Classical Christian doctrine—and for that matter, nearly the
whole of contemporary Christian doctrine—espouses belief in immaterial souls.
Properly understood, our immaterial souls ground individual identity, conscious
life, rationality, and moral accountability. At time of biological death, our
souls will separate from the physical body, with the hopes of reunion at
resurrection day.
Despite its respectable genealogy—mostly attributable to
Plato—and its widespread acceptance, the doctrine of immaterial souls cannot
fulfill the measure of its creation. One reason is the inability to disentangle
and distinguish one immaterial soul from another.
Matter, unlike an immaterial soul, can be identified via its
location in space-time.[1]
Matter is extended and locatable in relation to other physical entities. An immaterial
soul, by contrast, is not extended and not locatable in space-time.
Consequently, we cannot distinguish your soul and my soul by indexing them to a
particular space-time location.
Thus, this question emerges: in virtue of what are two
immaterial souls disentangled and distinguished?
One proposal distinguishes immaterial souls with reference
to a unique, identifying psychology. This psychology would include a unique set
of memories, habits, character traits, and the like.
This suggestion, however, may prove inadequate. To begin,
memories, habits, character traits, and the like are constituted by, and are
manifested in, the causal structure of reality. My psychology is formed, in
significant part, during interaction with the social and physical world.
Further, my psychology manifests itself in relation to that social and physical
world. So, it is not clear how my immaterial soul possesses a psychology that
is dependent on the causal structure of the world. Such an immaterial
psychology would be, at best, always in potentiality until reunion with a
resurrected body and that is like no psychology we are familiar with.
More importantly, though, this suggestion suffers conceptual
breakdown. Imagine a parallel universe identical to this universe in all
relevant respects. Now imagine your parallel twin in that universe. She
possesses your identical psychological structure. She has your same
temperament, habits, and predilections. In short, respecting psychology, you
and your parallel twin are identical. However, your parallel twin is not
identical to you, since you reside in different universes. Now imagine that at
the exact moment you die, your parallel twin also dies. At time of soul/body
separation, you and your parallel twin possess the identical psychological
structure. Thus, if your immaterial soul is distinguished from your parallel
twin’s immaterial soul by psychology, it follows that at time of death, you and
your parallel twin are identical. For that matter, it follows that your souls
are identical during life as well. Yet, logic compels the distinction all along
the way.[2]
Importantly, even though this may never happen in the actual world, it shows
that conceptually, the criterion cannot possibly correct.
The parallel twin example suggests another way to
disentangle and distinguish immaterial souls: each immaterial soul is
distinguished by being associated with a particular body. But again,
conceptually, this criterion won’t suffice. Imagine that God assigns an
archangel, call him Michael, to create and bind immortal souls to particular
human bodies at the time of conception.[3] However,
prior to Noah’s flood, God and the other archangels are overworked and so recruit
Michael to help. Unfortunately, one day Michael, multitasking and distracted,
creates a soul and fails to properly bind it to its intended body. The floodwaters
eventually roll in, destroying the soulless shell of a body, and the created
soul never unites with its intended host. Fortunately, Michael, now devoted
full time to soul-body binding, never repeats the former accident. At the end
of God’s magnificent redemptive work, every single human soul was associated
with a particular body, except one. However, this single immaterial soul can be
distinguished precisely in virtue of the fact that it was never associated with
a particular body. Thus, a soul can be distinguished without being associated
with a particular body.
Now imagine the same thought experiment in the reverse:
imagine the exact same scenario. Michael is distracted during Noah’s flood,
only this time he does not misplace a single soul, but places two created souls
into a single body. The result is conjoined-soul twins that share the same host
body. If they are distinguished by reference to a particular body, then they
will be identical and hence indistinguishable. But God created two souls. In
short, the body-soul association suggestion can’t possibly be right.
At this point, one may argue that God distinguishes souls.
He recognizes each individual soul and in that recognition disentangles and
distinguishes them. But the question reoccurs: in virtue of what does God
recognize and distinguish each individual soul? Is it in virtue of a soul’s
psychology, including its memories and habits? Is it in virtue of a body-soul
association? Some combination? Some other criterion altogether? In the end,
this explanation may prove theologically satisfying, but it will not prove
philosophically satisfying.
Faced with similar arguments, German Idealists, like Hegel,
and some strains of Buddhist thought, deny the existence of immaterial souls.
Instead, since souls cannot be distinguished, such theorists hold, there must
be a single, unifying principle, or world/universe soul underlying all of
empirical reality. Accordingly, a deep unity pervades all apparently distinguishable phenomena. At the other extreme, contemporary physicalists, like Daniel
Dennett and Patricia Churchland, deny immaterial souls. Instead, humans are
beautifully complex meat computers, nothing more.
Between these two responses, Mormonism points to a
third-way: a layered physical reality, with material souls. And I will walk that “third-way” in a subsequent post.
[1]
Though I note, quantum mechanics may challenge this claim.
[2] An
argument from contradiction demonstrating the distinction could be supplied by
relying upon Leibniz criterion of identity, which states that if x=y, then
anything that can be predicated of x, can be predicated of y. The fact that you
and your parallel twin reside in distinct universes supplies all we need to
generate such an argument. I spare you the details.
[3] In
Christian theology the view that God creates the soul at time of conception is called creationism. By contrast, traducianism
is the view that individual souls are generated as a natural result of the
procreation process.
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