Soul/Consciousness

What is the soul, What is consciousness? The word that comes to mind is ineffable i.e. questions that go beyond the scope of language itself. Yet we will attempt to do just that. The two linked philosophical renderings are provided as mere catalysts to trigger thoughts. The discussion is ours. Just as every other MM session, the ultimate goal is to deepen mutual understanding.

The first piece, The Invention Of The Soul, addresses the question: What is the soul? Does the soul even exist or is it merely a potent invention to account for human evolution by “transforming human relationships, encouraging new levels of mutual respect, and greatly increasing the value each person puts on their own and others’ lives.” How does one account for the vague notion of the “felt self"?

We might set the stage by referencing our MM 9/12/16 God And Science discussion invoking the words of Lance Morrow:

Sometime after the Enlightenment, science and religion came to a gentleman’s agreement. Science was for the real world: machines, manufactured things, medicines, guns, moon rockets. Religion was for everything else, the immeasurable: morals, sacraments, poetry, insanity, death and some residual forms of politics and statesmanship. Religion became, in both senses of the word, immaterial. Science and religion were apples and oranges. So the pact said: render unto apples the things that are Caesar’s, unto oranges the things that are God’s. Just as the Maya kept two calendars, one profane and one priestly, so Western science and religion fell into different conceptions of the universe, two different vocabularies.

While questions about the soul reside among such other "immeasurables," that has not discouraged those of the profane world from attempting to bridge the chasm. The attempt might start here with the philosopher Descartes’ assertion of a soul as an added material substance unique to the human subset of the animal kingdom (such others rendered mere machines). Laughable, declared a later French essayist. But quite so, countered the young Charles Darwin.

We are thus left with the question whether the soul represents some sort of added resource (metaphysical?) that is intermingled with the body as a controlling influence, giving life purpose and direction yet possesses a life of its own which survives the body’s terrestrial existence. Maybe so, argues the piece, but that added resource, rather than bestowed by God or genetics, is added by human culture giving rise to “castles in the air.”

Your soul, you see, is your private possession (like a kind of passport) that tags your significance through your conscious sensations. Those sensations are interpreted by your unique biometric markers which anchor your soul to the rock of your existence. No further questions? Good, we’ll move on.

Invoking that other immeasurable religion, we might explore the difference between the mind and the brain, the latter accounting for pure reflex and the former for their feeling i.e. that “felt self.” Christian doctrine thereby cites the marvel by which the flesh (Jesus) came into existence through the spirit (another immeasurable) second only to that marvel of marvels by which the spirit comes into existence through the body.

We are thereby invited into the territory of the spirit, the “soul niche,” in which the claims of the spirit rank as highly as the claims of the flesh, to which the piece teases, “You live there. You know.” Do you? How do you process the notion of a separate and everlasting soul? Do you see your own as perhaps blessed or compromised? Might it be tempered through the trials and tribulations meted out in this (real) world? Or, again, do you leave the whole subject as ineffable, the subject of two entirely different vocabularies?

The above leads to the interrelated mystery and meaning of consciousness itself, described as a figment of imagination. Fortunately the second piece guides us through that particular thicket with the thoughts of Michael Pollan as he sets the stage with the intriguing title The More You Study Consciousness, The Weirder It Gets. Approach accordingly.

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.