Tripartite Tenets—Part 2

Now to the contentious aspect of our being: Do we have a soul? While there is little doubt about the existence of the body and mind, we find strong debates about whether the soul is real. And it's even harder to define than the mind. While there is plenty of indirect evidence for the reality of the mind, the soul is much less substantial and provable. The dictionary defines it as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.”

That “immortal” part is what some people object to. They might agree with the immaterial part (after all, so is the mind), or even the spiritual aspect, but how does anyone know that it's eternal? Where is there any evidence for that contention? What does spiritual even mean? Isn't the description of the spirit and soul really a circular argument—because we define the soul as the spiritual part of us, and our spirit as the soul of us? In the end, the existence of the soul is essentially a belief—something that many of us simply accept as true. Its truth does not stand on nearly as solid ground as does the mind, however.

So the tripartite view of the human being is a debatable one. The body is unequivocally real (unless you are a hard-core disciple of Descartes). The mind—even though we can't see or touch it—seems also to be real, especially if you understand some of the remarkable findings of neuroscience. What about the soul? Its existence—or not—is very open to interpretation.

I think a more relevant question on the issue is: Does it matter if the soul is real? Does it matter if it's immortal or not? To some people it matters very much. I'm not certain it does. What really matters is that we live a moral life; that we help, rather than harm. Anyone's belief in the soul or even the existence of God is, I think, not essential to creating and living that moral life. And I believe that is an important point—given that there is no irrefutable evidence for either the soul or God. Neither can be irrefutably proven nor banished. In the end, it's not my beliefs that matter; it's my actions.

Tripartite Tenets—Part 1

How do we define a being—in particular, a human being? Of course, we could defer to biology for a definition of a living entity, which describes it as possessing certain characteristics; or to the dictionary, which defines a being as “the nature or essence of a person.” Now, that definition is a bit of an anthropocentric perspective, since it could be argued that a dog or a bat is also a being, and that they have their own essence.

But sticking with the human arena for the moment, there is widespread acceptance that we Homo sapiens are a tripartite entity which consists of a body, a mind, and a soul. It's the union of these three qualities that makes me, me. Each of us is a unique human being, whose body, mind, and soul comprise who we are, and the combination makes each one of us distinct.

Not everyone agrees with this perspective, however. Some would argue that there is no such thing as the soul—that each of us is really a bipartite being. To take a closer look, let me consider the nature of each of these three components of a human being—starting with the least controversial one: the body.

The body is the only one of the three that is a material entity. All of our senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste—will confirm that indeed we have a body. It can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted. I can use any one—or all—of my senses to convince me that the body is real. There's little disagreement that our corporeal essence exists.

How about the mind? Although none of our senses can unequivocally prove it, each of us is quite certain that we do have a mind. It may be immaterial, but common sense and experience tell us that our mind is real—just as real as the body. In fact, Rene Descartes, some 400 years ago, reasoned that our mind is the only real thing about our being that we can be sure of. In a deeply skeptical analysis, he concluded that, although we might be deluded about our body, we can be sure that we are thinking, and thus we exist—even if the only real aspect of us is our mind.

Descartes' thinking aside, how do we know that we have a mind, if we cannot see it or touch it? Many historical arguments and scientific experiments offer us evidence of its reality, yet it remains a diaphanous thing. Is it measurable? Can it be proven? Most of us are convinced we do have a mind—an aspect of us that enables us to be aware, to have experiences, to think (Descartes' point), and to feel. It's the basic faculty of our consciousness.

Modern science has provided lots of evidence for the existence of the mind—through various technologies of brain scans. In fact, the body and mind are intimately connected. Yet many questions remain. How does an immaterial entity like the mind influence, or even direct, the material body? Where does the mind reside—in the brain? Throughout the body? Or even outside the body? Can the mind survive the body's death? Might it be possible some day to upload the mind into a computer and thus achieve some kind of immortality?

More tripartite tenets next time...