Current Philosophy

Category: Blog

Your blog category

  • 👻 The Ghost in the Machine: Richard Swinburne and the Case for the Soul

    Over the last few weeks, we have navigated the busy streets of physicalism. We saw Daniel Dennett argue that the mind is a clever trick of the brain—a “user-illusion.” We saw Galen Strawson argue for a “Real Physicalism,” suggesting that matter itself is inherently conscious. Despite their differences, they both shared a common boundary: they believed that, at the end of the day, there is only one kind of “stuff” in the universe.

    Today, we cross that boundary into Substance Dualism—the idea that the mind is not just a property of the brain, but a separate substance entirely.

    To the modern ear, “Substance Dualism” sounds like a relic of a pre-scientific age. If you ask a modern neuroscientist, they will likely tell you it is a “medieval” superstition—a desperate attempt to preserve a religious ego. But Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor at Oxford, has spent a lifetime proving that the case for the soul is built on cold, hard logic rather than mere sentiment. He doesn’t ask us to believe in ghosts; he asks us to look at the logical requirements of being a “self.”

    Defining the Terms: What is a “Substance”?

    Before we dive into his arguments, we must clarify what Swinburne means by a “substance.” In philosophy, a substance is not a liquid or a chemical; it is something that can exist on its own—a “thing” that carries properties. A “property” is a characteristic (like the color red), but a “substance” is the entity that is red (like an apple).

    Physicalism claims that the only substance in the universe is matter, and the mind is just a property of that matter—like the “fastness” of a car or the “wetness” of water. Swinburne turns this on its head. He argues that the “I” is its own substance. You don’t have a soul; you are a soul, and you possess a body. This distinction is the foundation of everything that follows.

    The Problem of Personal Identity: The Ship of Theseus

    Swinburne’s strongest entry point is the question of what makes you “you” over time. Physically, you are a walking Ship of Theseus. In this ancient Greek paradox, a ship is repaired plank by plank until not a single original piece of wood remains. Is it still the same ship?

    Biologically, you are in a state of constant flux. Your cells are dying and being replaced; the atoms in your brain today are almost entirely different from those you had ten years ago. If you are purely a physical object, your identity is just a “pattern”—like a wave moving through water. As long as the memories and personality traits remain stable, a physicalist says “you” exist.

    But Swinburne argues that a “pattern” is a description, not a person. To illustrate this, he uses a provocative thought experiment: The Brain Bisection.

    Imagine a scientist removes your brain and splits it into two equal halves, transplanting each half into a different identical body. Both people wake up with your memories and your habits. Physics can track every atom during this surgery, providing a 100% complete physical map. However, physics cannot answer the most important question: Which one is you? Are you the person in the left bed, the right bed, or have you ceased to exist? A physicalist must say that because all the physical facts are accounted for, there is no “real” answer—you are simply both or neither. But from the perspective of the subject, this is impossible. You cannot “be” two separate streams of consciousness simultaneously. Swinburne argues that because there is a factual, “yes or no” answer to the question of your survival—an answer that a complete physical map cannot see—there must be a non-physical truth about your identity. This “thisness” (or haecceity) is what he defines as the soul.

    The Privacy of the Mental: The Patient and the Doctor

    The second pillar of Swinburne’s defense is the Argument from Privileged Access. This is the idea that mental life is private in a way that physical facts are not.

    Consider a man who goes to his doctor claiming he is experiencing vivid hallucinations of a mountain range. The doctor can use the most advanced technology available—fMRIs and EEGs—to monitor the man’s brain. The doctor might see a surge of activity in the visual cortex. These are “public” facts. Any trained professional with the right equipment can observe them, measure them, and verify them.

    However, the doctor is ultimately “blind” to the most important part of the event. No amount of machinery can tell the doctor exactly what the man is seeing—the specific jaggedness of the peaks or the subjective quality of the light. The doctor must rely entirely on the man to report the content of his vision.

    Swinburne argues that if the world were purely physical, everything would be publicly observable in principle. If I know the position and velocity of every molecule in a steam engine, I know everything there is to know about that engine. But I can know everything about the atoms in your brain and still not know what it feels like to be you. This suggests that the “mind” is a different kind of substance than the “brain.”

    The Piano and the Pianist: The Logic of Interaction

    The most common objection to dualism is the Dependency Argument: “If we have a soul, why do we lose our personality when the brain is damaged?” If the soul is separate, why does a glass of wine or a head injury change who we are?

    Swinburne’s response involves a crucial distinction between existence and functioning. He views the soul as the musician and the brain as the piano.

    A world-class pianist has the skill and the intent to play a masterpiece. However, if the piano has broken keys, out-of-tune strings, or a cracked soundboard, the music produced will be distorted or silent. In this model, the soul is the “player.” While we are embodied, the soul depends on the physical brain to “write” and “read” data from the physical world. Memories, in this life, are stored physically in the synapses—they are the “sheet music” the pianist uses to navigate reality.

    When the brain is damaged, the soul isn’t being “deleted”; rather, the instrument is failing. This explains why we are so heavily influenced by our biology without requiring us to be identical to our biology. The musician is not the music; the player is not the piano.

    The Simplicity of the “I”: The Binding Problem

    Neuroscience shows us that the brain is a collection of trillions of moving parts firing in parallel. There is no “center” of the brain where everything comes together in a single point. This creates The Binding Problem: How do trillions of separate physical events result in a single, unified “I”?

    When you see a red ball bouncing, one part of your brain processes “red,” another processes “circularity,” and another processes “motion.” Physically, these are disparate events occurring in different “zip codes” of the cortex. Yet, your experience is not a fragmented list of data; it is a single, unified perception.

    Swinburne argues it is “simpler” (invoking Occam’s Razor) to posit that the subject of experience is a Simple Substance. In science, we accept fundamental units like quarks that cannot be broken down further. Swinburne suggests the “Subject” is one of these fundamental units. You feel like a unified thing because you are a unified thing—a non-composite substance that “owns” the experiences of the complex brain.

    The Modal Argument: The Logic of the Possible

    Finally, Swinburne leans on what is known as the Modal Argument, which deals with the logic of possibility and necessity. He asks us to consider what is “logically possible.”

    It is logically impossible to imagine a “square circle” because the definition of a square contradicts the definition of a circle. However, it is perfectly “thinkable” to imagine yourself existing without a body. You can imagine waking up as a floating consciousness with no limbs, no brain, and no physical presence—much like a dream.

    Swinburne’s logical move is this: If it is even possible for you to exist without your body, then you cannot be identical to your body. If A is identical to B, then A cannot exist without B. For example, you cannot have water without H2O; they are the exact same thing. But if I can logically conceive of “Me” existing without “My Brain” (even as a thought experiment), it follows that “Me” and “My Brain” are two different things. Even if they are currently joined together like a driver in a car, they remain separate entities.

    Conclusion: The Driver and the Car

    Substance Dualism explains why you feel like a single “I” in a world of moving parts. It suggests that even if we can map every atom in the brain, the most important part of reality remains the “Pianist” who is making the music.

    This isn’t just an academic exercise. If we are just “brain-states,” then we are determined by the laws of physics—meaning free will is a myth. But if the soul is a separate substance, then the “I” has the room to act upon the brain, making us the authors of our own stories rather than just spectators of our own biology. We are the drivers, not just the cars.

    But if we are willing to accept that the soul is a separate substance, we must eventually ask an even more radical question: What if the physical world isn’t the primary reality at all?

    Next week, we step into the world of Idealism. We will explore the thinkers who argue that mind isn’t just part of the universe—it is the very fabric the universe is made of.

    Deepen Your Journey: Suggested Reading

    If this logical defense of the soul has sparked your curiosity, these resources are the best places to explore the analytical side of the debate.

    Transparency Note: The links below are affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I earn a small commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you. This helps support the research and writing of this series!

    • The Evolution of the Soul by Richard Swinburne: The definitive modern text for dualism. A rigorous defense of why the “Subject” cannot be reduced to the brain.
    • Mind, Brain, and Free Will by Richard Swinburne: Addresses how the soul might interact with physical laws and quantum physics.
    • The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism edited by Loose, Menuge, and Moreland: A massive collection of essays covering modern dualist thought.
    • The Self and Its Brain by Karl Popper and John Eccles: A landmark collaboration between a philosopher of science and a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist. While Popper’s “Three Worlds” theory differs slightly from Swinburne’s theological dualism, this remains the most famous scientific defense of the idea that the mind and brain are distinct entities.

  • 🧠 The Real Physicalist: Why Galen Strawson Thinks Matter is Conscious

    Over the last few weeks, we have navigated two very different maps of the mind: Daniel Dennett’s world, where consciousness is an evolutionary user-illusion, and David Chalmers’ Hard Problem, which suggests a universe split between physical facts and mental properties.

    However, as we move deeper into the mystery, we encounter a thinker who suggests that both are working with a faulty definition of the world. Galen Strawson is a Real Physicalist. He doesn’t believe in ghosts or souls, but he has arrived at a conclusion that flips our understanding of reality: If physicalism is true, then matter itself must be conscious.

    The Realization: Not on the Same Team

    I’ll be honest: when I first started reading Chalmers and Strawson, I was convinced they were on the same team. Both argue that subjective experience is a fundamental part of the universe. I had them both labeled as Property Dualists, assuming they both believed that in addition to physical properties like mass, mental properties also exist. They both stood in opposition to Dennett, who views those mental properties as an illusion.

    But Strawson and Chalmers are actually in a heated debate. Strawson is a vocal critic of Dualism. He believes that if physicalism is true, we shouldn’t be adding extra layers to the world; we should be redefining what physical means from the ground up.

    The Myth of Dead Matter

    Strawson’s starting point is an attack on what he calls PhysicSalism—the common assumption that physical stuff is exactly and only what we see in a high school physics textbook: mathematical points and dead billiard balls clacking in a void. Most of us assume that matter is inherently non-conscious “gray meat” that somehow begins to feel once sparked with electricity.

    Strawson argues that we actually have no idea what the intrinsic nature of matter is. Physics is brilliant at telling us how an electron behaves—its mass, charge, and spin—but it is silent on what the electron is in and of itself.

    The Detective Story: The Silence of Physics

    Physics is like a world-class detective who has found the fingerprints of matter but has never actually seen the culprit. Think of a game of chess. Physics is the grandmaster who has mapped every rule of the game. He can tell you exactly how the Knight moves, but if you ask what the pieces are actually made of—wood, plastic, or pure energy—the rules are silent.

    Physics describes matter using dispositions—what it does to other things. But matter cannot just be a set of behaviors; there must be something doing the behaving. The physicist Arthur Eddington famously agreed, noting that physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little. We know its mathematical structure, but we are silent on its inner nature. Strawson’s genius is realizing that because physics is silent about the internal nature of matter, it has no right to claim that matter is dead.

    The Law of No-Emergence: Something from Nothing?

    In science, we see emergence all the time, like liquidity. But liquidity is just a new way for molecules to behave in space. Strawson’s No-Emergence argument states that it is logically impossible for feeling to emerge from non-feeling stuff. You can’t get wetness if you don’t have molecules, and you can’t get redness if the building blocks of the universe are void of experiential quality.

    If there is no experience in the fundamental constituents of the universe, Strawson argues, then no amount of complex arrangement can ever bring it into being. If you want a conscious brain, you must start with conscious building blocks. Otherwise, consciousness is a miracle—something appearing out of thin air once matter gets complex enough.

    How to Build a Subject: Strawson vs. Chalmers

    If both men agree that an electron might be conscious, how do they view the Subject differently? For David Chalmers, the subject is a Result. He looks at the world through the lens of Information and Psychophysical Laws. In his view, matter carries information, and when processed a certain way, the laws of the universe switch on the light of experience. To Chalmers, the electron carries raw data that, under the right laws, becomes a subject. The subject is the result of an equation.

    For Galen Strawson, the subject is a Nature. He thinks Chalmers’ idea of laws switching on a light is still too close to magic. He argues that you don’t need a law to turn matter into a subject because matter is a subject. The electron doesn’t carry information that then becomes a subject; the electron is a tiny, primitive subject of experience. The glow is what the electron is made of. The subject is the fundamental reality of the physical world.

    The Conscious Electron: A Tale of Two Panpsychisms

    While Strawson insists consciousness is the nature of matter, Chalmers is more interested in the laws connecting matter to mind. Chalmers flirted with the idea that electrons might have a flicker of experience, but for him, it’s Matter + Laws = Mind. Strawson thinks this is a dualist myth. He believes the electron’s consciousness is its very identity. For him, it’s Matter = Mind.

    The Subtle Divide: The Plus vs. The Is

    It comes down to how you define Matter. Chalmers takes the Plus View (Property Dualism). He accepts the standard definition of matter as dead, so if the universe is conscious, it must be because there are extra properties—physical properties plus mental properties.

    Strawson takes the Is View (Real Physicalism). He thinks adding extra laws is an unnecessary complication. We don’t need extra properties because we’ve been wrong about the physical ones all along. The mental property is the physical property. For Strawson, the insideness of an atom is its experience.

    Why Philosophical Zombies Are Impossible

    This distinction explains why Strawson thinks Chalmers’ Philosophical Zombie argument is flawed. To Chalmers, a Zombie is possible because you could imagine a world where the matter is the same, but God forgot the consciousness laws. The hardware is there, but the software isn’t running.

    To Strawson, a Zombie is a contradiction. If you have the matter, you already have the experience. They are the same thing. Asking for a physical brain without consciousness is like asking for a circle that isn’t round. If you built a perfect physical duplicate of a human, that being would have to be conscious, because consciousness is what those atoms are.

    The Science of the Inside

    Strawson looks at the only piece of matter whose internal nature we actually know: the human brain. When a neuroscientist looks at a brain, they see the outside—the firing neurons. But because you are a brain, you see it from the inside as a symphony of colors and thoughts. Strawson suggests that consciousness is what the inside of matter looks like. There is no mystery of how the brain produces the mind because they are just two ways of describing the same physical event. Experience is the physical reality of the brain experienced from the first-person perspective.

    Evolution: Organizing the Wakefulness

    In Strawson’s view, evolution didn’t produce consciousness as a new feature. Instead, it organized pre-existing, conscious building blocks into complex structures. We didn’t evolve a mind; we are matter that has become complex enough to have a unified perspective. Consciousness was there from the Big Bang; evolution just gave it a voice.

    Conclusion: A Foundation of Experience

    While Chalmers is adding a new floor to the house of science to make room for the mind, Strawson is telling us that the mind was already part of the foundation. Strawson doesn’t make the mind a miracle; he makes matter extraordinary. He allows us to keep the rigor of physical science without having to deny the reality of our own inner lives. By redefining matter as inherently experiential, Strawson offers a version of physicalism that is actually real.

    But what if even Real Physicalism isn’t enough? What if the mind isn’t just a part of matter, but a separate substance that exists alongside it? Next week, we’ll step away from the physicalist camp entirely to look at the modern defenders of Substance Dualism—the thinkers who believe the ghost in the machine is very real, and very separate.

    Deepen Your Journey: Suggested Reading

    If Strawson’s argument for Real Physicalism has sparked your curiosity, these resources are the best places to start. Please note that the links below are affiliate links; if you choose to purchase through them, I earn a small commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you, which helps support the continued research and writing of this series.

  • The Man Who Made Philosophy Hard Again: David Chalmers and the “Hard Problem”

    The Morning After Dennett

    In my last post, we explored Daniel Dennett’s world—a world where we are complex biological robots. In Dennett’s view, consciousness is essentially a biological computer running a sophisticated program. When you smell coffee or feel a breeze, your brain is simply executing “sub-routines” of data collection, self-monitoring, and linguistic reporting. To Dennett, once you’ve explained how the program runs, you’ve explained the mind. There is no “hidden magic” left over.

    It’s a clean, scientific, and intellectually tidy view. But for many of us, it leaves a lingering, cold aftertaste. It feels like a “morning after” hangover where you realize that while Dennett has explained how the software works, he has ignored the most obvious fact of your life: The fact that it feels like something to be the computer. In 1994, at a conference in Tucson, Arizona, a young, long-haired Australian philosopher named David Chalmers walked into this functionalist factory and asked the question that would halt the Materialist parade: “If we are just programs, why does the program have to ‘feel’ like anything at all on the inside?”

    The Great Divide: Easy vs. Hard

    To understand the power of Chalmers’ insight, you have to understand his most famous distinction. He argued that when we talk about “consciousness,” we are actually talking about two very different things.

    The “Easy” Problems These are the questions that occupy 99% of neuroscientists. How does the brain integrate information from the eyes? How do we categorize objects? How do we react to a loud noise? Chalmers calls these “easy” not because they are simple, but because we have a functional roadmap for them. In science, if you can explain how a system functions, you have explained the system. There is no “digestion-stuff” left over once you explain the stomach; there is no “weather-stuff” left over once you explain the atmosphere.

    The Hard Problem The “Hard Problem” is the outlier. It is the question of Subjective Experience. When you look at a red apple, your brain processes light waves and triggers certain neurons. That is the “easy” part. But then, there is the redness of the red. There is the undeniable fact that it “feels like something” to be you in that moment.

    Chalmers’ point is devastatingly simple: You could explain every physical vibration, every chemical spike, and every neural loop in the brain, and you would still have a glaring hole in your theory. You still haven’t explained why those physical movements are accompanied by a subjective “glow.”

    The Anatomy of the Philosophical Zombie

    To prove that the physical world and the mental world are not the same thing, Chalmers resurrected and modernized a classic thought experiment that had been gathering dust in the archives of philosophy: The Philosophical Zombie.

    Imagine a being that is a perfect physical duplicate of you. It has your DNA, your brain structure, and your habit of squinting when it’s sunny. If you ask it how it feels, it says, “I feel great!” Because it is a biological robot running a sophisticated program, it reacts exactly as you would. If you prick it with a needle, it yelps “Ouch!” and pulls its arm away because its “threat-detection neurons” fired.

    But there is a catch: Inside this creature, the lights are off. There is no “inner life.” It is a biological machine perfectly simulating a human being, but with zero subjective experience. It doesn’t feel the needle; it just processes the signal and moves the muscle.

    The Ultimate Question: Why aren’t we Zombies? This is what truly “woke up” Chalmers. He realized that from an evolutionary or physicalist standpoint, we should have been zombies. A Zombie-you would survive just as well as the real you. Evolution only cares about what you do, not how it feels while you are doing it.

    So why did the universe “turn the lights on”? If the physical machinery works perfectly fine in the dark, why is there a subjective “you” along for the ride? The fact that we actually experience our lives—the joy of a sunset, the sting of a needle—suggests that consciousness isn’t just a byproduct of survival; it is a fundamental fact that science cannot ignore.

    The Structural Gap

    The weight of Chalmers’ argument lies in a logical trap he calls the “Structural Gap.” He points out that all of physics is a description of structure and dynamics—how things move and interact. If you explain the structure of a car, you’ve explained the car.

    But consciousness isn’t a structure or a movement. It is a state of being. You can map the “structure” of a brain forever, but you are effectively describing the map while ignoring the territory of the felt experience. For Chalmers, this means our current science isn’t just “missing a few details”—it is using the wrong language entirely. Physics describes things from the outside, but consciousness is the inside. You cannot logically arrive at an “inside” simply by rearranging “outsides.”

    The Solution: Naturalistic Dualism

    So, if consciousness isn’t just “meat processing,” where does it come from? Chalmers is a man of science, so he doesn’t want to rely on supernatural souls. Instead, he proposes Naturalistic Dualism. To understand this, consider Isaac Newton. When he proposed “Gravity,” critics called him a mystic. They asked, “How can two planets pull on each other through empty space without touching?” Newton didn’t have a “physical” mechanism; he just accepted that gravity was a fundamental force.

    Chalmers is doing the same thing for the mind. He believes there are Psychophysical Laws—nature’s own “bridge” that dictates: “When you have this specific physical information structure, you get this specific mental experience.” It’s not magic; it’s just a law of the universe we haven’t mapped yet. By treating consciousness as a fundamental pillar of reality—just like mass or charge—Chalmers provides the first framework that actually respects the data of our own lives.

    The “Wild” Conclusion: Panpsychism

    If consciousness is a fundamental building block—like gravity—it shouldn’t just magically appear for the first time when a human brain gets big enough. It should be there, in some form, at the very bottom of reality. This leads Chalmers to a conclusion that even he admitted was “wild”: Even electrons might have a tiny spark of consciousness.

    It is important to be precise here. Chalmers does not think electrons are “thinking,” having conversations, or feeling “sad.” He distinguishes between Sapience (complex thought/emotions) and Proto-Consciousness (the raw “light” of experience).

    • Human Consciousness: A high-definition IMAX movie where the pixels are so tightly integrated they form a seamless, meaningful reality.
    • Electron Consciousness: A single, tiny pixel flickering in the dark. It doesn’t have a “story,” but it has the primitive property of being “lit.”

    He proposes a Double-Aspect Theory of Information. He suggests that Information is the ultimate substance of the universe, and it has two sides: the Outside (what it does physically—the “program”) and the Inside (what it feels like—the “glow”). If an electron processes even a tiny bit of “information” about its environment, it has a tiny bit of “inside.”

    The Reality of the Internal World

    By placing consciousness at the center of his theory, Chalmers has achieved something historic. He has validated the fact that your inner life is the most real thing you possess. In a world of “biological robots,” he has given us back our humanity by proving that our experience isn’t a “trick” or a “user illusion”—it is a fundamental property of the cosmos.

    He has moved consciousness from a “byproduct” to a “fundamental pillar.” He has shown that to understand the universe, we cannot just look through a telescope or a microscope; we have to account for the fact that there is someone looking through them in the first place. Chalmers has finally given the “glow” of existence the scientific status it deserves.

    Conclusion

    Chalmers’ view of the universe is one where the lights are always on. It is a world where information isn’t just dead data, but carries the potential for feeling and experience from the smallest atom to the largest brain. It is a rigorous, logical, and deeply satisfying answer to the most difficult question in science.

    In my next post, we will keep this journey going. We’ve seen the world as a machine (Dennett), and we’ve seen it as a fundamental duality (Chalmers). But what if there’s a third way? Next week, we’ll meet Galen Strawson, the “Realistic Monist,” who takes everything Chalmers has taught us and uses it to redefine the very meaning of “matter” itself.

    The Consciousness Library: Further Reading

    Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you choose to pick up any of these books through the links provided, it helps support the blog and keeps these deep-dives coming!

    If you want to move beyond the blog post and engage with these ideas at their source, these five books are the essential starting points: