Bought and Souled
Rayne continues the soul discussion today, fixating (as I knew she would) on my remark about my Y-chromosome as somehow determinative of my opinion on the issue. Her comments on the differences between affiliative and achievement-oriented states of consciousness are helpful to a point, but I guess I’m at a loss without a more precise definition of what we’re actually talking about. It seems to me that trying to identify the existence of something in the physical realm is a job for science, pure and simple. Without data to substantiate opinions, we’re just standing around emoting at each other. Affiliative consciousness provides a more fruitful approach in discussions about ethics, aesthetics, psychology and social policy, but it seems of less use here.
Bottom line is, I guess I’m just a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist. I find the conditions of the natural world entirely sufficient to explain all natural phenomena, even if those explanations take us in strange and counter-intuitive directions. When it comes to claims of metaphysics, I subscribe to the “efficient cause” theory: the simplest explanation for any phenomenon is the one likeliest to be true. Maybe this is a narrow, analytical and unimaginative way to view the world, but I find that it keeps me out of a lot of trouble most of the time.
In the case of the existence of a soul, we know that immortality is a fundamental human desire, but one that cannot be fulfilled in the physical world. Now we’re presented with the concept of an immortal spark of consciousness whose existence can be “felt” in a subjective way by some people, but leaves no evidence that can be measured by any scientific process yet discovered. So we have two possible explanations for the soul theory: either it’s true in spite of a total lack of evidence, or it’s a manifestation of a wish-fulfillment desire that we know to exist. Furthermore, the main ideology that propagates belief in the existence of the soul – organized religion of various types – is one that benefits in numerous concrete ways from that belief. Hmmm…. In the words of Groucho Marx, “what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
9:00:42 AM 
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