I once watched a debate many years ago between an ex-christian pastor (turned atheist) and a current clergy member (arguing for Christian beliefs). The new atheist asked a question, or more accurately proposed the challenge:
“Can you explain what a spirit is? Using only positive terms?”
In other words, can you say what it is? Rather than trying to describe it by focusing on what it is not?
I actually don’t remember the answer, which is perhaps an indication that it was less than convincing. What I do remember though, is thinking “I can easily answer that question!” This article is my response to that challenge.
“I exist in the same way that all physical things in the universe exist, as a complex pattern emerging from the diverse interconnection of my constituent parts.”
It’s possible to understand, describe, and explain words like spirit and soul in purely positive materialistic objective terms. No, it’s not reductionist. Quite the opposite! With my answer I hope to satisfy (or equally dissatisfy) the spiritualists who say the tangible observable world is an illusion, and the materialists who say that if you can’t objectively measure it it does not exist.
There are two important concepts here that we must first understand, complexity and emergence.
Complexity:
Complexity is perhaps the easiest of these concepts to intuitively understand. The level of complexity of a system is a function of the number of degrees of freedom necessary to describe that system. Tic-tak-toe is a simple game – there are not many possible configurations. Chess is a vastly more complex game – the number of different possible outcomes are almost impossible to count! In other words complexity is a function of the number of possible configurations. The more information necessary to describe the system, the more complex and nuanced the result.
Example of increasing complexity:
Imagine your painting a picture. You’ve got a big brush, small canvas, and only one colour. Complexity is limited. What if you had a finer brush? Or a larger canvas? What if you added more colours? What if you added 3D textures like a collage? What if you expanded off the canvas, turned the whole room into one big painted collage? At every stage, you’re adding more possibilities, and the resulting artwork becomes more and more complex and nuanced.
Emergence:
Here is where the concept of emergence comes in. With increasing complexity, new patterns become possible. An emergent property is a characteristic of the system/group that was not possible, and indeed not present, in any one of its constituent parts. For example, when I combine the letters w, o, r, d, in a certain order, it spells ‘word’. This is an emergent property since no individual letter has the property of the whole word.
Simple Example of Emergent Properties:
Sometimes we can describe objects based on their colour – a red apple – a green frog – but what colour is a zebra? What colour is a leopard? We often describe these animals not by their colour but by their two-tone patterns, stripes and spots.
For these patterns to exist, we need enough complexity in the system, in this case two colours (not just one). This pattern of colour is an example of an emergent property. In other words, we can now ask not just ‘what’s the colour?’, but ‘what’s the pattern?’. This is perhaps a bit of a simplistic example but increasingly complex patterns can be seen throughout the natural world.
Examples of increasing complexity and emergent properties
Different combinations of subatomic particles come together to form a variety of different elements. Elements combine to form molecules, which arrange themselves into the physical world we can see in here. Arranged in the right way molecules can be a living cell. Groups of different cells become organisms like plants and animals. And a diversity of these becomes an entire ecosystem.
We can therefore say that an ecosystem is made up of sub-atomic particles arranged in a certain pattern. It only has the properties of an ecosystem when considered as a whole. It’s all about the different individual elements and how they are interconnected.
Example: What is a country?
Going even further, individual humans can group together to form families, societies, cities, cultures, and countries. So now let me ask you, what is a country?
Is it a piece of land? Is it rules and constitutions? Is it a particular culture? or perhaps a country is the individual members? And those members are the cells in thie bodies, and those cells are made up of molecules, elements, and subatomic particles…
Hopefully, the answer is obvious. All of the above! When subatomic particles arrange themselves in a certain (incredibly complex) way, the result is what we call a country, and nation.
We can think of it as a real, observable, complex pattern. We didn’t make it up any more than we made up a duck or a tree. It’s a pattern, something in the world which we observe and name.
A Note on Definition vs Recognition:
The universe is incredibly complex, and so are the patterns which we observe in it. The simple fact is that many of the tangible things that we name and recognise in everyday life are difficult or even impossible to define in any useful sense.
For example, do you know what a ‘bird’ is? If you answered yes to that question, what you probably meant was “I have a concept of bird in my brain and I can easily recognise this pattern in reality”. Now, a different question. Can you define a bird? Give it a try. Chances are, you probably described the individual properties of a stereotypical bird. Maybe it included words like animal, wings, feathers, or fly? However, on closer inspection, there are some birds (that would still match with your concept of bird), that cannot fly, have no wings, swim in the ocean, or are not even living. (e.g.ostrich, kiwi, penguin, paper crane)
One way of understanding this disconnect is that a definition must (by definition), be relatively brief. A sentence or two maybe? In contrast, the ‘concept’ of bird is derived from millions of instances of experiences (sights/sounds/stories) of birds that you have collected throughout your life. A recognisable concept is therefore radically more complex than a ‘definition’ could ever be, and hence it is often difficult/impossible to adequately reduce a concept to a definition.
“My soul is grounded in the physical world but transcends every aspect of it.“
So what is a soul?
So what then is a soul? A spirit? That’s a little bit like asking what is a personality, or what is love? It’s an observable, recognisable pattern. We may not fully understand it, or be able to concretely define it, but we can recognise it. In other words, it is a high level emergent property.
When we make negative statements like “I am not my physical body”, what I mean, in a more accurate way, is “I am not just my physical body”. My consciousness is not just a bunch of electrical signals in my brain any more than an ecosystem is just a bunch of subatomic particles. True, I am the cells that make up my body, but the I that is conscious and wills the writing of this sentence, is more than just an arrangement of atoms.
I exist in the same way that all physical things in the universe exist, as a complex pattern emerging from the diverse interconnection of my constituent parts. There is nothing spiritual about that. It’s just as much a materialist fact as giving a name to an element.
Yet at the same time, this more, literally transcends what we commonly think of as material. You can’t measure my soul under a microscope. You can’t surgically remove it. You can’t capture it, or hold it any more than you can catch a wave breaking in the ocean. Surely it exists but not in isolation. In fact some spiritual traditions compare our consciousness to the breaking of a wave in the ocean.
How I understand the soul:
Hopefully by now you’ll agree that it makes logical physical sense to talk about spiritual things (or higher things) that we observe. When we say higher what we mean is an additional level of complexity with a new layer of emergent phenomena and properties.
So… my spirit, my essence, my soul, whatever it is, the part of me that so many cultures somehow sense is eternal… what is it?
Good question! We may not fully understand how our own consciousness (our own existence) works, but for thousands of years humanity has observed that it does exist. And in an attempt to describe it many cultures have formulated certain imagery and beliefs to communicate about it. So I’ll do my best to put my concept and understanding into words below.
My soul is me, at the highest level. It transcends all physical dimensions it even transcends all mental dimensions. (i.e. not just what I think). It is my very essence, completely unique, undefinable, uncapturable, yet at the very source of what it means to be human. It is the highest level of pattern we have observed.
My soul is grounded in the physical world but transcends every aspect of it.
And so, with that I hope to satisfy (or equally dissatisfy), the materialist and the spiritualist. We are not just anything. The universe is an unfathomably complex arrangement of constituent parts. My soul is as real as the air I breathe.
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