The Birth of Soul

The "soul" is perhaps the poster child example of a "meme". What is essentially "us" survives death. Stripped to its fundamentals, this is the idea that the "mind" exists in some kind of parallel universe, independent of the physical world we all inhabit on a daily basis.

Modern versions of this idea set aside the parallel universe and assume that we can somehow "upload" ourselves into computers. This preposterous idea flies in the face of anything we know about the brain, but it has roots in the ancient lore of the soul. We just can't let go of the idea that we are ghosts that can be somehow set free.

"Idealism" takes the view that we can know only the world of the mind - indeed reality itself is the illusion. This is simply another variant of the concept that mind and world are fundamentally disconnected.

Where did this idea come from?

I think there is a simple answer. Imagine yourself to be a hunter-gatherer way back tens of thousands of years ago. Somebody dies. What do you make of this? What do you think has happened? Reasoning as humans do, you look for something similar. The only similar state of affairs that would occur to you is sleep. The person must be asleep but can't wake up. You know from personal experience that, during sleep, you dream. You do all kinds of normal things in your dreams, like hunt and avoid dangerous animals. You do strange things too, like fly and talk with the dead. It is perfectly logical to assume that your dead companion is dreaming but can't wake up. In fact, he is stuck in an alternate universe - a "dream world". From time to time, you may even visit this person in the dream world and chat with him. Conclusion: the essential nature of the person survives and does not depend on the physical body. Everyone has a "soul".

This is all very logical and not, as some would claim, "superstitious". It is not, as many assume, simply the result of wishful thinking or denial of mortality. It was a good theory based on a available evidence.

Over thousands of years and hundreds of civilizations, this meme has morphed into a myriad of religions, all based on the fundamental assumption that death is like sleep and we go on after death to live in a realm eventually populated by dead people and gods. Eventually, the oldest profession (the priesthood) arose, providing a living for those who claim to have special knowledge of he alternate universe and a unique ability to communicate with the spirits who inhabit that world. By the time we arrive in historical times, religions have become competing unwieldy tangles of mythology and guesswork. People are willing to kill over the precise details of religious theories. It's good to remember the assumption they all make: the existence of the soul. Imagine a world where all of a sudden people stopped believing in the "soul". To cite just one example, Islam would vanish like a popped party balloon. The attitude we characterize as "extremism" absolutely depends on belief in the immortal soul.

Even the minority of us who reject the idea of the immortal soul are still stuck with the idea that the "mind" (the modern word for soul) is a rather small, personal thing, rattling around in our brains. Our "mind" is something that mysteriously arises in the brain. Something to do with "consciousness". But this is just the soul stripped of its immortal qualities and trapped in our heads.

Many of the posts in this blog and the sister blog "Programmable Ape" explore the idea that "mind" is only partly a private thing. For example, you cannot understand the "mind" of any person without taking into the account language of his "inner voice" or the "programming" provided by his culture. It's also true that one evolutionary purpose of the mind is to accurately model the real world [1]. While it is true that this model is imperfect, it must also be admitted that the "real word" plays a large part it our experience - the "contents" of our minds. It almost seems that we don't learn a lot of useful information about "mind" from the fact that we seem to need a brain to have a mind. This is why we have entire branches of Science devoted to the study of how minds work in general without any specific reference to how the brain works. On the other hand, we see a million papers published every year in neuroscience but few that shed any light on how the mind actually works and none that tell us why it feels the way it does to have a mind (or does it feel this way to have a part of a mind?)

I conclude that we need to seek analogies and models for the mind that don't rely on the "trapped soul" metaphor. The mind is not an "epiphenomenon" arising out of  the complex neural structure of the brain, nor are our minds some kind of ultra-sophisticated computer. While it is far from the whole story, we can start by imagining the mind to be an active subset of the incredibly subtle and powerful "software" of human language [2]. If we imagine a brain that lacks this capability, we wind up with brains that lacks language - the brains possessed by the rest of the animal kingdom. The vast gap between the mind of a human and the smartest non-human animal gives a hint of the importance of this single capability. The example of language hints at the fact that "mind" is something shared among many humans and ultimately bound to the universe humans inhabit (what language is about). This is very far from the "dream world" theory of the mind. If there is to be an "alternate universe", it must be the world of the mind itself, which we all understand (in non-mystical terms) to differ from the "real world" in specific ways revealed in laboratory experiments and everyday experience. If we reject idealism, we must accept that both realms (mind and the real world) are real and in intimate communication with each other. Neither is "imaginary".

This view of "mind" also takes us away from the fashionable assumption that the mind is somehow identical to the brain. No amount of billion-dollar brain initiatives will uncover the secrets of the mind. The mind is not to be discovered in a "wiring diagram" (the "connectome"). It is more likely to be discovered in studies that reveal he structure of language, human society and reality itself. The brain is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of "mind", although in humans, it seems to be necessary but not sufficient. Accordingly, the wiring diagram of the human brain will not tell us much about what mind is.

In parallel to our efforts to re-imagine the "mind", it makes sense to reconsider what we mean by "self". How are these two ideas related? Modern psychology and experimental philosophy is teaching us a lot about the "self". For example, we learn that our sense of continuity with the past is very fallible (which is not the same thing as an "illusion"). We learn that our concept of free will is elusive in the laboratory.  We learn that "personality" depends as much on context as on some innate attribute of the soul. In general, the "self" is subject to exploration from the "outside". In fact a case may be made for the view that the "self" is the way we explain our behavior to others and even to "ourselves". Behind all this data gathering is the unstated question: What is it like to be X? What is i like to be me? That is a question that endlessly fascinates us and drives many forms of art. In all our investigations, we find that the "self", like the "mind"often seems like a small wave in a vast ocean of real people in the real world.

It is difficult to accept the Zen contention that the self is an illusion. It is illusive, dynamic and ephemeral, but this does not make it "unreal". It is, in fact, the mysterious foundation of all experience.

[1] It is always dangerous to assume that evolution has a "purpose". To me, such claims don't pass the sniff test. It is equally possible that the primary job of the mind is to support society by, for example, supporting face recognition and fidelity of communication.

[2] While we use the term "language" for the way we instruct computers, computer languages differ from human languages in many respects, the most important being that a speaker of a human language knows (or thinks he knows) what he is talking about.  Computers don't "know" the information they manipulate any more than a car knows about internal combustion.

Authority: The Core of Religion

There are many reasons why humans are attracted to the idea of a spirit-filled Universe.

"Theory of mind", which gives he brain a perception (not just a "theory") that other beings are conscious and act with intent just as we do. These days, we see this as a brain function that does not reflect reality, just as the illusion that things get smaller as they move away from us. Even our modern, scientifically-trained minds make us see life where there is movement.

Another consequence of they way we are built is a survival strategy that involves manipulation of the environment (tool use being the most obvious aspect of it). We expect to control the world around us and we are frustrated at the limitation of our power to do so. It is easy to imagine that the world can be (or actually is) controlled by a mind and a mind can be persuaded to help us do things we can't do for ourselves.

The illusion of time is strong in the human brain. We don't remember the past as well as we think but we're pretty good at using what we do remember to sharpen our survival skills. Almost by accident, in combination with our language skills, this gives us a "racial memory" that we fill with a mythical past that stretches beyond what we remember as individuals.

We are also dimly aware of the future, which is full of peril, especially to our own lives, which seem to be pre-ordained to end as mysteriously as they began. Quite naturally, we think about this a lot and wrap our thoughts with myths and stories.

Finally, language us a curse as well as a blessing. Language is unable to effectively describe its own limitations. We are always susceptible to the fallacy of confusing words with the things they stand for or, in the big picture, confusing stories with life itself.

But all this doesn't explain the role of what we refer to as a "religion". It doesn't explain the idea of "heresy" or our willingness to kill those who tell different stories, perceive different spirits behind reality and expect a different future. What I have said about human psychology is far from controversial, yet "religion" uniquely sets itself against Science, vigorously and sometimes violently defending the view that the alternate reality it constructs is not a mere product of human creativity but an account of reality itself. To the "believer", the world we live in is the illusion.

Religion is a byproduct of "civilization". We generally date the rise of civilization (literally, people living in cities) from the approximately 4000 BC, where we start to see fortified towns, kings, armies and writing to tell us what was going on. For thousands of years, the story of civilization is a chronicle of endless war and destruction as the number of "civilizations" dwindled and their power grew, along with the destructive power of their armies. People started dying in these wars by the tens of thousands. Hereditary Kings started to loot their neighbors to increase the wealth and power of their families.

But still, the people in these city-states had the same psychological needs as they had had for at last 30,000 years. They still saw their fortunes controlled by spirits, often the local god of a city or town. Sometimes the spirit behind natural forces (such as the storm or the sea).  Reading the Old Testament, perhaps the oldest volume of ancient history in popular use, we see a new role of God: He is responsible for victory in war (along with the slaughter of the enemy) and, conversely, defeat in war is when we fail to please God by following priestly law. This is a neat equation that keeps the priests in business no matter what happens.

In this context, what was going on in the mind of the citizen - a mind that has not changed since the days when "philosophy" was stories you shared with close relatives around a fire?

"Theory of Mind" has evolved into a complex system of theology.  The alternate universe is populated with an "official" pantheon, including gods who need to be flattered into sponsoring human activity by paying a new class of citizen: the priesthood. Vocabulary expands, the stories are written down and assume the status of what we would now call "history" and "Science". Cultural "memory" is collapsed and simplified, creating the illusion that current mythology is what it has been "forever", obscuring the role of human creativity.

Ability to control the world has expanded in some ways but narrowed in others. Weapons of war have improved to the point where they are more of a threat to the average citizen than a guarantee of survival. While agriculture has provided more calories per person, it has also made the city-state far more vulnerable to natural forces, such as drought and flood. Concentration of wealth has made the city-state attractive plunder for neighbors. Plundering neighbors has become an attractive alternative to finding new "raw" agricultural land. And yet, the illusion of control along with the expectation of control has grown. The fortunes of the city state seem to be in the hands of Kings and Priests. Compared to the freedom of the hunter-gatherer, the control of the individual over his own life has been reduced to the vanishing point.

In these civilizations, we begin to see an alliance between the priesthood and the Kings, which ties the political fortunes of the ruling class to the mythology of the culture. Failure to observe religious rites becomes treason. Acceptance of priestly authority becomes equivalent to acceptance of Kingly authority. For dissenters, it is no longer possible to just pack up and leave, since the whole world is chopped up into territory controlled by Kings.  Challenge to this arrangement is relatively recent. It dominated world politics for the last 2,000 years at least, but the system is still with us. A visit to 21st century Saudi Arabia will provide a modern experience of this kind of culture. No time machine is required.

But the strange thing is that the ordinary citizen has lost his natural relationship with the "spirit world". He still craves some measure of control. He still has a deep urge to influence the future and is still in full possession of the illusion that the spirits may be bribed or flattered into bending he normal course of history. How can this urge be satisfied? Well, you go to the experts: those who claim to know the mind of God. Those who know the rituals that are effective to bend the sympathy of God your way. Why just one God? The reason is simple. More than one God would imply competition for the priests. Even so, minor competition is allowed through the proliferation of thousands of local "saints", who stand in for the ancient Gods who ruled the territory of a single city. You can pick your Saint to make your case before the "one" God. If you can't shake your instinct to plead your case before an idol, you can still get your "fix" by praying to the saint of your choice. Donations appreciated of course.

But how does this work? Why do people accept the dry formulae and wordy constructions as substitutes for their in-bred passion for spiritual experience? The simple answer is "authority". They go to someone who is guaranteed to have the right answer. Not surprisingly, this authority will make sure that you distrust your own judgment, even convincing you that following your own mind is a mortal sin. Priesthood is not a good choice for a small business start-up.

Where does the priest get his authority? The answer (ludicrous as it may seem) is that he got it by "laying on of hands" by priests who had the authority, who got it from other priests, going all the way back to Peter, who got is authority from Jesus. Assuming that "being right" can be passed on like a virus this way, we are left with the obvious question of why we should think Jesus was definitely right about everything.

For Jesus to be right about everything, he needs to be "divine", a God. For this to work, you need to believe in gods, specifically this god and particularly not other gods. That's a huge leap and, historically, it has been opposed literally as soon as it arose. It was heresy punishable by death in Judea (it's why Jesus was crucified) and the "Christians" were being put to death for treason and/or heresy for centuries. Eventually, the divine status of Jesus was decided by committee and enforced by the time-old alliance between the priesthood and the King (Roman Emperor Constantine in this case).

It is important to understand that Jesus needs to be divine so He can claim ultimate authority, not the other way around (i.e. Jesus is not "right" because he's God). Before the era of political religion, the Gods were much more fun. "Infallibility" was not among their powers.

A similar story can be told about Islam, where the authority of Mohammed comes directly from Allah, but requires frequent slaughter of dissenters to this very day.

What about Buddha, who is so innocently portrayed to Western readers as "just a man". Anyone serious about Buddhism will quickly discover that a "real" Buddhist or Zen master traces his authority all the way back to Buddha by a process that's not very different from laying on of hands. The "Dharma", the teachings of Buddha have been elaborated and expanded by these hereditary authorities to create enough variation to fit just about any lifestyle. The Dharma itself is claimed to be eternally true (i.e., not subject to discussion or verification), very much like the "Word" of the Gospel of John, which effectively claimed he teachings of Jesus to be on par with, say, the law of gravity. Buddhist masters don't tend to go around making war on dissenters, but they don't spare scorn for "Westernized" versions of Buddhism that sell books in the West. At least according to the Buddhist masters, heresy is still possible in Buddhism, even though Buddha himself told his followers to be skeptical of everything, including his own teachings.

But what if we reject "religion" wholesale? Are we then able to jettison the workings of our brains that make us see spirits behind every tree and impose "meaning" on every experience.

No.

Our propensity for religion is primary. We invented Gods to satisfy our need to make sense of the world and feel some slight measure of control. Especially for those not blessed with a creative mind, nation states, political leaders and political philosophy will do as well. Even Science can be twisted into a source of authority by those who say things like "the majority of Scientists agree ..." or "Science says ...".

In fact, "Science" only tells us what is not true. Science is perpetually in the business of overturning authority. Attempts to co-opt Science for political reasons tend to come to a bad end, as do political movements that systematically deny Science.

What Science has done is to shoot down all support for any particular version of "God" put up by endless defenders of the concept.  Beginning with the Greeks, philosophy has provided us with an impressive tool kit to defend ourselves against fallacy. We are now able to use language more carefully than ever before if we chose to do so. World Religions, based as they are on a vast tissue of fallacy, cannot survive logical analysis, let alone "real world" verification.

Perhaps for the first time in human history, we can enjoy a complete divorce between what we know about the real world and what is claimed by human authority, especially what is claimed by political authority. We are also more aware than ever about the difference between what we "know" and what is actually happening in the Universe. Paradoxically, this can free our creativity, enjoy our lives and deal with our fears without paying a tax to priests for the privilege. There is no longer a need to judge the fantasies of other people as "false" or worthy of suppression.

In spite of the official claim of Science to provide only negative information, it turns out that we know an incredible amount about the world. So much, in fact, that we are amused by the world view of the "ancients" who, somehow, are regarded as authorities on everything except what turned out to be observably false. What is noticeably different about what we know now is that our knowledge is so impersonal. It's not as useful or apparently relevant as what, for example, the authors of the Bible thought they knew about creation (Genesis is a moral fable. The Big Bang is disturbingly impersonal). For example, astrology pretends to tell us about ourselves and our future but astronomy is almost entirely irrelevant. This illustrates my point that we have divorced knowledge from human fantasy. We are no longer in a position to determine truth by decree or authority.

Truth is now discovered "out there", not in the mind of some creative theologian. But there is also a uniquely human "truth" about our shared hopes and experience. It's important to know and appreciate the difference.