The philosopher Hume remarked that when he looked into himself, he never succeeded in catching sight of his “Self’, but only of particular thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Is that a valid argument against the idea of a soul?
What is a “Soul”? Lets use the dictionary definition – “(1) The animating and vital principle in human beings, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity. (2) The spiritual nature of human beings, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.”
Given the nature of the dictionary definition, positing the existence of a “Soul” can be understood from the perspective of two separate metaphysics:
- Materialism – if one uses the 1st definition, rejects the 2nd as illogical, and conceives the “animating and vital principle in human beings” as those processes that take place in the material brain to generate thought, action, and emotion.
- Cartesian Dualism – if one conceives the “Soul” as an immaterial entity separate from the body.
All that Hume argued here is that from the Subjective Standpoint, he can not see the workings of whatever it is that he might want to label “Self”. All he could see when he looked inside, were the products of the processes taking place. This observation, by itself, cannot support either interpretation of “Soul”.
The fact that from inside, one cannot see the processes that are taking place, only indicates that the very act of “Seeing” is accomplished through faculties that are insensitive to the level of granularity necessary to perceive the processes. Using this as an argument for or against the existence of a “Soul” is like arguing that because we humans are insensitive to Gamma radiation, it therefore does or does not exist. Such an argument is missing more than a few premises.