September 15, 2007

Thanks to Kenny, Sampson and Aaron for making this post possible. They were the intellectual foil against which I refined my half-formulated ideas through argument and discussion. My interest in philosophy, as well as psychology, lurk in the dark alleyways of my mind, awaiting the chance to rob me of valuable hours of time, just to toss me back on the pavement again with a head full of ideas.

Updated: I reorganized some points which were all in a jumble.

Now, to the point – what is existentialism? It’s a belief that humans have free will, the possibility to make a completely arbitrary choice in a circumstance. It refutes causality, which says that everything has a cause. If causality holds true, then humans don’t really have a conscious choice in things, they simply play their role perfectly, adhering to social norms, personal upbringing and the like. Now, the world would seem to be a bleaker place if humans did not have true freedom of will. We are reduced to puppets, complex puppets no doubt, but not much better than animals in controlling our own fate. If we are but puppets, who or what is the puppeteer? If you begin backtracking, you might come to a few roadblocks; the choice of the circumstances you were born in, and the creation of the universe. Let us examine the former.

We don’t (consciously) get to choose the circumstances we were born into. How are we to choose, without any past memory or experiences? Do we even exist yet at that point? This would bring in the question of what comprises a person’s existence. Let’s say we are made up of 3 elements – The body, the mind, and the soul. The definition of the body is obvious, the earthly shell we currently reside in. The mind is a bit more elusive. Is it the mind’s intelligence that drives our thoughts and therefore our actions? Or is it part of the body, being nothing more than a mass of neural connections and electrical signals? The latter suggests that we are but highly evolved apes, and have no right no call ourselves sentient. Finally, the soul. What the heck is it?

Religion suggests many possibilities, both contemporary and ancient beliefs. However, I have to express contempt for religion in general. Most religions are a mass of legends and myths interwoven into a somewhat coherent whole, and is usually backed by a compilation of ancient texts. Ancient man created religion as an explanation for the inexplicable. In more recent times though, we have been discovering the reason for many of the phenomenons revered as divine by civilizations long gone. Lightning is written off as a result of static charges. The seasons aren’t brought by wind deities or any other being – it is a result of the tilt of the earth’s axis. What I’m saying is… I believe religious beliefs in general are outdated, veering close to superstition. After all, what is contemporary religion? Nothing more than mythology that somehow clung onto believers. With so many theories flying about, such as reincarnation and karma, clashing against the concept of heaven and eternal salvation, we have no idea which belief is closer to the truth. As a result, souls aren’t clearly defined. So let me present some ideas.

Hypothetically: In the far future, we have gained the technology required to create a perfect physical clone of a human, right down to every last DNA strand. Let’s say it has been implanted with the memories of a normal adult human. It is biologically sound and should function properly. We start up the clone’s heart with a defibrillator – what happens next? Here are some possibilities: The clone sits up and greets us cheerfully. If so, did it just pull a soul out of the empyrean? This might have implications for many different subjects, including the ethics of abortion and the spiritual value of clones. Inevitably there will be groups who claim that clones are soulless and unholy, demanding that human cloning should never be attempted. Another possibility: It lays still, devoid of life. Or maybe it lives and has a pulse for a few seconds, then becoming lifeless again. Since it theoretically should live, does this mean that the third element – the soul – is missing? The clone would be nothing more than a lump of nerve bundles and minerals, but it would not and cannot truly live. (Fullmetal Alchemist, anyone?)

Do we continue to be self-conscious because of our soul? Being aware of our sentience and the ability to question our own existence is beyond animals. Our mind is supposedly making daily choices, but where does its will to live come from? What makes us more than primitive cavemen, or animals for that matter? Animals live to perpetuate their kind by reproducing, and humans do the same. Why? Think about this: Our body is naturally opposed to getting injured. We gag when we are choking on water. Our adrenaline starts pumping when we feel threatened or pursued. All this leads to the conclusion that the body has reflexive reactions as a contingency plan for self-preservation. This is at least on a unicellular level. But when the mind works as a whole, one can make the choice to commit suicide. Yet nature dictates that we have an innate desire to continue our lineage, natural selection coming into play to create an improved species. Does the soul also have the “natural” tendency to survive?

I say “natural” because nature is a very odd phenomenon. We subconsciously accept what exists in nature and call it the norm. For all we know, we are slaves to some sort of biological order. Maybe aliens bred us to provide a food source when they come and colonize earth in the next millenia. Then the question is raised: What do those aliens live for? Another far out possibility would be that life is actually a complex game, like an MMORPG. The Sims on an epic scale. We exist for the entertainment of greater beings. Again, what do those greater beings live for, then? This is why nature is highly subjective. What seems completely normal to us might be utterly unnatural to others.

Man is a step above animals, at least mentally. For example, an animal that is trapped under a fallen boulder wouldn’t make the choice to take its own life, because it cannot understand that it can escape pain through death. Pain is interesting because it is designed as a warning system – part of the body’s natural self-preservation. But humans have identified pain with emotional agony. A kitten that fell down a flight of stairs would recover and continue life as it is, with little or no memory of the incident. If it was a toddler, however, the child may grow up with a lifelong fear of heights, a subconscious extension of the self-preservation system. The fear is an artefact of mental scarring.

The mind and the body may not cooperate in harmony, even though the mind springs from the brain, a part of the body. However, man’s application of intelligence suggests that the mind is really an ingenious evolution on the body’s part. When survival got tough, the body developed the mental aspect instead of the physical, and as a result the mind can steer the body away from potentially dangerous situations. Preparation and premeditation may help much better than a reflexive response. Back to the point of the soul; if the mind can be attributed to the body, the soul may be that otherworldly element keeping us going. An amoeba is impossibly complex, with specialized microscopic parts that each serve a different function. What makes it move about and seek food, instead of being a pile of molecules?

We might physically be advanced animals, but the presence of a soul would mean that we have free will. Our bodies, for some unknown reason, wishes to perpetuate its kind. We are trapped by our own tendencies and corporeal identity. As I said, without being able to choose the circumstances of our birth, we probably cannot alter our future. If the aforementioned MMORPG idea is true, maybe the player controlling us had some semblance of choice. However, I am of the opinion that our personality and even the preference of brain hemispheres (thus producing logical or creative geniuses) are all defined in our early years of which we do not have conscious control and are little better than domestic pets. Perhaps that is the reason we have little to no memory of infancy – we have not yet become self-aware. The brain would have the capability for memory by that time, seeing how some childhood habits and behaviour carries on to our conscious life.

Anyway, the case remains that our early years sets our future in stone, and that in turn is affected by other people’s choices, and they are no different. We basically trace everything on earth back to the sun’s continued existence, and we get stuck. The Big Bang theory may hold some truth, but we can’t be sure without a time machine. Subsequently, there’s the confusing idea topic of how life began. Evolution says we came from simple beginnings, but that would’ve been a result of a puddle of biological soup somewhere on the planet. How the heck did the biological soup get there in the first place, we shall never know. And is evolution going on now, creating new species at the bottom of the ocean, perhaps? Our existence is placed into question, and I can safely say that creation myths supply unreasonable answers.

So. Is there even such a thing as a soul? Or are we, as a species, so self-centred that we have raised ourselves upon a pedestal, believing our gift of the mind is even more than just that? Man is famous for being conceited, for example ancient China calling itself the Middle Nation, convinced that it was the true centre of the world, and perhaps the universe. Who is to say animals or even sentient aliens cannot contest our claims of the only species that possess a soul? Nevertheless, since we are still a lonely planet, unbeknownst to extraterrestrials (see! Our conceit makes us think that other planetary beings are the outsiders, and never ourselves) and still isolated from the vast majority of the galaxy.

Do we have free will?

~ by blazerknight on 15/09/2007.