed to a substance view of the self.) Another way to put the point is to say, I am my life. This life is a physical life, but it is not identical with nor reducible to the material constituents of my body. I am the process of events which compose the immanent causal condition of my continuing existence.
What was striking to me is how all four of the authors seemed (to my surprise) to be committed to a substance metaphysics of the self, that is, that the self is a thing that endures self-identically through change. Not surprisingly, the dualists are most committed to such a view, but so in his way is Corcoran, who writes at length on how the identity of the self is maintained without recourse to an immaterial soul. Perhaps Murphy has given herself leeway to consider the self in other ways, but even if she is not explicit about it, it seems as though she conceives the self as an emergent entity that, since it exercises top-down causation on subordinate levels, deserves the status of substantiality. All these views leave me with some doubts. In the end, it makes more sense to me to think of the self as a process or a discourse that can be identified in a number of ways, each different, and perhaps not all commensurable.
To be clear, Goetz and Hasker are probably far better philosophers than I, and indubitably better analytic philosophers than I. They surely also understand neuroscience far better than I, although I have been trying to get a little more up to speed. But what a difference a sense for human difference makes. I just do not believe I am mistaken in seeing their approach to the issue as damagingly distorted by their evident attachment to versions of Christian commitment that appear to judge, a priori, "non-Christian" wisdom as essentially uninformative to the field of philosophical and theological anthropology.
Equally problematic is their shared commitment to, as best I can tell, a nominalistic substance metaphysics of selfhood. That is, both Goetz and Hasker seem to imagine the self to be quite unlike the body. The soul is immaterial, created and/or sustained supernaturally, and thereby immortal, in contrast to the material, natural, and mortal body. Moreover, the soul just is what it is - a simple, self-identical substance, complete in its individuality and in no need of relation to anything else to be what it is. (I expect - hope - their views grow more complex in their respective bodies of work. Yet, to the extent the essays in this collection serve as distillations of each contributor's view, I find the pictures presented by Goetz and Hasker rather alarming.
So, what if the self is not a simple, self-sufficient substance? And have we then lost soul? This was where reading Neville's book was most illuminating of my reading of the present one. Neville gives a clear and, I take it, a valid interpretation of Chinese philosophical and theological anthropology. That anthropology explicitly eschews a substance metaphysics of selfhood, and certainly with its suspicion of individualism cannot be considered nominalistic. As Neville defines it, the self is "a structured continuum between a centered readiness to respond and the ten thousand things," a "continuum beginning from the inner center of responsiveness, that is, the intentionality of orientation, functioning specifically to take on orientations in body and mind to the close things of the intimate body, to things and persons of direct contact such as family, friends, and coworkers, and then to social situations, historical places, nature,and the vast cosmos - the ten thousand things each with its own discernible rhythm, dao, and discernible grain." (158, 159)
To my sense of things, this characterization of self rings true. It also enables greater continuity of inquiry between the natural scientific study of human being and our efforts at philosophical and theological self-understanding - a considerable virtue in my book. Hasker invokes emergence in natural processes as far as it suits him, but in the end premises the claims he cares most about on a supernaturalistic theology. I don't think that is playing fair, and I don't think it's necessary. It is a symptom of the intellectualism that limits so much of modern philosophical anthropology (which, tellingly, goes by the name "philosophy of mind"). So the latter two contributions to this book, by Nancey Murphy and Kevin Corcoran, are far more interesting to me.
Both Murphy and Corcoran defend monistic, physicalist views of personhood. Murphy calls hers 'nonreductive physicalism,' and Corcoran calls his the 'constitution view.' Exactly how much there is to choose between them, even they do not seem completely clear about in this volume, although they do give it a go.
Murphy accepts there is no soul as a distinct substance. Insofar as that soul has served to explain distinctive human capacites, then, an alternative explanation needs to be offered. Murphy proposes the explanation can be found in brain functions in part, but, she says, "their full explanation requires attention to human social relations, to cultural factors and, most importantly, to God's action in our lives." (116) Another way to come at this is to note that Murphy's physicalism is not mechanistic. Rather, it is a philosophy of organism. It is not dualism minus mind or soul, but a monism that relies on emergence of novel levels of organization and causation to account for "higher" capacities.
The sticky question for such a view concerns how a budding organism could get free enough from some basic kind of causation to allow a new kind to exert itself. Murphy answers by focusing on the phenomenon of "causal loops" which even the simplest organisms exhibit. Without going into detail, the point is that organisms can be said to behave, not just be caused, because causal loops permit "action under evaluation" that is, some regulation of more basic causal processes. (119) Later, Murphy goes so far as to call this "downward causal efficacy." (129)
Stacked causal loops are the key to the emergence of self-evaluative behavior, or what Murphy calls self-transcendence. (121) Sophisticated language capabilities exponentially augment this capacity and launch organisms into the incredibly rich medium of culture. Whether all levels of causation are, or need to be, so interlocked as Murphy seems to suggest in appealing to downward causation, I don't know. It seems to me that this may be a problem to worry about only if one already accepts a reductionist view. If Murphy's physicalism is genuinely nonreductive in its explanation of behavior, then downward causation is not necessary. Well, maybe.
For me the most interesting aspect of Corcoran's "constitution view of the person" is his attempt to explain personal identity not in logical terms, which goes along with the notion or persisting substance (Hasker exemplifies this approach), but in terms of causation. For Corcoran the monist, human persons are essentially and wholly physical; we are "constituted by our bodies without being identical with the bodies that constitute us." (157) Remember, like the other contributors, Corcoran takes a literal view of Christian doctrines about a life to come. This conviction lies behind the following passage:
"When it comes to the persistence of bodies, I suggest we think this way. Human bodies are like storms. A tornado, for example, picks up new stuff and throws off old stuff as it moves through space. Human bodies are like that. They are storms of atoms moving through space and time. They take on new stuff and throw off old stuff as they go. And a body persists in virtue of the atoms that are caught up in a life-preserving causal relation at one time passing on that life-preserving causal relation to successive swarms of atoms at later times. My body has persisted into the present just in case the swarm of atoms that are caught up in the life of my body now have been bequeathed that life-preserving causal relation from the swarm of atoms that were caught up in its life a moment ago." (166)
Corcoran names this condition of bodily persistence the "immanent causal condition." And although he never says it quite this way, it is this, I think, that we can say is what I am. I am the immanent causal condition through which my body persists. (Corcoran does not say it this way, I suppose because he is committed to the language that the body constitutes the person, and this seems - but only seems, I stress - to suggest the priority of the body. As I note below, this means that even Corcoran seems committed to a substance view of the self.) Another way to put the point is to say, I am my life. This life is a physical life, but it is not identical with nor reducible to the material constituents of my body. I am the process of events which compose the immanent causal condition of my continuing existence.
What was striking to me is how all four of the authors seemed (to my surprise) to be committed to a substance metaphysics of the self, that is, that the self is a thing that endures self-identically through change. Not surprisingly, the dualists are most committed to such a view, but so in his way is Corcoran, who writes at length on how the identity of the self is maintained without recourse to an immaterial soul. Perhaps Murphy has given herself leeway to consider the self in other ways, but even if she is not explicit about it, it seems as though she conceives the self as an emergent entity that, since it exercises top-down causation on subordinate levels, deserves the status of substantiality. All these views leave me with some doubts. In the end, it makes more sense to me to think of the self as a process or a discourse that can be identified in a number of ways, each different, and perhaps not all commensurable.
June 18, 2024
AN EXCELLENT EXPOSITION/DISCUSSION OF FOUR DIVERSE VIEWS
Co-Editor Joel B. Green’s introduction to this 2005 book explains, “for many Christians, the traditional answer to the question, ‘what makes a human genuinely human? has been the identification of the human person with his or her soul… For persons of faith---Christians included, but many others besides---the idea of a soul separable from the body is not only intuitive but has contributed a great deal. We have regularly appealed to the soul as proof that humans are not mere animals, and thus as a foundation for our views of human dignity and the sacredness of human life; we have imagined that human possession of a soul has immediate and far-reaching consequences for the burgeoning and troubled arena of bioethics. Moreover, Christians generally have derived from belief in the existence of the soul their affirmation of the human capacity to choose between good and ill, as free moral agents… the soul provides the necessary (though not sufficient) ground of human spirituality, of one’s capacity to enter into and enjoy a relationship with God. Still further, the existence of a nonphysical soul … is typically regarded as the means by which human identity can cross over the bridge from this life to the next… Many voices are needed is these issues are to be explored fully. In this volume, we hear particularly from Christian philosophers who… are themselves in conversations with other disciplines… [The authors] demonstrate how each portrait of the human person they champion accounts for many of these issues.” (Pg. 9-11)
He observes, “If not through persistence of this body, how might continuity of personal identity, from death to life after death, be guaranteed? How can I be sure that the ‘me’ that enjoys eternal life is really ME? Here we raise the question of personal identity in general … an issue that has suggested to some that the hope of resurrection turns after all on anthropological dualism: mortal body, immortal soul. Given the self-evident finality of death for the physical body… how can we maintain a reasonable doctrine of the afterlife? If, instead of POSSESSING a body, I ‘am’ a body, then when my body dies, do I not likewise cease to exist?” (Pg. 30)
Stewart Goetz in his essays explains, “One of the things that I, as an ordinary person, believe about myself is that I am a soul that is distinct from my physical (material) body. Hence, I am what philosophers and theologians term a substance dualist or, more simply, a dualist.” (Pg. 33) Later, he adds, “Someone whose belief that the soul exists is basic in nature might be called an ‘antecedent soulist.’ Given that I am an antecedent soulist, the following is a simple argument… for dualism: 1. I (my soul) am (is) essentially a simple entity (I have no substantive parts). 2. My body is essentially a complex entity (… has substantive parts). 3. If ‘two’ entities are identical, then whatever is a property of the one is a property of the other. 4. Therefore, because I have an essential property that my body lacks, I am not identical with my body.” (Pg. 43-44)
He states, “Given the characterization of the soul in terms of its essential psychological powers and capacities, it is important to make two additional points... First… although the power to think is an essential property of the soul, the soul need not continuously exercise this power in order to exist… The idea, here, is that particular exercisings of the powers of thought and choice are nonessential or accidental in nature, and it is because … we could have thought and chosen different things and still have been the same soul… Second, one must be equally mindful that, although the soul has multiple, essential psychological powers and capacities, these powers and capacities… are not substantive, separable parts of the soul in the way that a portion of the table on which I am writing … can exist independently of the table and become part of another substance (e.g., a leg of a table can become a leg of a chair).” (Pg. 36-37) He concludes, “what is metaphysically contingent must have a cause of its existence…. If it is reasonable to think that I exist for the purpose of experiencing perfect happiness… then it is reasonable to think that the cause of my existence must be a soul which created me for that purpose.” (Pg. 60)
William Hasker (‘Emergent Dualism’) argues, “suppose that, given the particular arrangements of these atoms and molecules of the brain, new laws, new systems of interaction between the atoms, and so on, come into play. These new laws, furthermore, play an essential role in such characteristic mental activities as rational thought and decision making. The new laws, however, are not detectable in any simpler configuration… These, then, are EMERGENT LAWS, and the powers that the brain has in virtue of the emergent laws may be termed ‘emergent causal powers.’ … Suppose, finally, that as a result of the structure and functioning of the brain, there appear not merely new modes of behavior of the fundamental constituents … but also a new entity, the mind, which does not consist of atoms and molecules or any other physical constituents. If this were the case, we would have an ‘emergent individual,’ an individual that comes into existence that comes into existence as the result of a certain configuration of the brain and nervous system but that is not composed of the matter which makes up the physical system… Such an emergence theory would be, in fact, a variety of dualism… But it would be an EMERGENT dualism, unlike traditional dualisms that postulate a special divine act of creation as the origin of the soul.” (Pg. 77-78) Later, he adds, “the emergent mind is ontologically distinct from the organisms which generated it, and it is thus a coherent possibility that the mind could survive the death of the body…. It can also be resurrected in a new or restored body.” (Pg. 82)
Nancey Murphy (‘Nonreductive Physicalism’) explains, “What do nonreductive physicalists believe about human nature? For dualists, the concept of the soul serves the purpose of explaining what we might call humans’ higher capacities… A reductive view would say that, if there is no soul, then people must not be truly rational, moral, or religious… The nonreductive physicalist says instead that if there is no soul, then these higher human capacities must be explained in a different manner… their full explanation requires attention to human social relations, to cultural factors and, most importantly, to God’s action in in our lives.” (Pg. 116)
Kevin Corcoran (‘the Constitution View’) states, “On a constitution account, human persons are constituted by bodies but are not identical with the bodies that constitute them… I think we can say with some confidence that persons … are, minimally, beings with a capacity for intentional states: believing, desiring, intending, and so on. But if something does not so much as have a capacity for intentional states, it seems equally obvious that that thing is not a candidate for personhood… on my view, not only are human persons essentially bodily beings, insofar as they are now constituted by biological bodies, but human persons are ESSENTIALLY constituted by the biological bodies that do in fact constitute them. Therefore, if my body should ever cease to exist, I would cease to exist.” (Pg. 159-160) He continues, “a [Christian] dualist faces … one of the very same problems as the Christian materialist, namely, how to make sense of the Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body… it is plausible to believe that providing an account of the identity between the resurrected and earthly body is constitutive of an account of resurrection of the body. For the Christian doctrine is not … the doctrine of the acquisition of some body or other, any more than it is the doctrine of soul survival.” (Pg. 161-162)
He also suggests, “One implication of the constitution view is that no early term fetus constitutes a person. Another implication is that any entity … having lost all capacity for, the relevant kinds of psychological states also fails to constitute a person; and, there, some human organisms in so-called persistent vegetative states no longer constitute persons.” (Pg. 172)
This book will be of great interest to philosophically-minded Christians interested in such body/mind/soul issues.
Co-Editor Joel B. Green’s introduction to this 2005 book explains, “for many Christians, the traditional answer to the question, ‘what makes a human genuinely human? has been the identification of the human person with his or her soul… For persons of faith---Christians included, but many others besides---the idea of a soul separable from the body is not only intuitive but has contributed a great deal. We have regularly appealed to the soul as proof that humans are not mere animals, and thus as a foundation for our views of human dignity and the sacredness of human life; we have imagined that human possession of a soul has immediate and far-reaching consequences for the burgeoning and troubled arena of bioethics. Moreover, Christians generally have derived from belief in the existence of the soul their affirmation of the human capacity to choose between good and ill, as free moral agents… the soul provides the necessary (though not sufficient) ground of human spirituality, of one’s capacity to enter into and enjoy a relationship with God. Still further, the existence of a nonphysical soul … is typically regarded as the means by which human identity can cross over the bridge from this life to the next… Many voices are needed is these issues are to be explored fully. In this volume, we hear particularly from Christian philosophers who… are themselves in conversations with other disciplines… [The authors] demonstrate how each portrait of the human person they champion accounts for many of these issues.” (Pg. 9-11)
He observes, “If not through persistence of this body, how might continuity of personal identity, from death to life after death, be guaranteed? How can I be sure that the ‘me’ that enjoys eternal life is really ME? Here we raise the question of personal identity in general … an issue that has suggested to some that the hope of resurrection turns after all on anthropological dualism: mortal body, immortal soul. Given the self-evident finality of death for the physical body… how can we maintain a reasonable doctrine of the afterlife? If, instead of POSSESSING a body, I ‘am’ a body, then when my body dies, do I not likewise cease to exist?” (Pg. 30)
Stewart Goetz in his essays explains, “One of the things that I, as an ordinary person, believe about myself is that I am a soul that is distinct from my physical (material) body. Hence, I am what philosophers and theologians term a substance dualist or, more simply, a dualist.” (Pg. 33) Later, he adds, “Someone whose belief that the soul exists is basic in nature might be called an ‘antecedent soulist.’ Given that I am an antecedent soulist, the following is a simple argument… for dualism: 1. I (my soul) am (is) essentially a simple entity (I have no substantive parts). 2. My body is essentially a complex entity (… has substantive parts). 3. If ‘two’ entities are identical, then whatever is a property of the one is a property of the other. 4. Therefore, because I have an essential property that my body lacks, I am not identical with my body.” (Pg. 43-44)
He states, “Given the characterization of the soul in terms of its essential psychological powers and capacities, it is important to make two additional points... First… although the power to think is an essential property of the soul, the soul need not continuously exercise this power in order to exist… The idea, here, is that particular exercisings of the powers of thought and choice are nonessential or accidental in nature, and it is because … we could have thought and chosen different things and still have been the same soul… Second, one must be equally mindful that, although the soul has multiple, essential psychological powers and capacities, these powers and capacities… are not substantive, separable parts of the soul in the way that a portion of the table on which I am writing … can exist independently of the table and become part of another substance (e.g., a leg of a table can become a leg of a chair).” (Pg. 36-37) He concludes, “what is metaphysically contingent must have a cause of its existence…. If it is reasonable to think that I exist for the purpose of experiencing perfect happiness… then it is reasonable to think that the cause of my existence must be a soul which created me for that purpose.” (Pg. 60)
William Hasker (‘Emergent Dualism’) argues, “suppose that, given the particular arrangements of these atoms and molecules of the brain, new laws, new systems of interaction between the atoms, and so on, come into play. These new laws, furthermore, play an essential role in such characteristic mental activities as rational thought and decision making. The new laws, however, are not detectable in any simpler configuration… These, then, are EMERGENT LAWS, and the powers that the brain has in virtue of the emergent laws may be termed ‘emergent causal powers.’ … Suppose, finally, that as a result of the structure and functioning of the brain, there appear not merely new modes of behavior of the fundamental constituents … but also a new entity, the mind, which does not consist of atoms and molecules or any other physical constituents. If this were the case, we would have an ‘emergent individual,’ an individual that comes into existence that comes into existence as the result of a certain configuration of the brain and nervous system but that is not composed of the matter which makes up the physical system… Such an emergence theory would be, in fact, a variety of dualism… But it would be an EMERGENT dualism, unlike traditional dualisms that postulate a special divine act of creation as the origin of the soul.” (Pg. 77-78) Later, he adds, “the emergent mind is ontologically distinct from the organisms which generated it, and it is thus a coherent possibility that the mind could survive the death of the body…. It can also be resurrected in a new or restored body.” (Pg. 82)
Nancey Murphy (‘Nonreductive Physicalism’) explains, “What do nonreductive physicalists believe about human nature? For dualists, the concept of the soul serves the purpose of explaining what we might call humans’ higher capacities… A reductive view would say that, if there is no soul, then people must not be truly rational, moral, or religious… The nonreductive physicalist says instead that if there is no soul, then these higher human capacities must be explained in a different manner… their full explanation requires attention to human social relations, to cultural factors and, most importantly, to God’s action in in our lives.” (Pg. 116)
Kevin Corcoran (‘the Constitution View’) states, “On a constitution account, human persons are constituted by bodies but are not identical with the bodies that constitute them… I think we can say with some confidence that persons … are, minimally, beings with a capacity for intentional states: believing, desiring, intending, and so on. But if something does not so much as have a capacity for intentional states, it seems equally obvious that that thing is not a candidate for personhood… on my view, not only are human persons essentially bodily beings, insofar as they are now constituted by biological bodies, but human persons are ESSENTIALLY constituted by the biological bodies that do in fact constitute them. Therefore, if my body should ever cease to exist, I would cease to exist.” (Pg. 159-160) He continues, “a [Christian] dualist faces … one of the very same problems as the Christian materialist, namely, how to make sense of the Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body… it is plausible to believe that providing an account of the identity between the resurrected and earthly body is constitutive of an account of resurrection of the body. For the Christian doctrine is not … the doctrine of the acquisition of some body or other, any more than it is the doctrine of soul survival.” (Pg. 161-162)
He also suggests, “One implication of the constitution view is that no early term fetus constitutes a person. Another implication is that any entity … having lost all capacity for, the relevant kinds of psychological states also fails to constitute a person; and, there, some human organisms in so-called persistent vegetative states no longer constitute persons.” (Pg. 172)
This book will be of great interest to philosophically-minded Christians interested in such body/mind/soul issues.
August 3, 2018
I really wanted to give this book four or five stars based solely on the the topic (Four views on the mind-body problem by four Christian philosophers? Sign me up!), but overall the book falls flat in places.
The introduction is a solid introduction to the mind-body problem. I've read summaries of this philosophical dilemma elsewhere, but this is one of the best summaries that also explores how mind-body issues relate to issues that arise for philosophers with Christian commitments. I also appreciated the footnote on page 12 with a suggested list for all of the major Christian perspectives. It closely aligns with a list I recently found online: https://cct.biola.edu/overview-monism...
As for the four view themselves, they're really hit or miss. Unless I was misreading Goetz's argument, it seems that he argues for substance dualism on the basis that it's a "basic" belief that most everyone seems to hold. Seriously? Isn't this just a dressed up version of the "bandwagon" fallacy? I was most disappointed by Nancey Murphy's essay—not because I disagreed with her, but because I really couldn't make sense of her argument. In fact, I only really came close to understanding her position when it was summarized by the other authors and editor.
I thoroughly enjoyed the essays by Hasker and Corcoran. Their arguments are tight, nuanced, and recognize the complexity of the topic they're exploring. I'm not sure which of them I agree with more, but I'm certainly interested in reading more of their articles/books on the mind-body problem. (Oh, and bonus points for Corcoran for making me lol multiple times with his lapses into a more conversational style. He's clearly aware of his audience.)
I've seen a view reviews of the book criticizing the book for the conclusion's negative attitude about the entire analytic-philosophy enterprise. I can sympathize with this view; Palmer seems pretty cynical about any of these writers (or others) "finding" the truth, which seems like a strange final argument in a book purportedly about providing answers to a host of difficult questions. Still, I think Palmer's inclusion is valuable—not as a conclusion, however, but as an additional perspective on the fruitfulness of philosophical inquiry and it's implications for daily life (Palmer focuses on the issues of hospitality and forgiveness).
Overall, a helpful book despite some of the contributors' shortcomings.
The introduction is a solid introduction to the mind-body problem. I've read summaries of this philosophical dilemma elsewhere, but this is one of the best summaries that also explores how mind-body issues relate to issues that arise for philosophers with Christian commitments. I also appreciated the footnote on page 12 with a suggested list for all of the major Christian perspectives. It closely aligns with a list I recently found online: https://cct.biola.edu/overview-monism...
As for the four view themselves, they're really hit or miss. Unless I was misreading Goetz's argument, it seems that he argues for substance dualism on the basis that it's a "basic" belief that most everyone seems to hold. Seriously? Isn't this just a dressed up version of the "bandwagon" fallacy? I was most disappointed by Nancey Murphy's essay—not because I disagreed with her, but because I really couldn't make sense of her argument. In fact, I only really came close to understanding her position when it was summarized by the other authors and editor.
I thoroughly enjoyed the essays by Hasker and Corcoran. Their arguments are tight, nuanced, and recognize the complexity of the topic they're exploring. I'm not sure which of them I agree with more, but I'm certainly interested in reading more of their articles/books on the mind-body problem. (Oh, and bonus points for Corcoran for making me lol multiple times with his lapses into a more conversational style. He's clearly aware of his audience.)
I've seen a view reviews of the book criticizing the book for the conclusion's negative attitude about the entire analytic-philosophy enterprise. I can sympathize with this view; Palmer seems pretty cynical about any of these writers (or others) "finding" the truth, which seems like a strange final argument in a book purportedly about providing answers to a host of difficult questions. Still, I think Palmer's inclusion is valuable—not as a conclusion, however, but as an additional perspective on the fruitfulness of philosophical inquiry and it's implications for daily life (Palmer focuses on the issues of hospitality and forgiveness).
Overall, a helpful book despite some of the contributors' shortcomings.
September 29, 2016
Good book. But marred by poor editing/format. Just too many errors. Not properly vetted. Someone just didn't do their job!
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