Daily Archives: April 17, 2013

Contra the Moral Utility of Belief in a Soul

Juan Bernal

A few weeks ago while discussing people’s belief in an immortal soul I declared that there wasn’t any evidence or good rational ground for affirming that belief.  An email correspondent  — who had previously asserted that there was good evidence for soul’s survival of the body’s death –- asked me, “Why did so many people, in the past and present, believed in soul?”  He also stated that nobody had any good grounds for thinking that people in the past, who believed in the reality of immortal souls, did not have any rational grounds for such belief.  He declared that, after all, we weren’t there when ancient cultures and peoples of past centuries adopted belief in souls; so we really could not say anything about the reasons, evidence underlying such belief.

By happenstance this very issue came up in another setting.  A book discussion group,  of which I’m a member,  has been looking at Steven Pinker’s recent book, The Better Angels of our Nature – Why violence has declined.   In chapter four (pp. 129-188), Pinker takes up what he calls the humanizing process in Western Europe and in the USA which mainly ended the routine brutality and killing of human beings that marked ancient and medieval periods.

In leading up to his account of the humanizing process that occurred in much of Western Europe starting the late 18th century, Pinker takes time to describe the incredible violence and bloodletting that often was based on irrational superstitious thinking and on religious doctrine.  These early sections of the chapter are titled “Superstitious Killing: Human Sacrifice, Witchcraft, and Blood Libel,” and   “Superstitious Killing: Violence against blasphemers, heretics, and apostates.”   Here Pinker recounts the genocides that resulted from the Catholic Crusades, and the great number of deaths that resulted from various long, bloody religious wars between European states and principalities; the high number of deaths brought about by the persecutions, tortures, and executions of non-believers by religious authorities —- all adding up to millions of people slaughtered, tortured, and executed, by the various “Reformations” (Catholic and Protestant); by the Inquisitions in Spain, Italy, and the New World.

Considering that all of this took place at a time when belief in an immortal soul was nearly universal, we surely are struck by a paradox.  Given all that brutality and bloodletting were  perpetuated by believers in an immortal soul, the question arises:  “Why do people think that belief is a good thing?  What ethical or moral value can such belief possibly have if cultures and ages in which that belief prevails are so bloody and violent, and dangerous to life and limb?

Pinker has some interesting things to say relevant to those questions. In his attempt to understand why people finally began to break the cycles of violence and death in the 17th century, and finally began to tolerated those who preferred to dissent from the prevailing religious doctrines, such as that concerning the value of an eternal soul.  He writes:

“What made Europeans finally decide that it was all right to let their dissenting compatriots risk eternal damnation and, by their bad example, lure others to that fate? Perhaps they were exhausted by the Wars of Religion, but it’s not clear why it took thirty years to exhaust hem rather than ten or twenty. One gets the sense that people started to place a higher value on human life. Part of the newfound appreciation was an emotional change, a habit of identifying with the pains and pleasures of others. And another part was an intellectual and moral change: a shift from valuing souls to valuing lives. The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence. Death becomes a mere rite of passage, like puberty or a midlife crisis.

The gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendancy of skepticism and reason. No one can deny the difference between life and death or the existence of suffering, but it takes indoctrination to hold beliefs about what becomes of an immortal soul after it has parted company from the body. The 17th century is called the Age of Reason, an age when writers began to insist that beliefs be justified by experience and logic. That undermines dogmas about souls and salvation, and it undermines the policy of forcing people to believe unbelievable things at the point of sword (or a Juda’s Cradle).”  [Page 143]

 

Of course, Pinker is not the first to so describe the nature of religious doctrine concerning the immortal soul.  Decades ago (1950s), the American philosopher, Walter Kaufmann, remarked  in various books  that the other-worldly nature of Christian doctrine de-valued human life on this earth, or turned attention away from the brutality, suffering, death, and gross injustice that characterized most lives when the grand other-worldly religion dominated, with its dogma of the immortal soul.

———————-

So my reply to my email colleague’s question  –  Why do I think ancient people adopted the belief in an immortal soul?  —  is that the ancients and medieval people were generally  indoctrinated to believe the dogma of an immortal soul, along with other dogma about the fate of the soul after death.  In the Christian period, when they were not so indoctrinated or resisted the indoctrination, they were terrorized into believing (or at least outward assent to the belief).

Thus, I reaffirm my conviction that belief in an immortal soul is just the product of particular religious cultures and ages, and has never been grounded on rational evidence.

Mulling about some puzzles on ‘objective reality’

Juan Bernal

We occasionally hear what sound like daffy ideas from theoretical physicists when they unwisely encroach on hard philosophical problems: e.g., the notion that consciousness creates the universe, sometimes called  “biocentrism.”   Another is the  assertion that space-time is not an objective feature of the universe (world), but is something dependent on the cognitive faculties of the creatures like us.  This strikes some as being a bizarre claim.

————————

It seems that one could offer the following rebuttal:  It does not follow that that the spatial-temporal dimensions arise from the subject’s cognitive processing because we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of experience of the physical world.

——–

The starting point of our epistemological theories should not be a conscious subject isolated from the social, physical world. Ultimately this notion is an incoherent one.  The starting point should be a mindful, social and corporeal subject (a conscious animal), in a natural, social world, interacting with other like creatures and engaging in cause-effect interaction with the natural, social world.

——–

The epistemological tradition from Descartes through the classical empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to Immanuel Kant is based on an erroneous idea that the possibility of knowledge of the external world (external to the subject) needs to be proven.

——-

There’s something terribly wrong with the claim that, for any ‘X’, we can say what ‘X’ really is only in terms of

  • a possible experience of ‘X’ (i.e., ‘X’ must be an object of phenomenal experience);  or
  • a description of ‘X’ in terms of (Kantian) categories of the understanding.

There something terribly wrong with the assertion that any question of the form [What is a real ‘X’?] has to be answered in terms of the notion of ‘X-in-itself, i.e., ‘X’ as other than an object of phenomenal experience.

Recall that for Kantian thought, ‘X as an object of possible phenomenal experience is an object describable in terms of

  •  the intuitions of space and time, and
  •  the categories of the understanding.

———————

Ordinarily when we try to say what ‘X’ really is we do not do so in terms of Kantian noumena, i.e., thing-in-itself.  Rather we state things carefully, after additional reflection, study, and investigation (after we carry on with empirical inquiry).

——–

The world of physical phenomena (objects, forces, energy) is a spatio-temporal world.

——–

According to Kant, our experience of the physical world is temporally and spatially ordered. The cognitive mind provides this spatial-temporal template by which our phenomenal world is ordered. The world independent of this ‘subjective’ ordering (i.e., noumena, world-in-itself) falls outside the scope of our knowledge.

——-

But there is nothing we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say it is the world-as-it-really-is.

At best, this notion of a noumenal world is a limiting concept.

To see noumena as the way things-really-are is to erroneously interpret a limiting concept as having metaphysical import.

———

Insofar as we can coherently think or talk about it, the so called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the reality of human existence and human experience. We should not be confused by the fact that his notion of reality can be analyzed and refined.  Physicists, for example, can apply their theories and mathematical models to give us a refined, abstract picture of this world.  But that resulting picture (the scientific picture that science achieves) is a picture  (a model) of the world of experience.  It is not a picture of the world-in-itself.

———-

The world existed long before humans arrived on the scene. Can this be seen as the legitimate idea of the world-in-itself?

There is a world that humans inhabit and experience. When humans think about or conceptualize this world, they do so in terms of spatial extension, temporal dimension, and basic categories (concepts) like object, force, causal relations, etc. . .  (and in terms of transactions between the subject and the world).  We apply those basic intuitions and concepts to the world of experience in our conceptualization of that world.

That this is an appropriate application is something that flows from the nature of the real world, a nature characterized as a spatial, temporal, physical world.

 

Extra-Ordinary Claims & Miracles

Juan Bernal

To be credible someone making an extra-ordinary claim, e.g. my neighbor can levitate, we would ask for evidence sufficient to the claim.  It  wouldn’t do to go on mere hear-say or my sincere insistence that my claim is true.

Extra-ordinary claims call for extra-ordinary evidence, or as David Hume stated: “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

“Suppose .. that the fact which testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extra-ordinary and the marvelous: in that the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact [purported ‘fact’] is more or less unusual.”

(David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Section X  “Of Miracles,”  Part I”, 1748)

David Hume is regarded as  a classical empiricist.  Knowledge, if we have any, comes by way of experience.  Along with this is the assumption that there are regularities in experience and nature.

It is surprising to critical thinkers that anyone would question the principle that measures the status of a belief to the evidence supporting it.   The more extra-ordinary (marvelous, miraculous, magical) the purported event, the less weight carried by ordinary evidence (e.g., human testimony, reports, etc.).

It is not sufficient to well-grounded belief to affirm belief in miracles (e.g. a resurrection from death, or a feat of levitation) on testimony and reports of such events. Much more is called for if we’re to see such belief as rationally and empirically well-grounded.

Skepticism, not credulity, is the attitude of the rational person in the face of such extra-ordinary claims.

——

What could possibly be a philosophical rebuttal to this position skeptical of miraculous claims?

Some might raise technicalities about Hume’s suggestion of an appropriate proportion of evidence to belief.  These would be questions as to the precise measured proportion: What objective standard could we apply to determine exact proportionality?

Some might object that supernatural possibilities that fall outside of human empirical knowledge are not judged in terms of evidence usually applicable only to ordinary events.

Some might bring up the fact that extra-ordinary claims in the sciences were not required to conform to a “proportionality of evidence” and were not rejected because of insufficient evidence for an extra-ordinary claim.

We can reply to each in turn.  First Hume did not propose an exact science (with precise method and measurement) for evaluating extra-ordinary claims.  Instead, he offered a practical, common sense guide for proceeding, i.e., a general “rule-of-thumb,” in a manner of speaking.

——————————————-

Many events which are seen as miraculous can be shown to have natural explanation and may result from illusion or hallucination.  Those which cannot be readily explained do not automatically fall into the category of the miraculous.  On the one hand, they might be events that await further investigation.  On the other hand, they might be tagged (for now) as things we cannot presently explain.   But our inability to explain or understand the event does not imply that miracle or magical event has occurred.  All that is implied is that we do not presently have an explanation to give.

(Miracle:  The intervention of a supernatural being into a natural or social happening, many times a happening that is beneficial for humans.)