Q&A: Does Experience Prove a Soul?
Does Experience Prove a Soul?
Question
Hello,
I wanted to know what you think—
I think that experience itself proves the existence of a soul. The fact that we experience reality proves that we have a soul.
1. I don’t accept the claim that the feeling of experience is evolutionarily important. A robot with the same traits I have, including thinking that it has consciousness and experience (but it doesn’t), would survive just as well.
2. No matter how far science advances, I don’t see how it could explain how a machine made of molecules and atoms also comes to have experience (and not just the feeling of experience).
3. I don’t accept the idea that experience is an illusion—I know what I experience when I see the color red. No one can tell me otherwise.
Answer
- Evolution is irrelevant here in every way. If you see experience as something spiritual, then it indicates the existence of a soul even if it is evolutionarily necessary. The claim that experience is unnecessary for survival is correct, and I’ve addressed it here several times already. It comes from a Christian philosopher.
- Neither do I. But the fact that there is no explanation doesn’t mean the phenomenon isn’t real.
- Whose illusion?
Discussion on Answer
You’re bursting through an open door 😃 Rabbi Michi wrote a whole book about this.
By the way, the Christian philosopher who spoke about the evolutionary superfluousness of consciousness (actually, he even spoke about any cognition whatsoever, about reason in general) was Alvin Plantinga.
So you’re basically reinforcing my claims. In short, I’m arguing that experience itself proves a soul—very simple.