Best arguments against the existence and/or immortality of an immaterial soul

Introduction: Hi, I'm notmike. I am certain that this has been milled over and beaten to death, but I am on a time crunch to write this paper and sincerely ask your apologies. I AM NOT attempting to spam you. I hope that this forum may even add to the existing discussion on the matter.

Statement of the Problem: I have a week to finish my term paper for Phil1301. After speaking with the instructor on Thursday I was informed that I must change my topic from the existence of non-being to something more clearly explicable, with more basis in leading schools of thought, and something more plainly philosophical. The particular topic which was recommended for me was the existence or non-existence of a soul. So, all that I have done since the beginning of the semester seems for naught, I cannot drop the class, and so I must labor intensively to produce an 8-10 page postulating either the existence or non-existence of a soul.

Scope/ Methodology: Rene Descartes, in keeping with a trend from at least as far back as Plato, defends a dualist stance with relation to the existential state of the human subject. Descartes thinks he has proven incontrovertibly and completely that we exist as nous, mind, or 'souls.' However, the definitions of these, such key words as consciousness, soul, mind, brain, and others have been called into question. Further, Cartesians have been accused of reaching too far and claiming fact where nothing but faith, at best, can be found to tie ideas together by philosophers such as David Hume, categorical errors by scholars such as Gilbert Ryle, and missing the point according to the thought of great thinkers such as Bishop Berkeley. Through this dialogue I intend to discern a sound and logically based argument for the self/mind as a byproduct of biological processes. Without the intervention of ethereal, divine forces I do not see that we can logically prove the existence of any immaterial substance anymore than I can prove, logically, that the cheshire cat exists as pure non-being. However, I welcome any dissenting views as long as they do not detract from our purpose in this dialogue. Lastly, it would not be altogether bad for us to formulate stronger definitions for what we are talking about, or even, in the spirit of Ryle, we could try at the use of simpler language to describe these complexities of thought and spirit.
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With that said, allow me to include here some notes I have thus far taken regarding this alien topic. Here is what I have (at least digitally):



-Mind and Body are two different things, but that does not make them separate things. Two Manifestations of the same thing.
-Morning Star/Evening Star, Mind/Body Disconnect
-Damaging the brain(organ) will undoubtedly cause an altered level of consciousness. (WEAK ARGUMENT: PC damage does not negate a user)
-However, the conscious is also damaged in predictable ways.
-We have no examples of 'mind or consciousness' separate a brain(organ).
-How do we define 'consciousness'
-Assume a common understanding of 'consciousness' and not an idiosyncratic definition
-It seems empirically necessary that we have a functioning brain to have consciousness.
-Sponges and Jellyfish demonstrate primitive adaptive behaviors. (We need a stronger definition for what Human consciousness entails.)
-Brain is required for consciousness.
-Continuum of degrees of consciousness ANIMAL---->HUMAN---->HIGHER
-Creation of Art, Homo Sapien becomes aware not only of himself, but of the importance of events affecting him in relation to the species. Desires to leave a message.
-Human 'mind' entails a certain deterministic ability. The ability to do or do not.
-rationality, capacity for abstract thought, and its understanding of its own mortality.
-GILBERT RYLE, The Concept of Mind, The proper function of Mind-body language, he suggests, is to describe how higher organisms such as humans demonstrate resourcefulness, strategy, the ability to abstract and hypothesize and so on from the evidences of their behaviour.
-Animal Spirits, Descartes claims, are directed by the 'soul/mind' in some panpsychist manner. (WEAK CLAIM: to affect the direction of one force, an opposing force must necessarily affect the momentum and velocity of said force. This means that the soul would be necessarily required to act physically within the body to direct anything.)

Plz to be helping me

I was speaking purely in the Cartesian sense. Descartes would say that the mind is the soul. The soul is the immaterial part of the human which allows for consciousness, sentience, and self-awareness. In that sense mind and soul are interchangeable for the same thing. In fact, I think most dualists would agree that the 'soul' is either the same as the mind or closely correlated. For example, the soul is desire and mind the conscious thought to fulfill that desire.

I don't think that's a bad place at all to start though. Perhaps we need to begin with a stronger definition of mind, soul, consciousness, brain, and self.

Simply put, a soul is just an idea, conjuration of our thought, and more importantly an interesting metaphor that can give meaning to the part of a human being that we can cannot easily define or grasp. Every person only consists only of their personality and their physicality, right? well to some people, they like to believe there is more. The bigger picture applied to our existence could be called religion. A soul is the essence of a being that will carry on after death, the part of us that isn't tangible. That being said, you are arguing against a religious person who will say, "prove god doesn't exist". Unfortunately if we follow that logic then many things that cannot be disproved are mutually accepted.

If the soul is just an idea, as you say, then there is no soul, just the idea of the soul. But, that is exactly the issue. Is it true that there is no soul? And if, as you say, the soul cannot be disproved, that is no reason to accept that there is a soul, is it?

The mind does not have to exist, necessarily, apart from a body. You cannot show me consciousness absent a brain. Descartes proof was based on the fact that he could think about his mind absent the body. That is where the morning star proof comes in.

Morning Star/ Evening Star:

I trust you are familiar with the morning and evening stars; the first stars to disappear/appear in the morning/evening.

Imagine a world where the evening star exists, but the morning star does not. Just as Descartes imagined a mind without a body, this too is easily done.

HOWEVER, just because the evening star can be imagined absent the morning star does not make them two separate things. These are not stars at all; they are the planet Venus. The absence of one does not negate the other, nor does it create some new heavenly body. They are two manifestations of the same thing.


In the same light, the mind could just as easily, if not more easily, be explained as a byproduct of the evolution of the human brain. We have early examples of the creation of art by prehistoric ancestors of man. This, even on a basic level, shows that there is cognizance of something greater than oneself. These artworks were meant to leave basic information to 'someone.' Today, we are only better able to formulate a world view with regard to our individual legacy. If we deny the evidence of an evolutionary process then we must generally ascertain that God 'injected' man with consciousness at a specific point in time. But at that point we're into a realm I can't enter with this paper...

NOTE: While I certainly would say I'm a religious person, I am disallowed from using ANY theology in this paper. It is to be STRICTLY philosophical. Sadly, religion is a matter of faith, and as much as I may believe in a soul, or afterlife, or even God, I can't prove his existence logically and he isn't exactly knocking on my door with the answer.

There is reason to believe a soul can exist, there is no reason to accept that a soul is real unless convincing evidence suggests otherwise.

There is no difference, perhaps you had trouble understanding the meaning of what i wrote.

There is reason to believe a soul can exist, there is no reason to accept that a soul is real unless convincing evidence suggests otherwise.

There are more than enough reason to want to believe a soul can exist. People might find comfort in the idea that a part of them will live on forever. Whatever it may be, it's understandable to want to believe in the idea of a soul.

There is no reason to believe a soul is real due to lack of evidence proving such.

The difference being, there is reason to desire the belief of a soul yet there is no reason to actually believe a soul exists.

I'm not sure how else to put, it's possible i could be putting this in troublesome wording.

Let's put it this way...

There is an imaginary place called heaven and it's full of lots of awesome stuff.

Being that it's such an awesome place, one would want to believe it's real. One would really hope that heaven is real.

There is no evidence to suggest that it is real, so actually believing in heaven would be unacceptable, being that there is no evidence to suggest it is real.

There is reason to wish it were real

there is no reason to believe it is real

You just have to try harder... lol. Its not the only example, though it is likely the strongest of them. The reason being that for many, many years the two 'stars' where named Hesperus and Phosphorus respectively. Its not that you're imagining that Venus does not exist, but rather that one of its appearances is unknown to you. You imagine a world in which it only appears as one, separate thing. This is ultimately a false assumption, but so too may be Descartes assumption that the mind is some immaterial substance.

Another argument, this time assuming the mind as immaterial substance is how it affects the body. Descartes claims that this intangible soul interacts with the body by altering the direction of 'animal spirits' within their respective neural pathways. Animal spirits being natural forces of motion which move swiftly (that's where spirit comes from is the speed at which they act) through the nerves or some ****. NOT, actual, animal ghosts or anything. Anywho, for the 'soul' or 'mind' to alter the direction of these processes, they would have to physically interact with them. Descartes didn't have the conservation of energy/momentum in his day. If you change the direction of something you also have to change the velocity and momentum of that object. That requires physical action.

Another concern is the apparent physicality of the soul. It is at the very least tied to the welfare of the body. If we did some mad scientist experiments and cut open someone's head, we could then predictably alter their level and type of consciousness. We could stick prods in the brain and make them say all sorts of depraved ****, or forget their name. As the brain is damaged, consciousness (and the soul as the seat of consciousness) is directly affected. HOWEVER, this is weak! A user of a PC can't do **** if his PC is compromised by a virus, or we throw it off of a cliff.

To account for this, I must also bring to the discussion that no one has any memories of pre-birth. Some claim to have them, but how could they or we certainly know it was anything but an anomaly or delusion? Hume argued adamantly, and this gets into the immortality of the soul, that the passage of such a soul would likely be as unmemorable as the coming of it. He also argued that the soul appears fragile and the mind weak in the face of such little importance to an immortal thing. If it does exist, then certainly it is not immortal. Just look at when one becomes ill, or stressed, and especially during sleep. During sleep, the conscious acts quite suspiciously. Dreams have no real sensible pattern except to a mystic. For some, sleep is absolutely nothing at all, they have no recollection of how long or even that they had fallen asleep.

Aside from this, Hume argues some other points ferociously, but I haven't actually gotten the full grasp of him yet so I'll hope you can help me there.

Like I said, a significant part of me believes in the existence of a soul and the immortality of that soul, likely as a byproduct of being raised by a woman who's life dream was to be a missionary nurse. However, the empirical evidence weighs heavily against it. I'd love to argue Berkeley and say the 'soul' is the only 'real' thing... everything else is just awareness of ideas and perception of other 'souls,' but this professor is a dick and he ain't havin' that.


Then again... we are nihilists, Lebowski! We believe in nothing!