Archive for ‘The Beginnings of Scientific Psychology (Part III-B)’

I think the case of Phineas Gage raises some very hairy questions about metaphysics and Christian idea of the soul.  There is a lot of debate within Christianity about who a person is, what makes us human, do we have a soul, are we our soul, and does a person exist outside their body.  The idea of a transcendent soul is not even Judaic, but more Greek in origin.  A lot of ancient Hebrews did not even believe in another realm of “Heaven” where the faithful would go after death, the Sadduccees followed this tradition very heavily.

In fact, the Greek/Roman idea of the after life was a sort of noncorporeal world that punished a few people, but otherwise was a sort of boring nothingness in which we would float around forever.  In fact, if one scans the New Testament and tries to see how Jesus describes Heaven, it is much more like a recreation of Earth then the “other dimension” feel that many preach about today.  In fact, afterlife is described as believers getting new bodies and the Earth being renewed.

Also, saying that humans cannot exist outside our bodies and that the soul is in fact a part of the body, solves the problem Descartes and many other dualists (believing body and soul are separate) run into when trying to find a way for a noncorporeal soul to interact with a physical body.