I've Got Soul and So Do You

Do you have a soul? Yes, but not in the way that you think. Modern day thinking of the soul depicts it as a “ghost in the machine” sort of way. Your body is this bio-mechanical organism and your soul is this mysterious immaterial substance that, in some way, controls the body but is distinctly separate from it. This view is commonly called substance dualism, or Cartesian dualism (taking after the philosophy of Descartes). In substance dualism, you are essentially an immaterial thinking thing, completely separate from your body. The body, in contrast, is its own substance that is separate from you, but in some way or another, you are able to control this physical body and make it do what your soul wills.

This view is not without its problems. For one, it fails to explain why it is the soul is attached to a particular chunk of matter and can’t freely remove itself from the body and inhabit some other body. If I am a completely separate immaterial substance from my body, the fact that my soul is restricted to my body and only my body remains mysterious. Why can’t I leave this body and inhabit, say, a television? What is it about this body that chains my soul to it? Additionally, how an immaterial soul can interact and command the body is similarly mysterious. Causation in the natural world is almost exclusively dependent on two material things reacting with one another.  Yet the soul, being immaterial, is some how able to transfer some ‘oomph’ (if you will) to the body and cause it to move. As such, the modern conception of the soul is riddled with holes that leave it sinking.

Before discussing the view of the soul that I think is correct, some history is in order. In Latin, the word “soul” is anima. In the Ancient/Medieval era, the term refers to anything alive, or animated. Thus, according to Aristotle and, later on, Thomas Aquinas, you have a soul just by the mere fact that you are alive. Of course, what this implies is that so does every other living thing. Plants have souls, fish have souls, dogs have souls, etc. What makes something a living thing is that it has an intrinsic principle of motion. It is a self-mover, and the soul is this intrinsic principle that moves the body. To be sure, this view of the soul says nothing about whether it is material or immaterial in nature, only that it is what makes the thing in question alive.

Remember that under hylomorphism, every material thing is composed of a substantial form (what makes it what it is) and matter (what it is made of). In animated things, the soul is the substantial form of the thing. Since there are different kinds of living things, there are different kinds of souls. Aristotle breaks down the soul in to three distinct types: the vegetative soul, the sensible soul, and the rational soul.

The vegetative soul is the soul possessed by plants. It is responsible for things like taking in nutrients, growth, reproduction, and so forth. The sensible soul is the soul possessed by nonhuman animals. Like the vegetative soul, the sensible soul can also do things like take in nutrients, grow, reproduce, etc., but it is also capable of receiving sense-impressions. It can do things like hear, smell, taste, react according to instinct, etc. Lastly, the rational soul subsumes the vegetative and sensible soul while also allowing the capacity of rational thought. The rational soul can reason, conceive of universals, abstract and deduce ideas from other ideas, and so forth. This is the soul held by humans and other rational agents (if there are any others).

The Ancient/Medieval view of the soul has no explicit immaterial conception attached to it. Vegetables have souls, but they aren’t a separate immaterial substance that moves the body. The soul is nothing more than what makes the body alive, and no extra metaphysical baggage is necessary. This is not to say, however, that they didn’t believe the soul (at least, the human soul) is immaterial, only that there is nothing about the notion of the soul specifically that leads one to believe it is immaterial in nature. In my previous post I mentioned that the more we study a thing’s behaviors the more we have an understanding of its substantial form. When it comes to the rational soul, the more we look at the behaviors it engages in we learn that the soul of the human being is not like the souls of plants and animals—it has an immaterial aspect to it.

To be sure, this immaterial aspect of the soul is not a completely separate substance in its own right. It is a part of the substance. In substance dualism, there are two separate substances interacting: one immaterial (you) and the other material (your body). In the Aristotelian/Thomistic model, you are completely one substance that is composed of two distinct metaphysical parts—matter and form. There is only one substance, but this substance is dualistic qua composite, not qua substance. This view is called hylomorphic dualism. You are a hylomorphic composite just like every other material thing, except your substantial form has an immaterial aspect to it that other substantial forms don’t. So, what exactly are the reasons to posit the soul of the human being as immaterial? This question will be discussed in a future post.