What is the Soul? Critical approaches in Dualism

 What is the soul is a writing that presents a critical interpretation of dualism against monism in philosophy. Dualism is a metaphysical concept where people believe that there are two kinds of reality: physical reality, body and spiritual reality, immaterial. Russell examines such dualism in philosophical standpoint how mind and body exist. He critically examines the similarities and differences between body and soul in the form of mind and body.

        He vitally inspects the lacks of science. He articulates that science does not provide us all information that we desire to get. We have not got the information clearly that we had before science cane into existence. The line “…circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did”, [1]presents the idea that modern science even does not know how much we were supposed to have known before science came into existence. Modern science cannot even know about body and soul concept.

        He further scans the concept of the body and mind and their interconnectivity. He writes, “…that the body is in time and space, but the soul is in time only”.

It is believed that body consists of the two things. It consists of both time and space. It means body goes for physical aspect that consists of both time span and entities, means the mass of an object. However, the soul is only time. It has only span or no physical mass; mere psychological or matter of thought, no more concretization.

Making headway, he looks at the concept of the body in the line of materialism. He believes materialism advocates for the body in a way that it has ‘its existence of self evidence’. He postulates that body physically exists as it has a self-proof; it exists in the world physically. A scientific proof is always there for such physical components.

He views the positions of the philosopher. He writes, “…the philosopher was apt to analyze it away”. He means to say that they are keen to know about it and explains about it this way or that way. They are not found to be doing. However, he views that the simplicities of the ideas have been lost. He points out,

[…] fine old simplicities are lost: physicists assure us that there is no such thing as matter, and psychologists assure us that there is no such thing as mind. This is an unprecedented occurrence.

 He strongly raises his idea that the dualistic concept of metaphysical materialism has been lost, as they want to establish their own significance in the field of philosophy. Now days, the dualism has been lost. There are tussle between physicists and psychologists. They argue quite differently. For, physicists matter is all-in-all and for psychologists mind is all-in-all. However, these two extremisms are not true.

        Going ahead, he wants to know about the reason behind the loss of dualism in philosophical arena. He finds, “…some of them attempt to reduce everything that seems to be mental activity to an activity of the body.

He derives the understanding that The physicist and psychologist try to conclude all mental activities to physical action. In this scientific world, everything is taken from factual occurrence. The mental action is always reflecting or manifest in physical action. However, author does not believe in such arguments.

        Likewise, he further examines what a body is. He states, “…hitherto called our body is really an elaborate scientific construction not corresponding to any physical reality”. He examines that we have existing history that we have a physical body. it is only construction of science as it has described with different metabolic and organic component that science can explain.

        He looks at materialists understanding. He encounters, “…a certain degree of success reduce the activities of the mind to those of the body, he cannot explain away the fact that the body itself is merely a convenient concept invented by the mind”. Russell questions the limitation of the materialist who reduces mental action to physical actions. However, he fails to explain about the reliable reason behind of it.

        After talking about some laps of materialists, he looks at dualism. He speaks, “…mind is an emanation of body, and body is an invention of mind”. He explains the springs of rotation in finding the meaning of both and their connectivity in actual word. It postulates how they are interconnected with each other.

        A common person thinks about universality of the matter. He writes:

“The plain man thinks that material objects must certainly exist, since they are evident to the senses. Whatever else may be doubted, it is certain that anything you can bump into must be real; this is the plain man's metaphysic. This is all very well, but the physicist comes along and shows that you never bump into anything.”

It presents that normal people concept is that anything that can be sense by sensory organ is always true, as they exist in the world. Anything that we meet by chance are real for us. However the physician tells that we donot meet anything by chance.

        He further examines the duality between mind and body. They both have same utility and supremacy. He mentions, “Mind and matter were something like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown.” He means that modern science cannot give exact idea about the mind as it fails to talk about matter exactly/ It is just like a battle that never comes to an end. It only forms certain inventions. it is beneficial to collect certain events  And they are always relative.

        He explains the importance of both mind and matter. He inscribes, “…both mind and matter are merely convenient ways of organizing events.”Russell questions both physicists and psychologists that they give preference to one particular entity. Nevertheless, he thinks that both work together in the universe for organizing the events. They really have coexistence.

He wants to examines the reason for  the differences between metaphysical materialism and materialism. He marks, “...the opponents of materialism have always been actuated by two main desires: the first to prove that the mind is immortal, and the second to prove that the ultimate power in the universe is mental rather than physical.” He examines why metaphysical materialism is different from materialism. The first is that they consider the mind is immortal and second is to prove the world works is mental.

        Finally, he tells how one has to think about future aspects of human life and metaphysical concepts. He writes, “  …on the earth's surface anything happens because somebody wishes it to happen. And since our power on the earth's surface is entirely dependent upon the sun, we could hardly realize any of our wishes if the sun grew could. It is of course rash to dogmatize as to what science may achieve in the future”

He agrees with materialistic concept that matter is everything. It is not necessary to think that what happens anything above the surface of the earth. It is beyound the capabilities of people then.

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[1]  The lines are taken  from course book class 11 and direct quotations are from The chapter: What is Soul?