Friday 13 May 2011

Soul without a God

I am a dualist. I believe that consciousness cannot be reduced to matter. But there are different dualisms (like materialisms). Not every dualist believes in God.

Below I list five propositions about consciousness that may be associated with dualism. I believe in some of them, but not in the others.

1) Mental events (conscious experiences) are different from physical phenomena
2) I have private access to my conscious experiences
3) If I think that I have a conscious experience, I certainly have it (certainty of inner events as opposed to external phenomena, which are supposed to be uncertain).
4) A soul (consciousness) is immortal
5) A soul (consciousness) reflects my spiritual, God-like nature.

I believe in 1) and 2). As to 3), which reflects the intuition of the indubitability of inner experiences, it is true about some experiences, but not others. “I think that I think” may be evidently true, but not “I think that I am in love” not necessarily so. Philosophers (for some strange reasons) are more interested in the former rather than the latter sentences.

I have nothing interesting to say on 4) and 5 other than the identity of the soul and consciousness is implied here.