Who says we haven't got soul?

There are a number of contentious moves in Stephen Asma's discussion of teaching about "the soul." Asma basically takes talk of the soul to be discredited by natural science and recommends that we guide students who want to retain "soul talk" to interpret it in normative or non-descriptive terms. It's a sort of irrealism about soul talk, where "I hope her soul is at rest" turns out to be emotive, something like "I think Grandma deserved to live a tranquil life" (or some such).

But I'm not so convinced the pedagogical situation is as Asma depicts it in the first place. He writes:

No self-respecting professor of philosophy wants to discuss the soul in class. It reeks of old-time theology, or, worse, New Age quantum treacle. The soul has been a dead end in philosophy ever since the positivists unmasked its empty referential center. Scientific philosophy has shown us that there's no there there.

As I said, there's both contentious philosophy and contentious history of philosophy in Asma's remarks. The positivists were responsible for "unmasking" the soul? Not Kant or various post-Cartesian philosophers? And never mind that Asma's revisionary proposal that soul talk be treated as non-descriptive or aspirational has a decidedly positivist feel to it!

My point is simply that plenty "self-respecting" professors of philosophy want to, and do, discuss the soul in their classes. For one thing, if you teach history of philosophy, you can't avoid it. I'm teaching ancient Greek philosophy now and can't imagine not discussing the soul.

What Asma misses is that though the word "soul" doesn't have much traction in philosophy these days, we continue to investigate (and teach about) the soul under a different vocabulary. Whether the mind is reducible to the brain remains a central question in the philosophy of mind. Whether there is a self that persists through time, and if so, the relation of that self to the physical body, is a central question in debates about personal identity. This vocabulary, and these debates, are descendants of the somewhat musty, religiously inflected "soul talk" Asma suggests we need to recast. Admittedly, philosophers of mind tend not to talk of the "immortality of the mind," but if one thinks that the mind is not reducible to the brain, then a precondition of the "soul" (i.e., one's consciousness) being immortal may be met. Likewise for personal identity: If one thinks that a person can survive dramatic physical changes, then a precondition of the "soul" being immortal has been met. So "the soul" isn't dead in philosophy. Nor is it dead in philosophical pedagogy. It's simply been retranslated into other philosophical idioms.

Should students expect proofs of God?

Alex Byrne has a very nice article in the Boston Review appraising the main philosophical arguments for God's existence. It's an evenhanded discussion on the whole, but I was struck (pedagogically, that is) by Byrne's conclusion that "the funny thing about arguments for the existence of God is that, if they succeed, they were never needed in the first place." I take Byrne to be suggesting that only those who already have faith in God are likely to be persuaded by such arguments, which amounts to saying that proofs of God are not rationally persuasive since they presuppose the prior acceptance of their conclusions.


This resonates with something in my own teaching experience: I'm sure most of us teach proofs of God's existence, in our introductory classes for instance. But one challenge I've had in teaching this material is that many students (many of them religiously inclined, but not all of them) already share Byrne's conclusion God's existence is unprovable (especiallyto skeptics). Religious belief, on this view, can only be a matter of pure faith. Obviously, if that is the student's view, then the fact that so many of the arguments for God's existence seem shaky comes as no surprise to them at all. As a result, students feel little interest in engaging the proofs, since for them, it can only be an idle intellectual exercise. Fideism is thus a barrier to serious rational engagement with these arguments.

I'm curious to know if others have had the same experience in trying to teach these arguments, and if so, the approaches you've tried. One thing that's worked for me is to draw upon students' awareness of religious pluralism. Even students with strong religious convictions know that others don't share those convictions. I've had some success persuading students that reason has a role to play in discussions of theism if for no other reason that the various religions make competing claims about God that cannot all be true. This seems to get them in the right frame of mind to think about the question of theism more generally.

Anyone have similiar thoughts or experiences?

Teaching Multicultural Philosphy of Religion

A reposted "bleg" (blog+beg) from The Prosblogion: A Philosophy of Religion Blog:

Because I am teaching philosophy of religion in the fall and teach at a historically black college, I am looking for writings on what might be called African-American philosophy of religion or African-American perspectives on philosophy of religion (or even African philosophy of religion). I have not had much luck finding things. If anyone knows of anything relevant and can pass on the info or post it, I would appreciate that greatly.

Here are some of the replies so far:

Nicholas Rhodes said:

I wrote a long post that was accidentally deleted. It's simply too much to rewrite. I suggested some of the following texts to get started:

African American Philosophy of Religion

Yancy, African American Philosophy: Seventeen Conversations
West, Prosphesy Deliverance
West, Keeping Faith
West, African American Religious Thought
Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation
Cone, God and the Oppressed
Pinn, African American Humanist Principles
Pinn, The African American Religious Experience in America

African Philosophy of Religion

Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity
Hallen, African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach
Griaule, Conversations with Ogotomelli
Brown, African Philosophy

If you want to chat more about this topic leave a note here so that we might get in touch.

Let me know if you would like to chat further.

Patrick Todd said:

The Blackwell Companion to Phil. Religion has an entry, "African religions from a philosophical point of view." Seems like a good place to start.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design(ers?)

Google apparently thinks that this movie -- "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" -- is right up a philosophers' alley. Perhaps this would be useful to integrate into next semesters' philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, intro to philosophy, etc. courses. It looks like a provocative film, at least.