I don’t think we are things, or like things. If a stone or a fly were vaporized
and then rebuilt from scratch, could it be the very same stone or fly? Maybe
not. On the other hand, take the San Diego River. Sometimes there’s water in it,
sometimes not. When it’s dry, there is no river. When the water returns, is it
the same river it was before? Most people would say yes. The river can only be
destroyed by permanently cutting off its water source, or by eradicating the
river bed, so water could never flow in the same way along the same path again.
A person’s mental life is like a river that flows through the channels of one
brain, intermittently.

Or take music: each time you hear a particular song, is it the same song? The
answer is yes, it is the same song, though a different instance or performance
of it. A person is like a song which, as it happens, can only be played on one
instrument in the world, his or her own body.

What about the philosophical conundrum Trent brought up? What if my body,
including my brain, were duplicated atom for atom, say by a transporter
malfunction, as once occurred in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next
Generation”? Now two bodies would have my personality and my memories from
before the duplication. Would they both be me? My answer is yes. But how could
that be? If I were like a stone, a thing, a particular, it couldn’t be. A stone
can’t be two stones. One stone can’t be numerically identical to another. But
two performances of a song can be instances of the same song. I seem to be
saying that I am a kind of event. Every time I wake up the universe is playing
the “Jerry” song one more time, in a slightly different arrangement. It’s not
that an unchanging ‘I’ wakes up to a new world. It’s that a new world is doing
me again.

I’m reminded of a verse from John: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” I don’t know exactly what that
is supposed to mean, but even the word ‘spirit’ is related to ‘breath’. A wind,
a breath, is not a substance. It is not a thing. It is insubstantial. It is a
movement in something greater – in a substance or a medium. A wind can gust and
die down, then blow again, and still be the same wind. Or does it even matter
or make sense to ask if it is numerically the same one, if it is the same kind
of motion?

Perhaps some aspects of Christianity are about a person who can live in more
than one body … as I say I can, under special circumstances, if a person is a
kind of event. But my view is not the substance view.

We are evanescent, like a wind that blows across a field and then is gone. Why all
this thirst for permanence?

It might be objected that, if my brain (or my body as a whole) contains all the
information necessary to produce this “song of myself”, why not say I am my
body, and my mental states are properties of my body, and my mental acts are
done by my body? Then I would exist even when I was unconscious, as common
sense holds. I would be something substantial.

The best I can do here is to say that I believe I am immanent in my experience
and mental acts, as an aspect or dimension or a pole of them. That is how I
experience myself. I am a character in my mental life. That is what you meet,
through my body, which the character inhabits.

Here’s a another musical metaphor: the iPod is not the song, nor is the
information stored in it. The song only exists when it is being played. It
isn’t a property of the iPod; it is created, or recreated, by it. Likewise, my
mind isn’t a property of my body; it is (I believe) created by it, and then
inhabits it. I am an aspect or property of the organization of my mind. So when
it flickers out, I do. But I can return, as long as my brain is capable of
making that happen.

I expect all this will seem terribly counterintuitive to you, and I am not
prepared to explain fully why I believe it. I’m not sure I even know. But
perhaps I’ve managed to convey … at least some notion of an alternative point of
view.

You say, “I don’t know enough about the scientific research you referenced that
goes against the idea of ensoulment at fertilization, but I’m open to hearing
more about it.” I’ll try to explain.

There is no scientific research on ensoulment. There was once a theory called
“vitalism” whose central claim was that physics and chemistry were inadequate
to explain living things, so something beyond the physical was thought to be
responsible for life. For instance, how could a tiny speck of protoplasm “know”
what to develop into? Something must guide development which knew the goal for
that species, and perhaps even for that individual. That “something beyond the
physical” could have been the soul.

For all anyone knew a hundred years ago, vitalism could have been true. If it
had turned out that way, there might now be scientific research on the soul. The
moment of ensoulment would be an object of study. Maybe we could watch parts of
cells being moved around by an unseen force, a force that could explain growth
and healing and heredity, a force that was irreducibly alive. It would be like
a séance, but conducted by scientists in a laboratory peering through
microscopes. Vitalists tended also to be spiritualists. They attended séances,
collected ghost stories and founded psychic research laboratories. A new age in
which science confirmed spiritual beliefs seemed right around the corner.

But it didn’t turn out that way. Instead the central claim of vitalism was
shown to be false. Physics and chemistry turned out to be perfectly adequate to
explain biological life. Information plays a central role, but it is thoroughly
embodied. For instance, vast amounts of it are encoded digitally in DNA
molecules. No spooky entities were needed to explain life, nor were they ever
found. Eventually we discovered that apparently formless “protoplasm” was made
of myriads of ultramicroscopic molecular “machines” operating according to known
physical laws, interacting with each other in vastly complex and tangled
networks. Ordered behavior emerges unguided out of this complexity; it is not
imposed on the parts by some knowing Unity. The field that studies all this is
called molecular biology. Its subject matter – this whole level of reality – was
unimagined when vitalism beckoned with a very different kind of answer.

The upshot of all this is that (1) if there is an immaterial soul,
science has not detected it, but (2) science can say one thing definitively about
the soul: the soul is not life, nor does it cause life. Because we know what
life (in the scientific, biological sense) is: it is an interlocking ensemble
of physical processes which take place in organisms. These processes are
carried out by the organism’s parts just by obeying the laws of physics. All such
processes eventually suffer dissolution. They are not eternal. Nor do they slip
in and out of bodies like ghosts. So life is not the soul.

Another way of saying this is that, as far as biological life goes, materialism
won. This doesn’t mean there is no soul, or that there is nothing that might be
called “spiritual life”. But it does mean that the presence of life provides no
scientific evidence for ensoulment. Philosophers and theologians have differing
views on the soul, but they cannot call on science to settle the matter, unless
they are willing to be satisfied with a methodological dictum, namely Occam’s
razor: science has no need for the soul hypothesis.

Now let’s go back to the little thought experiment I suggested, in the
paragraph beginning “Try this…” You believe, you have said, that the soul
enters the body at fertilization. I have just claimed that you cannot know this
on the basis of science. So it is either philosophy and/or religion you rely
on. But religions and philosophies differ on this, so you cannot know for sure.
I suggested that you just imagine, for the sake of argument, that you are
mistaken, and that the soul enters the body later. I needn’t claim this is
true, or even probable. I did not cite any scientific evidence for it – there
is none. (I can cite you theologians, if you are interested.) The point is that
your argument that the zygote is fully human and of equal value with an adult
would fall apart if it turned out that an adult was ensouled but a zygote wasn’t,
because then you would have to argue that something with an eternal human soul
was morally equivalent to something that lacked any soul at all. How could you
do that? Therefore your argument for equal value relies covertly on an
assumption you have not defended and cannot defend scientifically: that
ensoulment occurs at fertilization.

I’m sure you’re aware that it is very easy to accept an invalid argument when
it proves what you already believe. Under your spiritual worldview, but without
the assumption that ensoulment occurs at fertilization, the argument for moral
equivalence of adult and zygote seems to fail. If you’re determined to defend
the pro-life position, this should make the claim of ensoulment at
fertilization very attractive. But to conclude, because it validates the full
humanity of the zygote, that the zygote must be ensouled, and because it is
ensouled it is fully human, would be to argue in a circle.

I was just listening to some of Scott Klusendorf’s lectures at Biola. He says
the issue is, “What is the unborn?” But if the question is, “Is the unborn one
of us?” then there is another, prior issue that must be addressed: “What are
we?” To merely say we are human animals, organisms, members of the human
species, is an inadequate answer both for you and for me, though for different
(but in-a-way similar) reasons. For you, the answer is something like: “We are
eternal human souls inhabiting mortal human bodies for the time being.” For me,
it is something like: “We are human minds inhabiting human bodies as long as
our brains allow us to.” For neither of us are we identical to the organisms we
inhabit. Once this is made clear, there is no logical reason to believe that
the history of the organism we inhabit and our history are one and the same.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to you on the phone, but I do know that I don’t always choose to give a religious answer when asked about my views, especially if it’s early in the conversation. At that time, I was pretty convinced that a strong secular argument could be made to ground human value, but since then I’ve become less convinced of that. While I do make principally secular arguments against abortion, I’ve often said publicly (especially in the last six months or so,) that when you ask deeper question like, “why are humans valuable in the first place,” my response is usually a religious one. This is because I’m no longer personally convinced by any of the purely secular arguments I’ve yet heard for human value. 

I think a discussion on abortion can remain non-religious if both parties presuppose the idea of human value, (which most people do agree with,) and then debating the humanity of the unborn, or bodily autonomy arguments. But if you don’t both presuppose human value, I agree that a deeper discussion should be had that very well may go religious.

As far as the “you’re just religious” audio I just released, I wasn’t talking about inquisitive people like you that don’t discriminate against religious people. I was ONLY asked to talk about the situation (that is sadly common for the group of activists I was speaking to,) where an atheist walks by a pro-life exhibit and refuses to engage or even listen to the pro-life person’s argument, and instead lazily exclaims, “you’re just religious!” If I was asked to talk about other, more reasonable people that take issue with our religious presuppositions, than that audio would clearly have been longer than six minutes.

I don’t know enough about the scientific research you referenced that goes against the idea of ensoulment at fertilization, but I’m open to hearing more about it. 

I’m not convinced my personal worldview has any episodic problem, because I don’t believe we are identical to our bodies. I don’t think there’s a gap in time between our bodies dying and our souls moving on to some other place and/or time.

Meanwhile, I believe your view (if I remember it correctly,) that consciousness is a necessary condition for personhood, still suffers from the episodic problem. You even admitted on the phone that you don’t know what to do about the problems of sleep and temporary comas. Have you found an answer since then to that problem that satisfies you?

Virtually all your arguments assume that we are our bodies. But now you
confess, “I believe that the soul is eternal, while the body is not.” You must
believe that we survive with our souls rather than die with your bodies. So you
DON’T believe that we are our bodies.

In the excerpt from your training called “You’re Just Religious”, you get
worked up about others supposing your arguments are invalid because you are a
Christian. (You say that they’re basically saying “you’re stupid,” but a more charitable
interpretation of such an attitude would be that they suppose that your
arguments can be ignored because they are probably based on unstated suppositions
that stem from your faith, suppositions which they don’t share). You say repeatedly
that you “haven’t made any religious arguments” and that the views you express are
“scientific and philosophic”.  But here’s
a thought: maybe you’re mistaken. Maybe your arguments rely on unstated
assumptions that ARE religious.

Try this: You say, “I believe the soul enters the body when the body becomes
biologically alive, at fertilization.” That is a religious view. Now imagine,
just for the sake of argument, that this view is untrue, and instead that the
soul enters the body at a later time, say when the fetus first becomes
conscious. Would your argument that the fertilized egg is fully human still
hold? The words would still make sense: organism, species, human, life, etc. But
the idea that something without a human soul has equal value with something that
possesses one was never something that you believed or argued for, because you
didn’t have to, because you just assumed, because of your RELIGION, that life
and soul always went together. Isn’t that true? If you dropped that assumption,
mightn’t you reject your own argument?

If this account is true, it would explain a lot to me. Despite your arguments,
I’ve always regarded the idea that a single cell could be a person as verging
on the insane. It was incomprehensible to me. It made no sense, UNLESS one assumed something supernatural were
attached somehow to that cell. So I have been left completely puzzled and mystified
how you, who are clearly not insane, could believe such a thing on the basis,
as you claimed, of philosophy and science, because I believe in those things,
and they don’t get me there. But religion can. I can understand that. But if
you admitted as much, it would as good as put you out of business, wouldn’t it?
Because it would mean you could no longer pose as making purely secular
arguments to nonbelievers. And they could justly dismiss your arguments, since you would have admitted they rely on unshared tenets of your faith.

I am not at all offended that you disagree with my position, and I look forward to watching more dialogue between you and Trent.

Did I offend you? I hope not. Perhaps I should not have personalized my
questions by using Josh’s name rather than an impersonal pronoun. I did not
mean any disrespect.

Did you not consider the problem I brought up a serious one? If the assumptions
underlying your pro-life arguments – specifically your animalism – contradict
the spiritual beliefs of most Christians (including your own) and also those of
many non-Christians, doesn’t this call at least for some explanation?

Or is it that you simply have no answer, and it would not serve the pro-life
cause to acknowledge this inconvenient truth?

I hope I am simply being too impatient, and that someone is even now working on
a reply.

One more point: I don’t believe soul “explains”
consciousness or free will as you claim. It is merely a cipher put in place by
the negative argument that physical reality cannot
explain consciousness or free will. Therefore something nonphysical must
account for them, about which we know nothing – call it a soul. Such a negative
argument is far from offering an explanation of anything. Contrast this to the research
program described by Christof Koch in his book Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist.

In asking my original question, I had a limited goal: I was
trying to get Josh to abandon his use of what he called “the episodic problem”
as an argument against the sentience view. I attempted to do this by confronting
him with a dilemma: either, as a Christian who believes in death followed by
bodily resurrection, you accept an episodic view yourself (so you should not
criticize it in others), or, as a Christian who believes in an immaterial soul
that leaves the body while continuing to be the person, you must abandon the “person
equals organism” view which is at the heart of most of what you do. Josh chose
the second option. Even so, in my points 1) and 2) I pursued the episodic
argument. But in point 4) I returned to the second horn of the dilemma which he
had chosen. It opens a whole can of worms.

Once, in a conversation with Josh, because I was completely
mystified by his conviction that the embryo is a person, I tried to probe
whether this belief of his might be based on belief in a soul. He denied it. It
did not occur to me that his “person equals organism” ideology might actually
be in conflict with his spiritual beliefs. That is the question on the table. You
write, “Even if atheism were true, a philosopher could hold to an “organism”
view … which is essentially the view Josh defends from a secular viewpoint.”
But Josh is not an atheist nor does he have a secular viewpoint. He believes in an eternal, immaterial soul which is the
bearer of personhood into the next life. The question is, can he defend the
organism view from this viewpoint. In
the two paragraphs of my point 4) I was not arguing against Josh’s position on
the soul, which I respect.  Instead I was
pointing to the difficulty of reconciling this belief with the “organism view.”

Here’s the problem:  If you were identical to your body, as Josh’s
arguments seem to assume, then once your body ceased to exist, it logically
follows that you would too. When people say, without thought, as if nothing
could be more obvious, “I was once an embryo,” they are assuming this identity
of self with organism. (“Since the organism I am was once an embryo, I was once
an embryo.”) But this assumption is inconsistent with life after death, unless
it takes the form of resurrection in the very same body. If the soul can leave
your body behind and still be you, it is no longer obvious that you were once
an embryo, since to know that, you would have to know more about the soul’s
peregrinations than anyone can claim to.

This problem is obscured if you make the ancient and very intuitive
assumption that ‘life’ is some kind of spirit inhabiting an organism and
vivifying it, since then you can conclude that, if an organism is alive, it is
ensouled. But this assumption has been shown by modern biology to be misguided.
Life is a physical process, which does not answer to what most people mean by ‘spirit’.
Once you abandon life=spirit=soul, if you believe that personhood is
soul-based, the question arises: when does a living human organism become
ensouled, and thus become a person? Given that the soul is immaterial and
undetectable, there is no non-controversial way to answer this question. My
strong suspicion is that the fabricators of the pro-life “organism view” (also
called “animalism”, a strange choice for Christians) have done so in part in
order to obscure this troubling question, because a theological answer would
not serve their political and propagandistic purposes. It’s much more powerful
to say this is about science, not religion.