The Human Soul Likely Doesn't Exist.

Thank you for your well thought out response. First let me look at Pro"s opening argument. P1 seems sound, but unimportant. Yes, the physical brain sends signals to the body which cause the body to move. That is not in question. The question is if the actions originated in the brain (or where caused by some other physical circumstance), or if the act of the brain sending those signals was itself caused by the work of the soul. P2 seems less sound. Fundamentally different substances do often interact. For instance, gasses can be shown to be soluble in water.[1] I am not as good with graphics as Pro is, but I think that we can use his analogy to see the flaw in his thinking. Pro drew a line of solid blue and a line of solid red. However, we can all imagine a line that starts out blue and then has a little bit of red added slowly to it until the line becomes entirely blue. There is no spot in that line where we can say that blue changes to red or that red changes to blue. The change is gradual as the fundamentally different colors intermix. I suppose P3 is the heart of our debate. Is the physical cause sufficient to account for human choices? If it is not the Pro has not shown that the soul does not exist, but he has taken away some of the strongest evidence in favor of the soul. If the physical cause is not sufficient to account for human choice then we have strong evidence in favor of the soul. Now to turn to Pro"s response to my initial argument. There is an interesting argument to be had about compatibilism. However, it is not this argument. My argument has no hidden premise about compatibilism. Compatibilists argue that we have free will in a deterministic universe. [2] This may or may not be true, but the question at hand is if we have free will at all. My first premise is that if we have any form of free will then the soul is the best explanation for that free will. If the human soul does not exist then our choices are nothing but electrochemical reactions. An electrochemical reaction cannot make a choice. If compatibilism is true " and Pro claims that the "majority of philosophers accept" it as true " then free will does exist and the human soul most likely exists as well. Pro"s thought experiment about Jack, Jill, and James is an interesting one about free will, but it does not establish what he hopes to establish. It provides an example of someone with free will being coerced to do what he would have done anyway. It does not establish where the power to make a choice comes from or how electrochemical reactions could produce a free choice. The strongest part of Pro"s argument comes in his rejection of free will. Pro is right to point out that we do not have entirely free will. Our will can be effected by outside stimuli, such as people acting rudely when showed rude words. However, this limitation of free will does not mean that free will does not exist at any level. Even when our will is affected by outside stimuli we still have a degree of free will. Though it may be difficult we can choose not to act rudely no matter how many rude words we are shown. Evidence for the soul does not require complete and unaffected free will. Any degree of free will provides us with evidence that cannot be explained by purely physical attributes. Pro"s suggestion that free will is neither caused nor uncaused is a false dichotomy. He has suggested that everything which is not caused is entirely random, but this is not true. We have knowledge of something which is neither entirely caused nor entirely random: choice. Choice does not fit well into a deterministic worldview because choice by nature is not deterministic. It is the human"s soul"s ability to make a choice " such as choosing to read this or not " that is neither caused nor random. If the soul did not exist then I would have to agree with an entirely deterministic view of reality. However our experiences tell us that we do make choices, so the universe cannot be entirely deterministic. Something outside the deterministic physical universe which allows for choices to be made must exist, and that something is what we are calling a soul. Pro"s final "basic argument" brings this debate into an entirely new realm. Pro is right that I cannot cause myself. If the soul exists then there must be some greater uncaused Cause which has created the soul and empowered it with free will. There is a reason that belief in the soul and belief in some kind of God have historically been tied together, and a reason that historically speaking most atheistic philosophies have been deterministic. However, for the sake of time we should probably hold off discussion of a Creator in regards to the human soul. Conclusion: Pro has brought us some of the strongest arguments against free will and the existence of a soul, but ultimately the fall flat. At the end of the day we each have our own experiences of making choices. If our own experiences are not a trustworthy manner of gaining knowledge then we have no trustworthy means of gaining knowledge on any topic. It is our own individual experiences that demonstrate that we have the ability to make choices, and the ability to make choices is evidence that the human soul most likely exists. Sources: [1]http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu... Correction: I intended to include these sources concerning electrochemistry in the brain in my first post. The provide evidence and a more complete explanation of electrochemistry in the brain. My apologies for the technical error. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... http://science.howstuffworks.com...