From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 03:55:30 MDT
At 01:47 AM 8/7/01 -0700, samantha wrote:
>> Many think that accepting Darwinianism makes unlikely the soul
>> hypothesis, a fortiori, the bonus of divine soul stuff is unlikely.
>I don't think that Darwin's work has a lot to do with hypotheses
>about souls or lack of same.
For starters, `Darwinianism' or `Darwinism' is just a metonymy for the
general theory of natural selection, something that has evolved (as it
were) and complexified over the last century and a half; Charles Darwin's
own views are not isomorphic with it, and hence of limited relevance.
Still, natural selection is an explanatory system that clearly makes
vitalism redundant and even ridiculous, as thermodynamics and quantum
theory make the theory of phlogiston redundant and ridiculous.
Does that mean impalpable entities unrestricted by the known laws of
physics might not attach themselves to animal bodies of sufficient
complexity, thereby gifting these crude material clods with a `spark' or
with consciousness? Obviously not. But why stop with anything remotely like
the classic Western idea of a soul?
Why not multiple souls for each person? We are constructed of many cells,
after all; what if each of them has a separate soul and we are therefore
each a celestial parliament? That might help explain the inner partitioning
that modular theories of the self try to account for.
Why not posit a hierarchy of souls within the body; one soul for each brain
module, say, and lesser souls for the limbs, until finally we reach the
discardable souls associated with hair, toenails and epidermal cells?
Samantha's right--there's nothing wrong with such ideas at all; their
potential for almost indefinite proliferation shows the tawdry limitations
of standard science and theology both!
Damien Broderick and its galaxy of contesting souls
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