Skip to content

Like this? Share it!

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Email
Closer To Truth
  • Watch
    • Seasons & EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch candid conversations with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • Roundtable ArchivesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Cosmos, Consciousness, Meaning: Explore the fundamental questions of existence.Topic Guide
    • All Topics
      • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
        • Back
        • All Cosmos
        • Deep Laws of Nature
          • Back
          • All Deep Laws of Nature
          • Cosmic Fundamentals
          • Time and Space-Time
          • Quantum Theory
          • Complexity and Emergence
          • Mathematics as Fundamental?
          • Information as Fundamental?
          • Universe as Simulation?
          • Deep Discovery in Science
        • Vast Cosmos
          • Back
          • All Vast Cosmos
          • Cosmic Immensity
          • Cosmic Beginnings
          • Cosmic Structure
          • Multiple Universes (Multiverse)
          • Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter
        • Our Special Universe
          • Back
          • All Our Special Universe
          • Fine-Tuning of the Universe?
          • Fine-Tuning the Universe for Life & Mind?
          • Breathtaking Universe
          • Where Are All the Aliens?
          • Far Future of the Universe
        • Breakthroughs
          • Back
          • All Breakthroughs
          • Breakthroughs in Science
          • Breakthroughs in Mathematics
        • Science and Religion
          • Back
          • All Science and Religion
          • Science vs. Religion?
          • Science and God
          • How Science and Religion Think
          • The New Atheism
          • Limits of Science
        • Mystery of Existence
          • Back
          • All Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Laws & Cosmos
          • Metaphysics of Cosmos
          • Why Anything at All?
      • ConsciousnessSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
        • Back
        • All Consciousness
        • Mind-Body Problems
          • Back
          • All Mind-Body Problems
          • The Mind-Body Problem
          • Brain Structure and Function
          • Brain Explains Mind?
          • Elements of Mind
        • Consciousness
          • Back
          • All Consciousness
          • Mystery of Consciousness
          • Consciousness as Emergent
          • Consciousness as All Physical?
          • States of Consciousness
          • Sleep and Dreams
          • Purpose of Consciousness?
          • Metaphysics of Consciousness
        • Persons
          • Back
          • All Persons
          • Persons and Selves
          • Personal Identity
          • Life After Death?
          • Souls?
          • Human Uniqueness
          • Creativity
          • Music
          • Epistemology
          • Belief Systems
          • Mind and Society
          • People and Society
        • Free Will
          • Back
          • All Free Will
          • Mystery of Free Will
          • Philosophy of Free Will
          • Free Will and Consciousness
          • Science of Free Will
          • Free Will and Morality
          • Theology of Free Will
        • Philosophy of Biology
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Biology
          • Why Philosophy of Biology?
          • What is Life?
          • Life in the Cosmos
          • Deception
        • Extrasensory Perception
          • Back
          • All Extrasensory Perception
          • ESP and New Realities?
          • ESP and the Nonphysical?
        • Art Seeking Understanding
          • Back
          • All Art Seeking Understanding
          • Aesthetic Cognitivism
          • Art and Philosophy
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Art
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Music
          • Art and God
          • Art and Religion
          • Art and Culture
      • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
        • Back
        • All Meaning
        • Philosophy of Religion
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Religion
          • Concepts of God
          • Alternative Concepts of God
          • Faith and Belief
          • Conflict Among Religions
          • Theology
          • How Philosophy Informs Religion
          • Religion Without God
        • Existence of God
          • Back
          • All Existence of God
          • Arguing God's Existence
          • Philosophical Arguments For God
          • Experiential Arguments For God
          • Arguments Against God
        • Attributes of God
          • Back
          • All Attributes of God
          • God's Nature?
          • God's Essence?
          • God's Powers?
          • God and Time?
        • God as Creator
          • Back
          • All God as Creator
          • God The Creator?
          • God's World?
          • God's Interactions?
        • Ultimate Destinies
          • Back
          • All Ultimate Destinies
          • God's Knowledge and Future Events?
          • Judgment (Heaven, Hell)?
          • Resurrection?
          • Eschatology (End Times)?
          • Eternal Life?
          • Search for Meaning
  • News
    • All NewsStay up-to-date with the latest from Closer To Truth
    • Book ExcerptsExplore recently authored books from our contributors
    • PerspectivesRead essays and articles from our community
  • About
    • About Closer To TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • The TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • Meet the TeamMeet the host and team behind Closer To Truth
    • PartnershipsLearn about our partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer To TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
Search
  • Login
  • Join
  • Watch
    • EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch chats with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • RoundtablesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Topic GuideCosmos, Consciousness, Meaning: Join us as we explore the fundamental questions of existence.
    • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
    • ConsciousnessSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
    • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
  • News
    • The Latest
  • About
    • About Closer to TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • Meet the TeamMeet our host and our team
    • PartnershipsLearn about CTT’s partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer to TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
    • FAQLearn about Closer to Truth membership
  • Login
  • Join

video

Topic Series

Dean Zimmerman

  • Watch Next
Cover image for How to Decipher Deception in Evolution?

How to Decipher Deception in Evolution?

Cover image for How Do Breakthroughs Happen in Biology?

How Do Breakthroughs Happen in Biology?

Cover image for How do Breakthroughs Happen in Physics?

How do Breakthroughs Happen in Physics?

Cover image for Noam Chomsky on Theories of Linguistics (Part 2)

Noam Chomsky on Theories of Linguistics (Part 2)

Cover image for Noam Chomsky’s Reflections on Philosophy and Linguistics (Part 1)

Noam Chomsky’s Reflections on Philosophy and Linguistics (Part 1)

Cover image for What is Philosophy of the Breakthrough Process?

What is Philosophy of the Breakthrough Process?

  • Details
  • Transcripts
  • Formats
    • Share
Featured In

  • Can a Person Be a Soul?
Contributors

Dean Zimmerman

Dean Zimmerman works in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Dean, I want to talk about the soul. Now I'm not telling you that I believe in it, but if I did believe in it I'd like to know what it is. I know theologians give lots of imagery, and philosophers frankly, they don't really talk very much about it because most of them don't believe in it.
Dean Zimmerman
That's right, that's right.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
So as a philosopher, how you begin to describe the soul?
Dean Zimmerman
Well there's a…there's a whole bunch of alternative views about the nature of the soul that are sort of out there. I think you can sort of explore them abstractly. At the end of the day what you want to know is why should you believe in a soul, and then you look at these various models and see which of them satisfy the desiderata, you know. So, but if you're just looking at the alternatives that have been offered, there's a whole spectrum of positions. One of the big divisions I think… Well so…I would call any view substance dualism if it posits something that has mental states or is crucially involved with my having mental states, and it doesn't have very much in common with the stuff that ordinary non-thinking objects are made out of. So if you're forced to posit a different extra kind of stuff in order to…in order to have thinkers, then you have a kind of dualism. Now there's a spectrum of views because you might make that stuff, you might say that it's very, very different from ordinary matter, or you might say that it's…it's kind of like ordinary matter but just a little bit different.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
How would the characteristics be in both of those conditions?
Dean Zimmerman
Well so you look at ordinary stuff and it's obviously in space, it's in time, it's made out of little bits that have mass and charge and various other properties that you can measure. And it's concrete in a sense. It's not…it's not…it's not abstract, out there in, you know, platonic heaven or something like that. Now the most extremely dualistic view would say I'm so unlike that stuff that I'm…not only do I not have mass or charge, not only am I not in space, but I'm not even in time. What's more, I'm not even a concrete entity, I'm abstract like a property, or an essence, or a number or something like that. Now that's a crazy view. Now some people have said things that almost seem to imply it. So sometimes you'll hear people say I'm the program that my body runs. Well a program is an abstract thing that can be instantiated in many forms and you can write it down on paper, you can think about it but never run it, right? So if I'm…if I'm like that, then I'm an abstract object of some kind. Others…you know because that's a crazy view. So other…others have said I'm outside of time and space, but I'm a concrete contingent entity. The most common sort of dualism, made famous by Descartes, is a dualism where I'm in time, I have mental episodes one after the other and they happen simultaneously with various episodes that happen to my body, but I'm not in space, and somehow this non-spatial thing gets hooked up with a body. But there have been other dualists who have said no, in order for this soul to get hooked up with this body, and that soul to get hooked up with that body, they have to be somehow differentially related, you know. They can't all just be in one place as it were outside of space. They have to be linked up spatially to the different bodies. So my soul is operating somehow in here and yours is in there. And some have posited further similarities between these…these mental things and bodies.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Do souls have parts like we have parts?
Dean Zimmerman
Yeah, so when you look at what the spiritualists of the 19th century thought, they posited a kind of ectoplasm. In fact they could sometimes produce it in the…in the séance. It bore a striking resemblance to liver I think. But they thought that the thinker is an immaterial thing which means it's not made up out of this kind of stuff this is made up out of, but it's extended, it's kind of like a body, right? And it has inner states that somehow mirror the ones here in this…in this body, and it can…could presumably come apart. Now I think all the reasons I can think of for being a dualist do not require that. In fact they point away from that. So the reasons I think there are to take dualism seriously is…is that I take myself to be a very precise thing. I take it that there's a definite fact about whether I'll survive the destruction of this body, and I take it there's only one of me. And, if you look at this body it's a vague kind of thing that sort of ceases to exist gradually. I mean by…by normal timeframes, our timeframe, we die suddenly. But if you look closely, it's a gradual process and dating it, you know, trying to find an instant when I cease to be would be silly really because it's a…it's a vague messy thing that just gradually ceases to be. And similarly, trying to find the precise boundaries of my body is…is silly. There's bits of skin flaking off – when exactly do they cease to be part of my body, when does this… this hydrogen atom become part of my body after I've absorbed it? Those…there's no answer to those questions because it's a vague thing, like a cloud. On the other hand, I think I'm a precise thing. Now maybe I'm wrong about that, but it would be very strange to treat myself the way I treat a cloud or some other vague thing.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
So what does that imply about a soul if one exists? I mean does it have parts? Are there component things?
Dean Zimmerman
It shouldn't be vague. It shouldn't be… It shouldn't… It shouldn't be the sort of thing that can gain and lose parts rapidly, or then it's just another thing like the body. I mean my basic problem with supposing that I'm identical with this thing is that I believe that these qualities, these phenomenal states are something extra and there have to be laws of nature about their generation. I don't think fundamental physical laws, these are going to be fundamental mind/body laws, but I don't think fundamental laws can be about tables, or chairs, or clouds, or organisms either – they're vague macro-physical things. They're not going to show up in the fundamental laws. So if there's fundamental laws about consciousness, they shouldn't be about vague things. And so I think there's a genuine possibility that they're about an extra thing that comes with consciousness. So just like when you create a particle by some, you know, by bombarding some particles, you generate a new property that wasn't there before; you generate a subject with it. So when a brain gets in the right sort of state, it may generate consciousness and generate a subject to go with it.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Does that have any implications on whether that soul will survive the death of the body? Because one, I could think, could argue it both ways.
Dean Zimmerman
No, it doesn't. I don't see that it has any consequences. So in fact…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Because most people assume that it would. Once you get to a soul you're automatically…
Dean Zimmerman
You're home free.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Yeah right, right, you got it forever.
Dean Zimmerman
Yeah.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
But it's not from the precision by which you define it, it is a completely new fact that you have to deal with.
Dean Zimmerman
Right. So if you think there's souls because you think brains generate consciousness, consciousness needs a new subject, well this new subject was generated by a brain so maybe it remains radically dependent upon the brain. Certainly I think – unlike Descartes and lots of earlier dualists – we've got really good reason to believe that my ability to think and function mentally at all depends massively upon the proper functioning of this brain. I'm…I can't think without it. Take it away, presumably I can't think at all. Perhaps take it away and poof, I just cease to be.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
But yet that soul, if one is there even under that condition, it may remain, it may not remain, may be conscious, may not be conscious. If you believe in a soul, which I'm not saying I do, but even if you do you still have not solved your ultimate problem. It's one step maybe.
Dean Zimmerman
Yeah. The question…the question is now on the table: could I survive without a body, right? That question is a live one now. Given that the soul as I'm thinking about it is something that's a part of the natural order, it's generated when brains generate consciousness, the question of whether it just – poof – goes out like a candle when the brain stops functioning, well that's a good question. Now if you're a theist you've got reason to suppose that even if the soul would naturally go away, God might miraculously want to keep you around. And of course the orthodox view about persons and souls is, you know according to Christian theism anyway, is that souls naturally have bodies and…and that they're going to get bodies again. So it's an unnatural state for a soul to be in for God to be sort of sustaining it without its body.
  • Short Video
  • Long Video

Watch Next

Members Only

Please login or join to view

Cover image for How to Decipher Deception in Evolution?

What can we learn when people deceive? There are all kinds of deception: from lying, duplicity, and disguises, to propaganda, disinformation, and deep fakes. Self-deception,...

video

How to Decipher Deception in Evolution?

Episode 09

Season 21

26:47

Watch

Members Only

Please login or join to view

Cover image for How Do Breakthroughs Happen in Biology?

Biologists work in different worlds than do physicists, separated by vast orders of magnitude, numbers of variables, and levels of complexity. Does the process of...

video

How Do Breakthroughs Happen in Biology?

Episode 07

Season 21

26:47

Watch

Members Only

Please login or join to view

Cover image for How do Breakthroughs Happen in Physics?

The nature of scientific Breakthroughs is one approach; the process of scientific Breakthroughs is quite another. When physicists reflect on how they do physics, when...

video

How do Breakthroughs Happen in Physics?

Episode 06

Season 21

26:47

Watch

Cover image for Noam Chomsky on Theories of Linguistics (Part 2)

Closer To Truth is proud to present this four-part miniseries with distinguished theoretical linguist, analytic philosopher, and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. In Part 2,...

video

Noam Chomsky on Theories of Linguistics (Part 2)

CTT Chat

42:32

Watch

Cover image for Noam Chomsky’s Reflections on Philosophy and Linguistics (Part 1)

Closer To Truth is proud to present this four-part miniseries with distinguished theoretical linguist, analytic philosopher, and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. In Part 1,...

video

Noam Chomsky’s Reflections on Philosophy and Linguistics (Part 1)

CTT Chat

27:17

Watch

Members Only

Please login or join to view

Cover image for What is Philosophy of the Breakthrough Process?

Scientific Breakthroughs are discoveries or theories that are milestones and touchstones, signposts and short-cuts, surprises and revelations. How to get at the nature or...

video

What is Philosophy of the Breakthrough Process?

Episode 08

Season 21

26:47

Watch


Become a Member

Get free access to exclusive content and more.

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • Find us on PBS
  • Watch on YouTube
  • Contact Us

Policies Terms © Closer To Truth. All rights reserved Website by Visceral