The Soul and Bertrand Russell The controversy has been raging since the time of the ancient Greeks. British empiricist David Hume, after analyzing the mind through introspection came to the conclusion that no particular soul entity exists and that the mind is merely the sum total of its states.
Apparently influenced by Hume, some psychologists later asserted that the mind as a thing does not exist. William James regarded consciousness not as an entity but as the function of knowing, that is, as a stream of consciousness. Reality is something difficult to know.
Events deep down in the stream throw up bubbles and eddies on the surface of the stream. These are the transfers of energy and radiation of our common life, which affect our senses and so activate our minds; below these lie deep waters which we can only know by inference.
These bubbles and eddies show atomicity, but we know of no corresponding atomicity in the currents below. The simplest body of this kind is a molecule and a set of molecules forms a lump of ordinary matter, such as a chair or a stone. The series of events that replaces the particle has certain physical properties…but it has no more substantiality than any other series of events that we might arbitrarily single out.
The argument is only one of probability, but it is as strong as those upon which most scientific conclusions are based. But evidence, Russell points out, has little bearing on what we actually believe. In the decades since, pioneering psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has demonstrated that the confidence we have in our beliefs is no measure of their accuracy. Noting that we simply desire to believe in immortality, Russell writes:. Believers in immortality will object to physiological arguments [against personal immortality] on the ground that soul and body are totally disparate, and that the soul is something quite other than its empirical manifestations through our bodily organs.
I believe this to be a metaphysical superstition. Mind and matter alike are for certain purposes convenient terms, but are not ultimate realities. Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical fictions; each is really a history, a series of events, not a single persistent entity.
In the case of the soul, this is obvious from the facts of growth. Whoever considers conception, gestation, and infancy cannot seriously believe that the soul in any indivisible something, perfect and complete throughout this process.
It is evident that it grows like the body, and that it derives both from the spermatozoon and from the ovum, so that it cannot be indivisible. This is not materialism: it is merely the recognition that everything interesting is a matter of organization, not of primal substance. Our obsession with immortality, Russell contends, is rooted in our fear of death — a fear that, as Alan Watts has eloquently argued , is rather misplaced if we are to truly accept our participation in the cosmos.
Russell writes:. Fear is the basis of religious dogma, as of so much else in human life. Fear of human beings, individually or collectively, dominates much of our social life, but it is fear of nature that gives rise to religion. The antithesis of mind and matter is … more or less illusory; but there is another antithesis which is more important — that, namely, between things that can be affected by our desires and things that cannot be so affected.
The line between the two is neither sharp nor immutable — as science advances, more and more things are brought under human control.
Nevertheless there remain things definitely on the other side. Among these are all the large facts of our world, the sort of facts that are dealt with by astronomy. It is only facts on or near the surface of the earth that we can, to some extent, mould to suit our desires. And even on the surface of the earth our powers are very limited. Above all, we cannot prevent death, although we can often delay it. Religion is an attempt to overcome this antithesis. Mistake: Choose Email for contact not necessary :.
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