OK, I've been thinking about the definition of "soul" given by the blog quoted above:
That seems like a reasonable summary of the way most people use the word these days -- both Christians who believe in soul and those who oppose them. The definition is useful, I think, because it exposes the very poor and fuzzy way we are thinking about the subject.
For example, it relies on something called "spirit energy" which doesn't help us at all. First we'd have to figure out what "spirit" is, and that's another word with no good meaning. Does it mean something ghostly? Does it just mean attitudes, as in the phrase "school spirit"? Defining one unknown term with another unknown term doesn't help much. And not knowing what spirit is means that we don't know what kind of energy we're talking about. Is "spirit energy" anything like the energy physicists study? Does this mean that physicists can study soul (if it exists)? Or is "spirit energy" something else?
We're left talking about words so fuzzy that we can hardly say anything. And we are liable to make assumptions -- for example, that soul must be similar to something we understand better, like electricity.
The reason I brought up Aristotle earlier is because he had a definition of soul which is not at all fuzzy, and which many Christians also used. It's not only clear, it is something non-supernatural which most people could understand, even if they don't think it's helpful.
So, to repeat, here is Aristotle's definition. "Soul" is the morph part of hylomorphism. It is the form of the body, as opposed to its matter. In this case "form" means more than "shape." (A newly-dead body has the same shape, but not the form, in this sense, of a living body.) Form here means shape but also the functions, interactions, and operations. The things that the body does, by its nature.
When the body dies, the matter is still there (at first) but the soul is gone, because it is no longer capable of doing human things.
I think using the word "soul" in this way is still useful, because it gives a more general word to the totality of a person. It includes habits, mental memory, body memory, dispositions, many other things. If you wanted to avoid the word "soul" because of its modern implications you could substitute some longer phrase, like "all the memories, thoughts, habits, and dispositions of what I am."
The only thing spooky about soul, in this sense, is the Christian idea that at death the soul is transferred from its first, fleshly body into a different body, made of some different matter. And the Christians who assert this, if they're honest, recognize that this belief about the transfer of the soul is not at all provable, but only faith-based.
It came up on another thread recently that the term "supernatural" is similar. In today's usage it is so incoherent that it's easy to dismiss it as unreal just because the term means nothing. In the bad old days, however, people gave it a clear use which could be debated. This older definition certainly didn't prove the reality of the supernatural, but it made it clear what we're talking about.
Quote:Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.
That seems like a reasonable summary of the way most people use the word these days -- both Christians who believe in soul and those who oppose them. The definition is useful, I think, because it exposes the very poor and fuzzy way we are thinking about the subject.
For example, it relies on something called "spirit energy" which doesn't help us at all. First we'd have to figure out what "spirit" is, and that's another word with no good meaning. Does it mean something ghostly? Does it just mean attitudes, as in the phrase "school spirit"? Defining one unknown term with another unknown term doesn't help much. And not knowing what spirit is means that we don't know what kind of energy we're talking about. Is "spirit energy" anything like the energy physicists study? Does this mean that physicists can study soul (if it exists)? Or is "spirit energy" something else?
We're left talking about words so fuzzy that we can hardly say anything. And we are liable to make assumptions -- for example, that soul must be similar to something we understand better, like electricity.
The reason I brought up Aristotle earlier is because he had a definition of soul which is not at all fuzzy, and which many Christians also used. It's not only clear, it is something non-supernatural which most people could understand, even if they don't think it's helpful.
So, to repeat, here is Aristotle's definition. "Soul" is the morph part of hylomorphism. It is the form of the body, as opposed to its matter. In this case "form" means more than "shape." (A newly-dead body has the same shape, but not the form, in this sense, of a living body.) Form here means shape but also the functions, interactions, and operations. The things that the body does, by its nature.
When the body dies, the matter is still there (at first) but the soul is gone, because it is no longer capable of doing human things.
I think using the word "soul" in this way is still useful, because it gives a more general word to the totality of a person. It includes habits, mental memory, body memory, dispositions, many other things. If you wanted to avoid the word "soul" because of its modern implications you could substitute some longer phrase, like "all the memories, thoughts, habits, and dispositions of what I am."
The only thing spooky about soul, in this sense, is the Christian idea that at death the soul is transferred from its first, fleshly body into a different body, made of some different matter. And the Christians who assert this, if they're honest, recognize that this belief about the transfer of the soul is not at all provable, but only faith-based.
It came up on another thread recently that the term "supernatural" is similar. In today's usage it is so incoherent that it's easy to dismiss it as unreal just because the term means nothing. In the bad old days, however, people gave it a clear use which could be debated. This older definition certainly didn't prove the reality of the supernatural, but it made it clear what we're talking about.
