Arguments against Soul

[Belacqua]

@Belaqua

I’m curious; would you be comfortable with the term “being” as short-hand for the Aristotelian definition of “soul” you provided earlier? As in, the sum of all the constituents and experiences of an alive person who exists. I would view this, philosophically, as “more” than just a body or just a mind, but not in the sense that there is some thing that consciously continues after death.

I was pondering this on the bus today. I think I use "being" to mean "all of me" in conversation, but have never given it any scrutiny. 

For example I might say, "I hate that guy with all of my being," to emphasize that no part of me doesn't hate him. 

A while back we were discussing the idea that God is existence itself. And at that time you pointed out that it doesn't make much sense to talk about existence as some detachable quality, which we might have in the absence of the stuff that exists. So if "being" in today's sense means something like "existence," then maybe it doesn't add to what I mean when I say "me." "Me" is a simple word for "my being." 

Still the rhetorical force of the word, I would say, does emphasize wholeness, whereas "me" is more casual. If I say, "hand me the newspaper," I'm not referring to anything deep. So I think "being" is useful as indicating my totality -- all those things which are included in "me." 

(Or it may be that I'm wildly far away from what you're thinking, in which case please let me know!)

Now I think that "being" in this sense of totality isn't the same as "soul" in the sense Aristotle uses it. And that's simply because "soul" refers to form and function, but not matter. And since matter is part of the totality of me (which is my being) then soul is only a portion of my being. 

Still, it's useful to have a term to refer to totality, I think. And partly this is because people may be misled into thinking that soul and matter are somehow two separable objects which don't form a whole. But Aristotle and I both oppose the "ghost in the machine" idea, where soul is a wisp or field piloting a separate meat-body. 

So let's take as an example the muscles in your leg. They have both matter and form [soul]. The matter, I guess, is flesh. The form is the way the flesh is structured, and the things it does. But obviously, the things it does depend on the presence of the flesh -- the form or soul isn't there if the flesh isn't there. And the flesh depends for its existence (as flesh) on the form, because flesh which lost its form would decay immediately, into whatever the constituent parts are.

In this sense, your leg is a unity, and we categorize it as matter and form to help our understanding. "Soul" or "form" is the word we give to those things we talk about as form or function. "Matter" is when we're talking about the physical stuff. 

An analogy might be to when I talk about "my right side" and "my left side." Categorizing things in this way is necessary to get along in the world. For example, to tell the dentist where it hurts. But the idea that right can exist without left, or left can fly away to heaven without right, is just silly. Likewise form and matter.  

So tentatively, I'll guess that "being" refers to the whole thing, and "soul" refers to a portion or category that is useful when understanding myself. 

One of the oldest and most difficult parts of theological and philosophical tradition, as you know, is how our minds divide the world and how we reassemble what we've divided. We must divide to understand -- if we couldn't talk about before and after, or mine and yours, or good and bad, we couldn't make sense of the world. But the big traditions also urge us to recognize that these are categorizations, and the world is really one. So in that sense, "being" is a good word, I think, to put back together what "soul" and "matter" have led us to believe are separate things. 

(In Japanese, the kanji 分 is both "understand," and "divide." The true world, before our senses divide it, is to Buddhists 不二 -- "not two.")