After-Life, Out of Body, and Disembodied I Part A

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En provenance du cours de Rutgers the State University of New Jersey

Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences - Unit 2: Belief Systems

136 notes

Rutgers the State University of New Jersey

Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences - Unit 2: Belief Systems

136 notes

Throughout history, the vast majority of people around the globe have believed they have, however defined, a “soul.” While the question of whether the soul exists cannot be answered by science, what we can study are the causes and consequences of various beliefs about the soul and its prospects of surviving the death of the body. Why are soul and afterlife beliefs so common in human history? Are there adaptive advantages to assuming souls exist? Are there brain structures that have been shaped by environmental pressures that provide the foundation of body/mind dualism that is such a prominent feature of many religions? How do these beliefs shape the worldviews of different cultures and our collective lives? What is the role of competing afterlife beliefs in religion, science, politics, and war? This course explores several facets of this relatively unexplored but profoundly important aspect of human thought and behavior. The course consists mainly of 70 to 80 minute lectures, typically broken up into 3 segments, recorded from a course offered by Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences. These videos include slides and some embedded video clips. Most lectures are accompanied by slides used during the lecture, also including recommended reading assignment which may provide additional opportunities to reflect on your studies. Due to the lengthiness of this class and natural progression, the online course has been separated into 3 units, this is Unit 2.

À partir de la leçon

After-Life, Out of Body, and Disembodied: What's the Evidence I

After-Life, Out of Body, and Disembodied I Part A22:42

After-Life, Out of Body, and Disembodied I Part B20:14

After-Life, Out of Body, and Disembodied I Part C28:21

Rencontrer les enseignants

Prof. Daniel M. Ogilvie
Professor of Psychology
Psychology
Prof. Leonard W. Hamilton
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology

Thanks for being here, it's a pleasure.

I'll very gladly take on the challenge that Dan mentioned, from Eben Alexander.

I'm also, as a matter of fact, writing a book myself on the topic of the soul.

The topic of these two lectures, today and on Tuesday, is the soul on trial,

and the book that I'm in the middle of writing is called The Emperor's New Soul,

and you can tell a lot, I'm sure, from the title.

So when a new movie comes out, when Hollywood puts out a new movie,

you usually get a sneak preview or a trailer.

And that's what I intend to do today and on Tuesday,

I want to give you a sneak preview of some of the main ideas that I'm discussing

in the books, some of the main conclusions that I have reached in the book.

Now I want to start by giving you a preview of what those are,

the main conclusions, at least the one's I'll be talking about here.

And then I'm going to give you all the evidence.

The first important conclusion that I'm going to reach is that the traditional

soul, the idea that there is something non-physical or

immaterial about human beings.

Something that is psychologically potent that gives us something,

like perhaps consciousness or free will, or a moral compass.

And something that,

at the same time, can potentially survive the death of our physical bodies.

That making such a claim is, not just I'm going to show you, a religious or

a theological or a metaphysical claim, it's also, above all, a scientific claim.

And it's just not one scientific claim, it's in fact a series of scientific

claims about physics, about biology, about psychology, and neuroscience.

So that's the first important conclusion.

And that won't take too long to establish.

The second conclusion, and

now you can easily see what follows from the first conclusion.

If, in fact, claims pertaining to an immaterial soul are scientific claims,

that means that they can be evaluated objectively.

The way we decide the age of the Earth, when and how the universe started, and

a host of other questions that can be answered objectively.

In other words, we'll be able to decide whether there are good reasons,

objective valid reasons to believe in the soul or not.

And what I'll show you, as a next step, is contrary to what many people believe.

Mostly lay people because as I'll show you, scientists believe otherwise.

Unlike what the majority of people in the United States believe.

In fact, there's little evidence.

In fact, there's no real serious evidence that souls exist of the type that

we will discuss.

Moreover, I'm going to show you that postulating the existence of

a traditional soul clashes with what we know about modern science,

what we know about physics, what we know about biology,

what we know about psychology, what we know about neuroscience.

So in addition to, there not being any serious evidence, postulating such

an entity creates all kinds of problems for established scientific conclusions.

To make things worse, so

to speak, we'll see that there is plenty of solid evidence, in fact,

overwhelming evidence for what is called materialism or sometimes physicalism.

Mainly the notion that our minds very broadly construed.

Including the content of our consciousness,

arises from the operation of our brains.

And so in other words that we are, our brains and bodies and the organs,

and the cells, and the atoms, and the molecules, that compose them.

And that there's no additional nonphysical,

non-material ingredient that is part of the mix in making up a human being.

But then I want to end with a positive message because I can see the look on many

of your faces thinking, oh wow, I've never heard that very often before.

I wanted to show you, and

I'll spend some time next time that there is in fact nothing to lose morally,

spiritually or aesthetically by giving up our soul beliefs.

Of course, whether you do so or not is a personal matter.

I'm not going to enforce conclusions on you.

You are free to believe, obviously, whatever you want.

I'm just going to present a series of arguments against the traditional

notion of the soul.

That's the plan.

Now, I want to spell out an important caveat, which is that the book itself,

which will become available in the future,

I'm still in the middle of writing it, discusses many issues related to the soul.

And I have with you today and on Tuesday just about two and a half hours.

So I'll be able to talk about just the tip of the iceberg.

There are many other important questions,

sometimes background assumptions that we may not all share.

About how science works,

what evidence actually is, that I will not have time to discuss.

So bear in mind that you're seeing just the tip of the iceberg.

Of course, I'll be delighted to take your questions at the end of today's session.

We'll probably have some time left, in this room.

And next time in a side room that will be made available to us,

a small group of you and myself for more in-depth discussion.

And this is something I always look forward to.

It's extremely enriching to me and it's always lots of fun to talk to students

about these very important questions, and I'm sure you've wondered about yourselves.

If you're interested,

I gave an hour long recorded interview on the topics discussed

in the book at Temple University, recorded by their media services.

And this will soon be made available online, and as soon as it's the case,

I will forward the link and the email to professors Oglesby and Hamilton and

they can then make this available to you in case you want to hear more about

these topics.

So let me give you a sense of what the agenda is for today and for

Tuesday, more specifically.

I'm going to start today by discussing two perennial, two traditional

views on human nature, on who we are, on what we're made of, on how we function.

The traditional dualistic view which incorporates a soul as part of

the makeup of human beings and the view known as materialism or physicalism.

Both of which have origins going way back in time,

way back all the way back to antiquity and perhaps even further back.

Then I want to say something explicitly about the tone of the discussion,

given how sensitive the issues can be for many people.

I want to make sure that I strike the right tone, and

I'll say something about this explicitly

before proceeding to evaluating the evidence, for or against the soul.

Then, I want to, of the many questions that one can ask about

the traditional soul that you've been discussing with Professors Oglesby and

Hamilton in this wonderful class,

I'm going to select three that I want to discuss specifically today and Tuesday.

Three that are discussed in the book,

among the many other questions that I talk about.

The first one, and you can already know what the answer is, at least what I take

the answer to be, is whether science has anything to say about the soul itself.

In many people's minds, the answer is no.

I've asked students in questionnaires over the years, here at Rutgers.

I'll share with you some of the results.

And very often what you hear, from the majority of the people who

believe in the soul, is that this has nothing to do with science.

This is separate, this is religion, this is feelings, this is metaphysics,

not science.

Science can't touch the soul.

I'm going to argue powerfully that it can,

that again postulating the existence of a soul is a scientific claim.

So we'll talk about this question and I'll show you that this is so and

it won't take too long to establish.

Then I want to ask, what is at stake?

What if we do have a soul and what if we don't have a soul?

What do we have to gain, to lose, how many important issues does this bare on,

how important should this be to us as individuals,

as groups of people, as a society?

So we'll take a look at the implications of this question,

and that's going to be the meat of the presentation,

I want to show you why it is.

I'm not, by the way, standing up here to talk about my personal views.

Of course I happen to agree with what's called the scientific consensus.

The views I'm going to present to you are the views of the overwhelming majority

of scientists, including the professors that you take classes from,

including people in physics departments, including biologists,

including all scientists, not just in the United States but around the world.

Of course there are dissenters, always are, but

the consensus opinion today is that we do not have a soul in the traditional sense.

I want to explain to you why it is that scientists have abandoned the notion

of a soul, the way we have abandoned the idea that the earth is flat, or

that it's at the center of the universe.

Or that species were created directly by the hand of a divine

artificer about 10,000 years ago in their present form.

There is plenty of evidence that this is not true,

as you know if you've taken a biology course.

In spite of rather interesting opinions within the general

public in a country like the United States, so we'll touch on that.

And then finally I'll end with the positive message that I mentioned to you.

That in fact we don't have much,

if anything at all to lose from changing our minds on this perennial question.

So that's the plan.

What I'm going to do today is layout the foundations, raise the issues and

touch on the parts there that you see highlighted in orange, and

I'll keep the intellectual meat, as it were, off the discussion for next time.

And I'll keep you in suspense regarding the challenge that was issued by

Professor Ogleby, namely how we should regard the so-called proof or

the kind of proof that comes from people like Evan Alexander.

I'll show you in a few moments a slide, if you read something like Newsweek,

you've noticed that about a week or week and a half ago,

the cover had the title Heaven is Real.

And then inside was an article claiming to have proof of heaven.

And of course, if heaven is real, then what goes to heaven are souls and so

the soul must be real.

We'll touch on that.

So let me start with two views of human nature then.

One view of course is that human beings are composed of not just the bodies and

brains that we have, but of an additional immaterial ingredient called the soul.

And the soul, as you know from taking this class is a very old idea.

We can find discussions of the notion of the soul and

the afterlife already in Ancient Egypt, thousands of years ago.

This is a depiction of the god Anubis, god of the underworld, god of the Dead,

depicted there in the form of a jackal, half-human half-jackal, who was supposed

to weigh the heart at death to determine the fate of the soul in the afterlife.

So the idea is very old,

and probably older even than what we have in recorded history.

As you know, the Classical Greeks, Plato, Aristotle, talked about the soul as well.

Aristotle made a distinction between three different kinds of souls.

He did not believe that the soul can detach from the body at death,

unlike Plato, but nonetheless he talked about three different kinds of souls.

The idea was to try to understand what distinguishes things that were

alive from things that were not.

So plants and cats and people are alive, so we think, but rocks aren't.

So what makes the difference?

According to Aristotle, to explain what plants can do which is to grow and

feed, you need what he called a nutritive soul.

One step up in the hierarchy, you take animals, non-human animals.

Non-human animals can not just feed and grow, but they can also move about and

perceive and sense their environment.

So, they need a more sophisticated soul, what Aristotle called a sensitive soul.

And then at the very top of the hierarchy is us, human beings, rational creatures.

Reason, it was believed, is something that only humans have, and

so to explain our rational faculties, our intelligence,

our ability to talk, to do mathematics, to get involved in the arts.

You need what Aristotle called the rational soul.

Perhaps the most influential figure in the entire history of humanity,

perhaps the father of the modern conception of the soul is a fellow known

by the name of Renee Descartes.

He is a French Philosopher and scientist and was instrumental in the 17th century

in helping usher in what is now called the Scientific Revolution.

He, along with people like Galileo, Newton, Francis Bacon, and

others, ushered in a few centuries ago what we call the Scientific Revolution.

Importantly Descartes argued that we, human beings,

are composed of two important elements.

On the one hand there is, of course, a physical body.

That's what Descartes called in latin Res Extensa,

meaning the substance that is extended in space, and

therefore has physical qualities, obeys the laws of physics.

So part of us is physical, but he could not comprehend

how mind would arise from something purely physical.

At the time the type of physics that Descartes was pushing is what's called

contact mechanics, so think of billiard balls hitting each other.

Descartes could not imagine how you could get thinking and

intelligence out of contact mechanics.

So he postulated a different substance called Res Cogitans in Latin,

which means literally thinking substance, and

he argued that that's what we are fundamentally.

We are souls, we have souls, and therefore souls don't really need bodies,

so when the body disappears the soul can continue to live.

And that happens to be the view or the notion of soul

that most people have today, as I will show you in the United States.

It's the Cartesian notion, not the Aristotelian notion.

So he was very influential, and of course as you may know he argued that these two

different realms, these two different worlds,

these two different substances can interact with each other.

Your soul can make you do things, your soul can push your buttons, your soul can

give you consciousness, can make you make decisions, gives you freewill, etcetera.

And what happens in your body can be felt in your soul, so if you get hurt, for

example, if you cut yourself, then you'll feel the pain in your soul.

Incidentally, Dickhart believed that animals, other animals like cats,

I showed you a picture of a cat a few moments ago, did not have souls,

that they were machines, that they were automata,

incapable of feeling anything because they lacked souls.

The French had a practice in the 17th century called cat burning.

I'm not joking.

They used to take cats, put them in a big net, hoist them up, light a big fire

underneath, and watch them burn to death and the crowds in Paris would assemble and

laugh hysterically as the poor creatures would shriek in pain and get carbonized.

So if you, now, ever think that scientific understanding and

morality are divorced, think again.

It was believed at the time that cats and other animals were mere automata.

Hence, you can do things like that to them because they don't feel any pain.

Now, let's fast forward the tape.

So we're moving from 17th century to the 21st century,

right here In North America in New Jersey, and you can see displays like this one.

If you drive on the New Jersey turnpike, I come from the south so

I drive up north on the turnpike.

You can see right by the university, right by exit nine, huge billboards.

This one you could see about a year or so ago, and

here's what it says, you can see it.

After you die, you will meet God.

Now, think about what this entails or what this means.

There are two assumptions being made here.

This is not 17th century France, this is not ancient Greece,

this is not Egypt, this is America today.

What this means is two things.

First, there's an assumption that is shared by about 80% of the population

in the United States, that God exists, unquestioned.

God must exist, we take that as a truth.

Second, when you die, in other words when your physical body dies,

something about you, your soul, obviously, will meet God.

So this implicitly tells you that you have a soul, and

that soul will meet with the creator, at the moment of death.

The current, for those of you happen to be driving on this section of turnpike,

the current billboard is this one.

And I'm not showing you what's at the bottom, if you drive you can see,

there is a phone number you can call, it's 1-855-FOR-TRUTH.

What this is doing is it's blatantly denying one of the most robustly

attested scientific theories of all time, the theory of evolution.

Right by the university, a center of learning, a center of knowledge,

you have posters like these right here in the United States today.

I did call the number, by the way, this summer, 1-855-FOR-TRUTH, and

I had a nice conversation with a lovely old man.

I can tell you about this later if you'd like.

If you're interested, those posters, and I asked him, who sponsors this stuff?

And he told me who does.

He also told me where to find more posters like these if you're interested.

GospelBillboards.com.

That's who sponsors these billboards and that's what you see.

Drive tonight if you want, or today.

Drive on the turnpike, you'll see the one at the bottom.

The one up there was the one what was there maybe a year or so ago.

And then of course as Professor Ogilvie mentioned,

in America today, in fact, a week or so

ago, you can pick up major news magazines and find something like this.

Newsweek saying heaven is real.

Roughly three quarters of Americans, by the way, I'll show you data in a moment,

believe already anyway that heaven is real.

But heaven is real.

And inside you can read about a doctor's experience of the afterlife,

Ethan Alexander, a neurosurgeon.

Of course he has some credentials, he's a scientist,

fantastic, then Heaven must be real.

Because this gentleman had what's called a near-death experience.

Something we'll talk about next time.

So this is America today.

I want to show you now a short video clip that probably is British,

given the way the ad is phrased.

I'm told that there's interference if I move in this section.

It's an ad for seatbelts.

It's very clever, and

it beautifully illustrates the notion that we are more than our bodies.

You can see there, on that still image, something beginning

to detach from the body of a young man who was killed in a car accident.

So let me show you the video, and then we'll continue the discussion.

[SOUND]

[MUSIC]

[SOUND] You see

a very clever ad.

Belt up, buckle up, heaven can wait.

So when you drive home tonight, buckle up.

Heaven, which is real, can wait.

So this traditional view then, that we are part animal,

part angel, is what's known in the philosophical jargon as dualism.

Or more specifically, substance dualism, or again, Cartesian dualism.

It is the idea that there are two substances,

that we're made up of two very different ingredients.

So this is the definition from All About Philosophy that

says that dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain.

The concept entails that our mind has a non-material or non-physical, spiritual

dimension that includes consciousness, and possibly an eternal attribute.

That's the attribute that we'll meet God, that we'll meet in Heaven or

Hell, depending on the case.

One way to understand this concept is to consider ourself as a container

including our physical body, and

physical brain along with separate non-physical mind, spirit or soul.

This is Substance Dualism.

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