Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates Read online

  Philosopher W. Allen points out that “the soul embraces the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, while the body has all the fun.” But Plato counters that while the Appetites do have all the fun, they’re actually part of the soul. This is one of the key differences in the philosophies of Plato and Allen.

  For Plato, the ultimate goal of the soul is to strip off its sensuous nature and move toward knowledge of the Forms; immortality is reserved for the rational part only. In other words, contemplating the triangle trumps sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

  He prefers a triangle to sex? This guy sounds a few Doric columns short of a Parthenon.

  We urge you to withhold judgment until you’ve seen this triangle, Daryl. It isn’t any old triangle, it’s the Ideal Triangle.

  Aristotle had a slightly different take on the soul, but his conclusion was similar. He divided the soul into the vegetative soul, which causes the mechanical and chemical changes that we share with animals and vegetables; the animal soul, which creates the locomotion and experiences the sensations that we share only with animals; and reason, which we don’t share with any animal or vegetable. Like, try reasoning with your cat. Or your carrot.

  Ari further divided reason into passive reason (perception) and active reason (thinking, conceiving, visualizing Aphrodite in your bedroom, that sort of thing). For Aristotle, it is active reason that’s the immortal part of the soul.

  THE VEGETABLE SOULMAN COMETH

  The Greek notion of the soul as an entity gave Wally Scott the idea of selling his on TradeMe, New Zealand’s equivalent of eBay, in 2008. Of course, the idea of selling one’s soul is at least as old as Faust, but Scott’s innovation lay in seeing that there is a mass market for souls, and not solely the devil. Bidding for Scott’s soul reached $189.

  Several philosophical questions, of course, needed to be addressed. First was the issue of how bidders could be certain of the condition of Scott’s soul at the time of sale. Scott maintained that it was in “pretty good nick” with the exception of a “rough patch” when he reached the legal drinking age.

  Then there was the question of what rights were implied in the passage of the title from Scott to the buyer. Scott’s lawyer maintained that the mere fact of owning Scott’s soul would not entitle the buyer to own or control him—a tricky distinction, we thought.

  Finally, there was the question of whether TradeMe rules should permit the sale of something as intangible as a soul. In the end, TradeMe ruled that because a Deed of Soul Ownership would change hands, they would permit the sale.

  The folks at eBay were more skeptical. In 2001, bidding for Alan Burtle’s soul had reached $400 when eBay pulled the plug, saying that nothing tangible would be transferred. By “tangible,” they meant something like a vintage Pokémon or a Beanie Babies collection, two of their most popularly traded items.

  The question of immortality of the soul would not have come up in ancient Israel. Unlike the Greeks, the Hebrews didn’t see human beings as divided into two separate parts, body and soul. The soul in the Hebrew Bible refers to the whole person. Human beings don’t have souls; they are souls. And they don’t have bodies; they are bodies, living bodies.1 How’s that? What’s the difference, then, between a dead body and a living body, you may ask. Well, the Bible isn’t real clear on this, but it seems to be something like the difference between a live battery and a dead battery. It’s not that the dead battery is missing a part; it’s just missing pizzazz. What it’s missing is life.

  I’M ALL FOR YOU, BODY AND . . . WHATEVER

  Paradoxically, Edward Heyman, the lyricist who penned the jazz classic, “Body and Soul,” was of the Hebrew persuasion. The rumor that Heyman’s rabbi informed the songwriter that he was making a false distinction and should call the song “Body and Body” is unsubstantiated.

  Same deal in the New Testament. To “lose your soul” is simply to lose your life. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”2 means simply “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his life?”

  PROFIT AND LOSS

  If we take the New Testament at its word, it seems to suggest a cost-benefit analysis of “gaining whole world” vs. “losing soul.” As with all questions of valuation, it depends on the evaluator.

  A lawyer woke up one night and found his bedroom awash in red light and foul with a sulfurous stench, and there at the foot of the bed was someone he recognized instantly as Satan.

  Satan smiled and said, “Mr. Jones, if you wish, I will give you untold wealth and all the women you want, plus fame and a long life. How about it?”

  The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

  Satan replied, “In exchange for all of that, I will take your immortal soul.”

  And the lawyer said, “Come on. What’s the real catch?”

  In ancient Indian philosophy, the atman, or Self, totally transcends most of the functions the Greeks included in their conception of the soul. In fact, the seat of thoughts, emotions, etc., which was an integral part of the Greek notion of the soul, is regarded by the Indian sages as a body part, albeit the “subtle body.” But this isn’t even the biggest difference between the Greek and Indian notions. For the Hindu sages, the Self isn’t something we own individually, like a Harley or a Panama hat: it’s the universal stuff that pervades everything in the universe, as in the ancient parable of the Hindu who asks the hotdog vendor to make him one with everything.

  Both Plato and Aristotle talked about a universal Reason that underlies our individual reason, but they also maintained the idea of an individual soul that survives death. By contrast, in Indian thought—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—to become immortal means to transcend our individuality and “step off the wheel of birth and death.”

  Oh, yeah? What about reincarnation, then? I always thought that sounded like a good deal. Like I used to be Napoleon, then I was Daryl, next I may be a bunny rabbit.

  You’re not alone, Daryl. A lot of Westerners think that reincarnation is the Eastern version of immortality of the soul. But no way, Sanjay! First of all, Buddhists, the chief source of the Western idea of reincarnation, don’t even believe in the soul. Their concept of reincarnation is the passing of a flame from one candle to another. No self gets transferred in the deal, because there ’s no self to transfer.

  Secondly, reincarnation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, our subtle body gets to keep on truckin’, but it’s still truckin’ on the same old gravel road. Reincarnation merely subjects our psyche to another round of struggle and purification on the way to finally realizing our true and universal Self. To get there, we must step off the gravel road of multiple deaths and reincarnations, become one with the universal Self, and ride on eternally in an Off Road Vehicle.

  In fact, reincarnation is just an extension of the law of karma. People who do evil become evil—in this life and beyond. People who do good become good—in this life and beyond. But what we become in our next life shouldn’t be viewed as a reward or punishment; the purpose of reincarnation is to give us an opportunity to evolve.

  CREATIVE EVOLUTION

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” a golfer asked a friend during a round at the local municipal course.

  “Why, yes, I do,” said the buddy.

  “Well, how do you want to return to ear th?”

  “I want to come back as a lesbian.”

  “What! Why?”

  “I still want to make love to women, but I want to hit from the shor ter tees.”

  But some of us have been going in the wrong direction. According to a Hindu text, the Garuda Purana, the murderer of a Brahmin will come back with tuberculosis. (Sorry, Brahmin-killers.) The killer of a cow doesn’t fare much better: he or she returns as a humpbacked imbecile. Remember that when you’re pouring ketchup on your next Quarter Pounder. And the murderer of a virgin? A leper, of course. Figures.

  The New Agers have adopted some of the more exotic f
eatures of belief in reincarnation. A website called Reincarnation Station provides a short quiz to determine what you’ll likely come back as. We’re not saying who’s who, but one of us will be back as a really cute panda; the other, as a rat.

  MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE WEST . . .

  Many of the functions of the soul described by the pre-Socratics and Plato and Aristotle are what we would now call functions of the mind: locomotion, knowing, perceiving, desiring, willing, reasoning. In fact, the Greek word for soul is psyche, a word we now use to mean “mind.” Psychology, the modern study of the psyche, is the study of the mind, not the study of the soul.

  So what do we Westerners have in mind when we refer to a “mind”? Does it provide any clues to the immortality question? Like how does it differ from that part of our body that’s located in our skull—the brain? If the soul is just the mind and the mind is just the brain, there goes any shot at immortality. A term you often hear around the ICU is illustrative: braindead.

  REALIZING THE UNIVERSAL SELF: THE DOWNSIDE

  In the seventeenth century, the father of modern Western philosophy, René Descartes, put forth the dualistic view that Mind and Matter (which includes the brain) are two altogether different kinds of beings that occupy different realms with different rules, with no point in common. But that raises a question: If they don’t overlap in some way—if they exist in their own separate spheres—how can it be that matter can cause changes in the mind and the mind can cause changes in the material world? For example, physical objects apparently cause our perceptions of them, and our “will” seems to cause parts of our body to move. And then there’s the business of certain chemical substances that can cause big-time changes in our minds, like visions of plasticine porters with looking-glass ties.

  DUALISM IN A NUTSHELL

  What is Mind?

  No Matter.

  What is Body?

  Never Mind.

  So what exactly is the link between Body and Mind? Another seventeenth-century philosopher, the German rationalist Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, maintained that Mind and Matter don’t actually get into each other’s knickers. He said they operate in parallel, like two synchronized but separate clocks. Each goes forward in its own realm, and the changes in one are merely associated with changes in the other because this harmony was preestablished by God. Thanks for that info, G.W.V.L., but you may want to lay off the mind-altering substances for a while.

  The nineteenth-century Darwinist T. H. Huxley said the mind is merely a side effect of bodily functions, an “epiphenomenon” like shadows on the ground. Physical brain states can cause changes in mental states, said the epiphenomenalists, but mental states can’t cause anything, even other mental states. So while our bodies, brains included, go about their business, our minds simply show the pictures.

  The “logical behaviorists,” including the twentieth-century British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, took it a step further. Ryle ridiculed Descartes’s view that mind and body are two different kinds of beings, with the mind somehow “inhabiting” the body. Ryle called that idea “the ghost in the machine.” He said Descartes had led us in a centuries-long detour trying to define what sort of entity this ghost is, when in fact the mind is not an entity at all. To have a mind isn’t to possess a certain thing; it’s simply to have certain capacities and dispositions. We go around thinking that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, cause our behavior. In fact, our behavior is caused by dispositions to behave in certain ways, and our mental states simply reflect those dispositions. That doesn’t seem to leave anything to be immortal; it’s hard to picture immortal capacities and dispositions. But then again, who knows? Lots of us find it hard to picture an immortal mind or soul of any kind.

  The development of computer technology has raised interesting questions in the mind-body debate. In 1950, A. M. Turing, one of the founders of computer science and a celebrated British World War II codebreaker, asked the question whether it is theoretically possible for a large enough computer to answer questions in such a way as to fool us into thinking that it is a human being—like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. If we could be fooled by Hal, what does that tell us about the role that our mental states may or may not play in determining our behavior? Maybe, like Hal’s, our behavior is caused by sophisticated programming, and our impression that we are mentally in charge is an illusion. Buddhist meditators and experimenters with psychedelic drugs have described the realization that our minds are always a half-step behind our behavior, perpetually running to catch up.

  MINDLESS CREATIVITY

  If mental states don’t cause anything, where do the mind’s creations come from? Are all of our creations just outputs of our brain’s hard-wiring? If so, shouldn’t a sophisticated computer system be able to create a first-rate joke? You be the judge. Programmers gave this challenge to the supercomputers at Edinburgh University, and here is the kind of gag the machines generated:

  “What kind of line has sixteen balls? A pool cue!”

  Using a five-knee-slap scale, what do you think? Well, okay, then consider this one:

  “What kind of murderer has moral fiber? A cereal killer.”

  Sure, it’d go over better in the middle-school cafeteria than on Saturday Night Live, but, hey, your brother-in-law has told worse, are we right?

  As the mind-body debate has continued in our own day, it has gotten subtler and more complex, but its basic terms have not changed. There are still dualists of various stripes who claim that the mind is something different from the neuroelectrical impulses of the brain. And there are the physicalists who claim that mental states are identical to neural states. And then there are the functionalists, who are basically neutral on the issue, so who needs them?

  ENTER ZOMBIES, LAUGHING

  One entertaining philosophical contribution to the debate about what a mind might be is the so-called zombie problem. It seems particularly relevant to death, you know?

  The zombie problem is a challenge to the physicalists, who say that after we describe the brain and how it works electrically, there’s nothing left to describe. The workings of our “minds”—sensations, thoughts, intentions—are all subject to the laws of physics, and all our “changes of mind” are the result of physical, neuroelectrical causes.

  The twentieth-century American philosopher Saul Kripke posed the ultimate physicalist question this way: Imagine a God who brings into existence a world that looks exactly like ours that operates purely by the laws of physics. Would the Creator have to do anything further to provide for human consciousness?

  Ludwig Wittgenstein put it like this: “What is left over when I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”4 (You may have to read that one twice. We did.)

  Enter the zombists. Zombies, presumably, are human beings without consciousness, yet they move around and do all the things that other human beings do. So if zombies exist, that rules out physicalism, because if physicalism were true, the zombies would have consciousness!

  ALL TOO HUMAN ZOMBIES

  But wait one minute. Maybe zombies don’t exist. (Personally, we’ve never seen one, and we’ve been to some really slow cocktail parties.) No problem, say the trickier zombists. If it’s even possible that zombies exist, that’s good enough to challenge physicalism. So the zombists dream up conceivable scenarios. Says contemporary British philosopher Robert Kirk, we can conceive of micro-Lilliputians inside Gulliver’s head who disconnect both his receptor nerves (input/perception) and his motor nerves (output/action). These little tricksters now receive all the inputs into Gulliver’s brain and initiate their own signals to his muscles. Gulliver will seem to an observer to be just his ordinary self, but he will have no consciousness. He will be, in effect, a zombie. So, says Kirk, because we can conceive of this scenario, consciousness must be something different from just the physical inputs.

  The zombies were halfway across the living room

  when they noticed that “Friends” was on
.

  But wait, cry the physicalists! Being conceivable isn’t the same thing as being possible! You can conceive of these nano-Lilliputians, but they’re not really possible in the real world.

  At this point the argument gets too wiggy for words, and our mind—or brain, you choose which—shuts down.

  Wow! Finally something I get—philosophers have nothing better to do than to dream up little Disney characters.

  Sure, but after they dream them up, they ask some pretty interesting questions about them.

  Yeah, maybe interesting to a Disney character. Anyway, I think the soul is something different from the mind. Like it’s deeper. If I say somebody’s soulful, I don’t mean anything about his mind. You know, like Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul, not the Queen of Mind, and barbecued soul food is way more appealing than any “mind food.” (I’m thinking ginkgo biloba here.) And oh, one more thing—souls are good or bad morally. A good mind is just sharp at plane geometry or gets straight As in French, but someone with a good soul, that’s a whole different deal—that’s a person who feels your pain. He’s, like, in touch, you know?

  Excellent points, Daryl. And the twentieth-century psychologist and philosopher of psychotherapy Otto Rank agrees with you. He says the modern view that equates the soul with the mind is way off the mark. He says that in primitive times “soul” meant “life-power.” (Think James Brown singing “I Feel Good.”) And this life-power, or mana, was everywhere and in everything.

  In those good old primitive days when a man was a man, and kids still helped out around the cave, death-anxiety had not raised its scary head, because this universal life-power was immortal. Not only was the Force with us, but we were part of the Eternal Force. But soon the notion of life-power got mixed together with the notion of individual will-power, and once that happened, it was only a matter of time before people realized that the will of some folks could break the will of other folks. This could be life-threatening for the folks of the second part—first of all literally, but secondly because the primitive idea of will-power was so wrapped up with their notion of life-power that any limit on their will-power brought on the heebie-jeebies of death-anxiety. In other words, the possibility of having their will crushed raised the threat of having their souls crushed in the process. Say goodbye to the happy innocent days of equal-access mana.