When I was 17 in 1971, I purchased my dream car--a 1966 Ford Mustang--blue
with a white vinyl roof, bucket seats and a powerful eight-cylinder 289-cubic-inch
engine that could peg the speedometer at 140 miles per hour. As testosterone-overloaded
young men are wont to do, however, over the course of the next 15 years I
systematically wrecked and replaced nearly every part of that car, to the
extent that by the time I sold it in 1986 there was hardly an original piece
remaining. Nevertheless, I turned a tidy profit because my "1966" Mustang
was now a collector's classic. Even though the physical components were not
original, the essence of its being--its "Mustangness"--was that model's complete
form. My Mustang's essence--its "soul"--was more than a pile of parts; it
was a pattern of information arranged in a particular way.
The analogy applies to humans and souls. The actual atoms and molecules
that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born
with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month. Still, I am "Michael
Shermer," the sum of the information coded in my DNA and neural memories.
My friends and family do not treat me any differently from moment to moment,
even though atoms and molecules are cycling in and out of my body and brain,
because these people assume that the basic pattern remains unchanged. My
soul is a pattern of information.
Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that
the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body. Monists
contend that body and soul are the same and that the death of the body--the
disintegration of DNA and neurons that store my personal information--spells
the end of the soul. Until a technology is developed to preserve our patterns
with a more durable medium than the electric meat of our carbon-based protein
(silicon chips is one suggestion), when we die our patterns die with us.
The reason dualism is intuitive is that the brain does not perceive itself.
The principal barrier to a general acceptance of the monist position
is that it is counterintuitive. As Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom
argues in his intriguing book, Descartes' Baby (Basic Books, 2004), we are
natural-born dualists. Children and adults alike speak of "my body," as if
"my" and "body" are dissimilar. In one of many experiments Bloom recounts,
for example, young children are told a story about a mouse that gets munched
by an alligator. The children agree that the mouse's body is dead--it does
not need to go to the bathroom, it can't hear, and its brain no longer works.
Yet they insist that the mouse is still hungry, is concerned about the alligator,
and wants to go home. "This is the foundation for the more articulated view
of the afterlife you usually find in older children and adults," Bloom explains.
"Once children learn that the brain is involved in thinking, they don't take
it as showing that the brain is the source of mental life; they don't become
materialists. Rather they interpret 'thinking' in a narrow sense and conclude
that the brain is a cognitive prosthesis, something added to the soul to
enhance its computing power."
The reason dualism is intuitive is that the brain does not perceive
itself and so ascribes mental activity to a separate source. Hallucinations
of preternatural beings (ghosts, angels, aliens) are sensed as real entities,
out-of-body and near-death experiences are perceived as external events,
and the pattern of information that is our memories, personality and "self"
is sensed as a soul.
Is scientific monism in conflict with religious dualism? Yes, it
is. Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific
evidence that it does. Does monism extirpate all meaning in life? I think
not. If this is all there is, then every moment, every relationship and every
person counts--and counts more if there is no tomorrow than if there is.
Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of
life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have ever known. The realization
that we exist together for a narrow slice of time and a limited fraction
of space elevates us all to a higher plane of humanity and humility, a passing
moment on the proscenium of the cosmos.