Yes, we do have a soul: What this means.

In the course of writing my previous post on the inability of neuroscientists to pinpoint where in the brain or its processes the human's intellectual and decision-making capabilities arise, it struck me that many people are likely to be unfamiliar with the concept of the soul, perhaps only knowing of  the term from its use in "soul music" or the saying, "It's got no soul!" (as in Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street").

Fundamentally, the soul is of central importance in understanding the human person because it endows the person with the dignity that we find in declarations of human rights and, generally, in claims that everyone must be treated equally and justly. 

The only way the human person can claim a dignity above the rest of the natural world, and an equality among peers, is through the mutual acknowledgement that each person has a transcendent character,  a quality that is beyond the material. This is often referred to as the brain-mind mystery, as discussed in that previous post.

In other words, if the person is held to be only of a material nature, then there is no solid base for the human to claim a dignity above any other element of the natural world, deflating any likelihood of  successfully creating a system of moral behaviour that would be upheld in society. 

We can see this breakdown of the moral order in Western countries with the secularization of the culture. This has led to the Godless principle that there are no boundaries on human behaviour. as expressed by US Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy in 1992: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." 

Neuroscientists, as we saw in my previous post, recognise that their research has shown the limitations of attempts to discover in the brain's functions the source of human consciousness, or of the power of reasoning, or of the independence of the will, which are what Catholics refer to as the spiritual faculties of the human person.

As well as making possible self-reflection, meaning our consciousness, the soul is where we exercise our intellect and free will, where we believe and love, sin, and yearn for goodness, beauty, truth, and for God.

What all of us are dealing with as we explore our human capabilities are features of human existence that have been puzzling people through all time. We have the ancients, then the Greeks and Romans, and the creators of Hinduism and Buddhism, and the varied array of animists over the millennia, who have laboured over the same matter, an awareness that the body is not all that we are. A typical example is the case of  the Dyaks and Sumatrans who, as anthropologists in what is now Indonesia found, bound various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of what animated the body. 

However, it is the Catholic doctrine of the soul that is most useful to examine because it enshrines the principles of ancient speculation, and is ready to receive and assimilate the fruits of modern research. 

First, this post will clarify what Catholics mean by the soul, and then it will provide some scientific insight into why there should be respect for its doctrine.

The human person is a single entity defined by material and spiritual components such that the spiritual soul is metaphysically the “form of the body” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 362-368).

This phrase is defined by the Church. It means that a human body can only exist as a holistic and functional reality in the cosmos through the spiritual soul. And by corollary, it means that the spiritual soul holds all the material powers of the body in integral unity as human and personal. 

It is also Catholic doctrine that body and soul do not share the same genesis because matter and spirit are not one common order of existence. This need not imply any opposition between matter and spirit. Both matter and spirit are ultimately from God’s creative hand. The body comes from the parents, but the soul is fused with the body to be the "holistic reality" spoken of above (CCC 382). Another way this is described is that the soul animates the body, so that we are an ensouled body (rather than an embodied soul). 

The soul has a natural aptitude and need for existence in the body. But it is not wholly immersed in matter, because its higher operations are intrinsically independent of the organism. This "rational soul"  is produced by special creation and is of a higher order than the "vegetative" and "sensitive" souls that are part of the different levels of the purely material world.

Therefore, the soul is that component of human nature that is fully integrated with the body as with the individual and personal centre of control and direction, namely the intellect and will. In this, the body, with its inherited instincts, is acknowledged as integral to our thinking and self-determination, but it is not the full picture.

One writer goes into greater detail:

Our brains no doubt work on the same patterns as other brains in nature, but the human quest for knowledge is not just bounded by the needs of survival. We indulge in pure speculation and seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Our minds delve far beyond the things we can reach directly with the physical senses. We reach out to the very boundaries of creation and beyond. This is both the wonder and the burden of being human.

We also yearn for more than just the satisfaction of bodily needs. The human will and creativity faculty are a further witness to our freedom from the environmental harmonics of animal urge and instinct. We actively shape and develop the environment itself based on our own insight into the structure and patterns of Nature. At our best we do this in harmony with the laws of creation, enhancing the world with our own creative developments and inventiveness. Tragically, we can also break the laws of our own well-being and perhaps even the natural harmony of the planet we live upon. We are not supposed to do this, of course, but the fact that we can do so still demonstrates the transcendent power of the human spirit. No purely material creature could break the material laws of directional control that shape and define its very essence.

All of this shows that we are not just creatures who are controlled and directed. We are creatures who exercise control and direction. That is to say, we are not just matter; we are mind as well. Our fairly constant and active consciousness of our physical environment furnishes the foundational experience of what mind and matter are.

The writer goes on, offering this interrogation of evolution:

If it is true that evolution produces more and more powerful brains as it progresses, and this requires more and more control from the environment to ensure its meaningful and balanced behaviour, then, somewhere along the line, things must reach a natural limit. Nature could produce a supreme brain that was still within its control, but if things were to develop one step beyond that, then it would indeed have created something that was out of control and could not be given a programme of life - an animal that had no place or meaning in Nature.

Such a creature would be un-natural by definition. So, in fact, such an event could never happen - at least not on its own. Everything in the universe, including our own brains, is built up on this principle of control and direction, and Nature cannot break its own fundamental law without the whole process of the universe being undermined and coming to grief.

And yet evidently something has given us power over the physical environment, power to work out the laws of nature themselves and control them for our own ends, power even to destroy Nature itself with our technology if we are foolish enough. It looks like the impossible has actually happened. How do we explain this?... 

This ‘new power’ cannot be something material, something which arises from the organisation of atoms and molecules and electrical energies of the universe... Therefore it can only come from one other source. It must come directly from God. The human body comes about from the seed and egg of parents in common with other animals, but the soul is created immediately by God’s loving command and wise, eternal will. Whenever a new human life is conceived the soul must also be there. This is because the formula or pattern that makes up the human body makes no sense and has no place in Nature without the [soul] to hold it together and give it a meaning and a purpose.

All the preceeding gives some insight into the Catholic, and largely Christian, doctrine of the soul. But it would be a sin of omission if I did not add some information about the work of Christians in conducting and analysing research in the realm of consciousness and its transcendental nature.

A good starting point for futher information is the 2015 book The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason. Here, the author, Robert Spitzer, examines the research being done that highlights the "transphysical soul" and the "possibility and plausibility of [our ] transcendent nature and destiny."

One quote given in Spitzer's text is from Sir John Eccles (died 1997), the Australian neurophysiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his research on brain synapses. He did a lot of research into how the soul could interact with the material brain.  In a 1990 text he expressed his dismay at the boundaries set by some scientists in what they would accept as to the brain's capabilities:

The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons. Such as presumed action is alleged to be incompatible with the conservation laws of physics, in particular of the first law of thermodynamics. This objection would certainly be sustained by nineteenth century physicists, and by neuroscientists and philosophers who are still ideologically in the physics of the nineteenth century, not recognizing the revolution wrought by quantum physicists in the twentieth century.

So it is not the Christians who are backward, but those with heuristic platforms that they will not shift from. Spitzer, a Jesuit priest and scholar,  updates Eccles' view with an overview of more recent scientific contributions, including that a "whole new area of biophysics is developing around  [the use of quantum theory]: neuroquantology".  

In concluding this post, I turn to a summary of Spitzer's extensive analysis of evidence for the soul: 

Father Spitzer's work provides [...]traditional and contemporary evidence for God and the transphysical soul. It shows that we are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death; that we are self-reflective beings able to strive toward perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty; that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God. If we underestimate these truths, we undevalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny.   

References:

Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907-1912. Access here. 

Robert Spitzer, 2015, The Soul's Upward Yearning, Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason, Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Faith.org.uk, "Body and Soul - Renewing Catholic Orthodoxy", Editorial, FAITH Magazine, March - April 2008. England. Access here.

Stephen Beale, "What Are We? Body and Soul…and Spirit?", Catholic Exchange, Access here. 

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