An Afterlife? - Science Has All The Answers

Another of my diversions follows, this time involving 2 other correspondents and so, once again, I am in the position of having to summarise their part of the debate. You can, however, read the exchange in full in its original location.

Gareth joined the discussion by pointing out that there are lots of things we don't know but that would just produce a long and imaginative list of unlikely items. Just as there is unlikely to be an invisible lizard living on his shoulder, so he can dismiss ideas of God, the soul, an afterlife and other anti-scientific ideas. He called this rationalism.

Gareth's post was made on 18 Jun 2008 at 02:38 pm. My reply was made on 18 Jun 2008 at 04:27 pm:

Hi Gareth. It always amuses me to find someone who dismisses an invisible lizard with a leap of faith, but thinks he's a rationalist, because it is rational to hold that the entire universe was caused by an exploding dot which is so powerful that it gives mankind the ability to make free decisions and have intentions. And as for logic I wonder if you have ever heard of either inductive or deductive logic or pondered what happens when cause and effect in science trace backwards into an infinite regression. Oh, and by the way, Gareth, that's not a lizard on your shoulder - it's a chicken - or is it an egg?

Peter Rayner

Gareth made a spirited reply by stating that he believed in science because it is supported by data and that the whole point of science is to explain everything. Otherwise we are at the mercy of superstition and dogma.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 12:57 am.

Tim replied to Gareth with a moral argument for life after death. He suggests that if people just die then it's "not fair". He suggests a moral force which makes some things true and others false and if there is no such force then he asks what it means to say something is true.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 01:37 am.

Gareth replied to this somewhat oddly claiming, on the one hand, that there is nothing outside the structure which we impose and, on the other, that we are bound by data.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 03:08 am.

Tim came back with the claim that the universe has its own moral structure and that there is such a thing as truth which we are, therefore, morally obliged to follow. He challenges Gareth to show why anyone should believe his theory of truth.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 04:08 am.

Gareth's reply, again somewhat oddly, is to seek the physical whereabouts of this moral structure. He then presents us full on with his, dare I say it, dogma that science has to be everything, although we are not told why this is so.

He then reveals his utilitarian view of morality, namely, that we make rules in order to run societies.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:35 am.

My reply to these exchanges follows. It consists of an attack on the "science is everything" theory by arguing that science is merely an attempt to understand the process which followed the big bang. Also, our knowledge of the "matter" which resulted from this is very limited. Furthermore, we think in time and space, yet both these concepts would seem to be paradoxical. Human beings behave, habitually, in ways which science is unable to explain by their expressions of intentional behaviour. There is a further problem inasmuch as science proceeds by testing its own theories to destruction and is, therefore, always based on uncertain knowledge. Finally, the implication of the entirely materialistic world is determinism.

My post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:46 am:

Hi Gareth. Thanks for seeing the funny side of it but get serious now, we must.The data you refer to is a theory about process, that's all. It is an attempt to make sense of an expanding universe. The theory struggles to take account of dark matter which, it seems, accounts for some 80% of the stuff of which the universe is made and about which we know very little. It also requires us to believe that our theory requires the concepts of space and time both of which have to be made to disappear up their own black holes in order to avoid a double infinite regress. If space measures limited distance then what lies beyond the furthest point? If time began with the big bang then where did the matter in the big bang originate? I can see that science is making progress within the confines of how stuff works within our world and universe of worlds but I don't see it getting close to the big issues of how the process first began and for that matter why. Nor do I see how mere matter leads to human will and action. How do we come to have intentions? Matter can't do that. You say nothing lives outside science. I say we human beings live outside science - all the time. Almost everything we get up to is outside science. We need to get our lives back. You say the remit of science is to explain everything. I say the ultimate remit of science is to explain the process of matter, just like a builder constructs a house. He knows everything about it in process terms but the truth is he is following someone elses plan - another issue entirely. But there is a further problem with science. The way in which science proceeds is to posit a theory and test it to destruction. The well known phenomenon then takes place - the scientific revolution - followed by a new theory which is then, itself, tested to destruction. Fine for the scientists, useless for epistemologists because the inevitable conclusion is that science, by definition, is always wrong. Worse still, even if you suceed in doing away with everything except matter then how do you avoid living in a deterministic world in which everything has already been decided by the mother of all explosions?

Peter Rayner

I then replied to Tim, agreeing with his right to pose the moral universe proposition.

My post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 05:58 am:

Hi Tim. I love your line of thinking. This is so far removed from the hard materialism of your opponent that it simply cannot be consumed by science. Why not pose the question "What if we live in a moral universe?" Does that not so clearly point out the limitations of science which has to exclude it, not because it's wrong, but because it's not scientific. A perfectly valid question, nevertheless.

Peter Rayner

Tim then decides to look at the utilitarian argument and asks what if it turns out that society works better if people believe in an afterlife. On utilitarian grounds we would have to believe in it, even if it were not true.

Tim's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 06:24 am.

Gareth's reply was to re-assert his view that science can and will, one day, explain everything. He also indicated that a further big bang along exactly the same lines would produce the same results and that would not make the world deterministic although he offers no explanation for this statement.

Gareth's post was made on 19 Jun 2008 at 06:28 am.

Gareth made 6 more posts, starting with a reply to Tim's moral argument but all his replies are basically a denial of anything outside his view that science has all the answers.

The discussion then returned to the analogy of the chinese room...

Tags: afterlife science God soul rationalism exploding dot intentions inductive deductive logic infinite regression data dogma moral argument structure utilitarian process big bang matter determinism

An Afterlife? - Soul Searching

Before continuing with the exchanges with Richard, I want to make a brief diversion. At this point in the proceedings I answered a number of other posts, most of which are not worth repeating. One writer, however, did pose a worthwhile question by stating "Until someone offers a good summary of a soul, I cannot even begin to answer the original question." My reply follows. You can find the original posts in full here. There has not, so far, been an answer from the person who wrote the original post (a common occurence on this site, I'm afraid.)

The original post was made on 10 Jun 2008 at 08:10 pm. The first of my replies was made on 11 Jun 2008 at 03:30 pm:

I find your response to be very interesting and absolutely on the mark. I would like to take up your challenge of defining the idea of the soul. There are, I believe 2 enormous obstacles to overcome. In the first place there is a huge historical backcloth to the idea of the soul, going back many hundreds, if not thousands, of years and covering many different religions. The ways in which our ancestors understood the world was very very different from the ways modern thinkers tackle the issues. Having said that some of your own references bear an uncanny similarity to the Aristotelian tradition so sometimes old ideas do stand the test of time even if the context is different. So, obstacle number one is that there is too much material to easily summarise since there have been so many points of view.

Obstacle number 2 is that the context has changed. Throughout much of our history the idea of the soul was set in a context in which people believed in God and saw him actively intervening in their lives on a day to day basis. There was a huge sense that the world was under the direct control of God. Nowadays, we have a different obsession. Most people believe primarily in science as the discipline which explains how the world works and see God as a discredited part of the superstitious nonsense of history. There seems to be a prevailing view that a better understanding of the physical world precludes the idea that there can be anything more to it than that. So the modern challenge is to describe the idea of the soul in a way which is in sympathy with the material world.

I am going to give the matter some thought and post another reply to you when I am ready to offer you a fair summary of the idea of the soul which is relevant to today and accurate historically. Unless, of course, someone beats me to it!

My second reply was made on 29 Jun 2008 at 11:10 am:

I promised I would post again in response to your asking for a summary of what the term "soul" has meant historically. For the benefit of others reading this post you should have a look at my earlier reply to Kevin to see what problems I anticipated.

The idea of the soul as a psychological phenomenon is entirely absent in the ancient world. It was real. Indeed it might best be described as the breath of life, quite literally, capable of entering the body through a wound or the mouth. The ancients thought of a body as having life breathed into it by the soul which then inhabited it but might also leave it to become a free spirit. All ancient ideas, as far as I know, gave the soul attributes. Socrates, for example, describes a 3 part soul, comprising of logos (intellect), emotion and desire and he sees it as the essence of being. Aristotle, in contrast describes the soul as the core essence of a person but without a separate existence and without immortality, although the intellect, which is part of his 4 part soul, is immortal.

There is, as you rightly say, much emphasis in the ancient world on various places which are thought to exist and which become available to souls which are no longer inhabiting a body. Although these places change with the onset of Christianity, the principle survives in the idea of souls being saved and rewarded in Heaven in the after life. Less fortunate ones, of course, go to Hell! Both are immortal.

It is, of course, quite easy to dismiss these historical ideas from a modern perspective and certainly fewer and fewer believe in a world abundant in spirits and a God actively intervening in the world. The Western World, at any rate, is no longer dominated by the Church, as it once was.

However, the story does not end there. The philosophers Avicenna and Descartes looked at the idea of self-awareness, the essence of the self, as a primary given. This is an idea in logic in which an argument is either inductive or deductive. The latter contains nothing new whereas an inductive argument proceeds from some "given" starting point or premise. Both of them argued that the one thing you could not have doubts about was your own existence. This put epistemology (what it is possible to know for certain) into the forefront of philosophical thinking and for that alone it is immensely important, even if you reject everything else about Avicenna and Descartes. For Descartes this was a deductive argument and formed the basis of his belief that reason rather than perception formed the basis of knowledge.
The idea of the soul, at this point, has no attributes. It is a "ghost in the machine" which controls the body.

Whilst the Cartesian notion of a mind/body dualism is rarely argued today the issues which it raised live on. After all, each of us still has a unique point of view and can never be a different person seeing things as that person. So the idea of describing the self as first person and everyone else as inferred rather than known in the same way continues to attract. Also, there does appear to be some merit in noting that human beings have desires and intentions and purposes in contrast to machines or matter. Finally, it is difficult to conclude that all there is is the processing of matter because this does not explain why we have a universe or, indeed, how, since matter cannot of itself be the first thing at the beginning of everything which starts it all off, can it? If it is like that then there would seem to be no room for any kind of choice. Each of us is following a pre-determined pathway dictated by the exact rules of matter and what we think of as free will is, in fact, an illusion.

So, as you can see, the context has shifted. The modern argument is about the concept of the self rather than the soul and it is set in the context of the philosophy of science rather than religion. The issues, though, are remarkably enduring.

I hope this helps.

Tags: afterlife soul history religion Aristotle God science material world psychological phenomenon breath of life free spirit Socrates intellect emotion desire essence immortality Christianity Heaven Hell Avicenna Descartes inductive deductive existence epistemology reason perception ghost in the machine dualism intentions free will

Peter Rayner