Here's another in that series: religious beliefs vindicated by being redefined to mean something different from what people used to think they meant. We've had religion not being about beliefs so much as about practices; and we've had the one where belief in God doesn't entail belief that there is a God; we've also had religious belief not being about reality or propositional truth, and belief in God being essentially about the possibility of justice and freedom. The latest in the line comes from Stephen Asma, professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, and this time it concerns, not belief in God, but belief in the soul. Here is how it goes.
(1) 'Science seems entirely justified in its soul scepticism'. (2) 'One response is for believers to rush headlong into a faith-based rejection of rationality and just hold fast to the traditional soul idea'. (3) But Professor Asma has 'a fresh alternative' to offer. (4) Expressions referring to the soul 'are not really propositions about the world. They express emotional attitudes and resemble other kinds of imperative or aspirational speech' - a claim which he backs by reference to the use of such locutions as 'He is my soul mate' and 'This nature hike is good for my soul'. (5) Therefore, 'the soul can be deeply meaningful whether it exists or not' (my italics); and, unpacking that conclusion:
Once you take the metaphysics out of the language of soul, you begin to see how the soul is used in social contexts of ordinary language. When a minister tells parents at their son's funeral that they will see their son again, and his soul is in a better place, I cannot dismiss it or heap scorn on it. If we professors hear this language as a description of reality, then we're bound to be irritated by the issue of truant evidence and the lack of warrant. But if we hear it as emotive hope, then our objections fall away... Metaphysics aside, the minister's language seems to suggest that there are emotions so deep and bonds so strong that not even death should end them. That is a beautiful sentiment no matter what you think of the soul.
I agree with one thing here: I, too, wouldn't heap scorn on what the minister says at the funeral. People have to cope with death and loss, and this is one way in which they do it. To heap scorn about it is contemptible. But Asma's futile rescue effort tries to dress up a philosophical retreat as a vindication - a vindication of the concept of the soul. It won't work.
For, while it is true that there are 'emotions so deep and bonds so strong' that they survive the deaths of individuals, at least when there are others left alive to remember them, it is possible to recognize this and the force of the feelings that make it true in statements of a quite other kind - such as (just for example) 'We feel for you in your sorrow, and for your terrible loss; your son will be cherished in the memory of all who loved him'. I make no special claim for that particular form of words; it can doubtless be improved upon with some other non-soul-referring statements. But in any case, that there are such alternatives registering the depth of loving attachments and the strength of human bonds faces Asma with a stark choice. Since these sentiments can be articulated directly and explicitly, he must either say why the expression of them can't be substituted for statements about the soul going to a better place and so offering hope of future reunion, or acknowledge that there is more to these statements than merely the expression of deeply-held emotions. That is to say, the soul-statements don't have the meaning, or just the meaning, Asma attributes to them, but embody something extra as well, as they appear to do; they lodge the expression of emotions in an entity - even if posited only at some 'mythical' level - that survives bodily death.
One or two analogies may help here. A woman who has believed through 25 years of marriage that her husband was a good man and lived by high principles discovers that he's been unfaithful to her for most of their marriage, with many different women and including two of her best friends; learns that he betrayed one of his own best friends in a most despicable way; and that he has stolen money from two cancer charities he worked for; lied to their own children to turn them against a friend to whom he had taken a dislike without good reason; and deliberately killed the family cat, being averse to pets. It would be true to say of her previous good opinion of him that there were creditable impulses behind it: she loved her husband, was committed to their relationship, and from her knowledge of him could not imagine him like this. But the nature of those loving, trusting impulses would not show that her earlier view of him was not a mistaken one. Someone who believes that the only thing in the way of a blissful utopia on earth is private ownership of the means of production, or that not enough people go to church, or that we have all been wrongly socialized, is deluded, even if one source of their delusion is a healthy human hope that the world can be made better than it is.
If in plain retreat you try to represent your retreat as a victory, be prepared for others to view this claim with scepticism.