Introduction

So far, most of my content has dealt with Alzheimer’s proofing in home-modification scenarios and other long-term-care conversations.

But, today, I thought I would venture off the beaten path just a little bit.

Alzheimer’s also has a number of interesting theoretical implications as well. My academic background is partly in philosophy and so these theoretical questions are also of interest to me personally.

There are a great number of these cognitive impairments and dementia might surface in a number of different contexts. Ethics is going to be one. Metaphysics is another. Philosophy of mind has obvious relevance. So, I thought I would just pick one of those issues and I decided upon the question of the existence of the soul; that this is an issue that has been debated for thousands of years, so I am under no illusions about trying to resolve the issue in the space of a short web article.

In fact, I am not even going to take sides on the issue, what I want to do instead is just trying to present an accessible introduction to the range of issues, or if you are already familiar with these then call it a refresher course.

The question that is going to be somewhat in focus here is:

Does Alzheimer’s disease disprove the existence of the soul?

What I am going to do is assume the role of the person who says that Alzheimer’s does disprove the soul and then, on the other side of the fence, I’ll play the person who says it does not. I’ll go back and forth like this through five (5) considerations.

But, without further ado, let me present both sides!

Pro and Con Arguments

Against Soul #1: Alzheimer’s is a brain disease that can destroy someone’s personality. That’s the key point.

Alzheimer’s destroys personality by destroying the brain. So, take away the brain, and you take away the personality. A soul simply does not fit into that picture anywhere.

The brain is necessary for personality.

For Soul #1: The brain is necessary for personality. There is no real question about that. So yeah, if you take away the brain, you take away the personality.

But think of a Philly-Cheese-Steak sandwich. If you take away the cheese, you take away the Philly cheese steak sandwich. That does not show that there is nothing to a Philly cheese steak sandwich other than cheese.

The cheese is necessary, just like the brain is necessary. But arguing that the necessity of the brain shows the nonexistence of the soul is like arguing that the necessity of the cheese shows the nonexistence of …bread rolls.

Against Soul #2: Not really, because we already know that bread rolls exist, and we know the full recipe for a Philly cheese steak. It is part of our background information.

But, here, we’re trying to figure out what the full recipe for personality is, based on empirical evidence.

Personality is made up of brain states. Think of it as like how a team is made up of players and coaches. There is nothing more to a team than the people who make it up, and there is nothing more to a personality than the brain states that make it up.

For Soul #2: Well, wait a minute!

The evidence shows dependence. Personality depends on the brain. But dependence is not the same thing as identity.

A team may be identical to the people that make it up. But, then, a team is not a good analogy.

A better analogy would be to think of a musician. A musician depends on a working, well-tuned instrument in order to make music. If the instrument is broken, or out of tune, then the quality of the music is either dramatically lowered, or the musician may not be able to make any music at all. But this dependence of the musician on a working instrument certainly does not imply that music is identical to a good instrument.

Similarly, the fact that personality is dependent on the brain does not mean the two are identical. The brain is an instrument of the soul.

Against Soul #3: But we can experience both musicians and musical instruments. We know they are two separate things because we can have dealings with both of them.

Again, in this case, were trying to figure out how many things there are.

Just because there could be something more than the physical brain does not mean that there is.

Number one, it’s not clear how a nonphysical thing like a soul could use a physical brain as a tool.

And, number two, the principal known as “Occam’s Razor” tells us not to multiply causes, and to prefer simpler explanations.

So, in this case, saying that personality is due to one thing – a physical brain – is simpler than saying that it is due to two things – a physical brain plus some mysterious “soul.”

For Soul #3: There’s a saying, sometimes attributed to the famed physicist Albert Einstein: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Simplicity is great, but it is not always a matter of just counting proposed causes.

Suppose someone is investigating a house fire, and they notice that the wiring is faulty, and that there were oily rags strewn about the entire place.

Now, it would, of course, be simpler to explain the house fire only by talking about the faulty wiring, and not mentioning the oily rags at all. But, if the house fire was in fact caused by faulty wiring and the rags together, then any explanation that leaves one of those factors out is not a good explanation.

Occam’s Razor says we should not multiply causes beyond necessity. Sometimes multiplying causes is necessary.

Against Soul #4: In the case of your fire example, the multiplication of causes is necessary because the scientist, or in that case, the fire investigator, concludes from the evidence that having more than one cause is necessary to give a full explanation.

In the case of personality, the investigators, for example, neuroscientists, have not concluded that we need to appeal to more than the physical brain in order to have an adequate explanation.

So, appealing to anything else simply goes beyond what is needed.

For Soul #4: Fire investigators and neuroscientists are both scientists of nature.

Natural science deals with what is physically measurable and physically detectable.

So, natural scientists can tell you all about the physical causes of physical things, but they cannot tell you about nonphysical things. For example, the fire investigator can tell you about faulty wiring and oily rags but cannot tell you that the fire was a tragedy.

Things like tragedies, or indeed souls, are nonphysical things. But, being nonphysical does not mean that they are not real parts of human experience. They are; they just go beyond what natural science can talk about.

Against Soul #4: We do not need the fire investigator to tell us that the fire was a tragedy. That’s obvious. But having a soul is not obvious.

For Soul #4: Here is what’s obvious: I have a rich inner experience – a private mental life – that goes beyond what neuroscientists can image, or test, or quantify in physical experiments.

Against Soul #5: We are getting off track. Here is the bottom line.

My dad got Alzheimer’s disease and progressively forgot more and more, and got worse and worse until, eventually, somebody could have looked at him and said he was a completely different person.

And that horrible decline was due to a brain disease.

So, at the end of the day, who my dad was, and who we all are, is dependent on, caused by, or explained in terms of the brain.

If something like Alzheimer’s disease comes along and damages our brains enough, it can literally change who we are.

And this is not at all what we would expect if we had, or if we were, something other than, a physical brain.

Therefore, Alzheimer’s disease shows: Probably, there is no such thing as a nonphysical soul.

For Soul #5: Well, my dad went through Alzheimer’s disease, too.

Notice how we both said that.

“My dad developed Alzheimer’s disease.” “My dad got progressively worse.” “My dad forgot who he was.”

But all that happened to the same person: My dad.

Yes, his personality was dramatically and tragically changed, because we know – from science – that you have to have a working brain in order to be a healthy and recognizable version of yourself.

But my dad never literally became someone else. If he had, why would the family have continued to care about him at all?

See, that is really the point. If, as I think, he was still numerically one and the same person, even after his brain and his personality were destroyed, then the question is: What was it about them that stayed the same the whole time? What continuous, existing thing explains that identity over time?

It wasn’t his brain, or his memories, or his personality. All those things were destroyed by the Alzheimer’s!

Therefore, I say that the thing that stayed the same was something the Alzheimer’s could not destroy: It was his soul.

Conclusion

These are heavy, theoretical topics! Bear in mind that I have left out quite a lot!

Philosophical reflections on questions regarding the soul may spill over into discussions of personal identity, memory, and so on – each of which on their own fill countless pages and extend back hundreds and even thousands of years.

Conversations of this kind often invoke obscure words and forbidding terminology. You may hear talk of “aboutness” and “intentionality.” You may be exposed to ponderous phrases like “mind-body dualism” and “reductive versus non-reductive physicalism.” You might hear great-big words like “supervenience.”

In the above presentation (and accompanying video!), what I have tried to do is to give a presentation of the issues without any of that jargon.

I have, however, bumped up against some of the deeper concepts. For example, there is an underlying discussion of necessary and sufficient conditions. I touched on this a little bit, without naming it specifically.

But, there are other important issues that I simply haven’t gotten into at all. For instance, there are questions about identity and what is sometimes called “Leibniz’s Law.” I did not really get into those at all.

And the conversation can easily turn into a subset of philosophy called “modality,” where the discussion is about concepts like contingency, possibility, and necessity.

Suffice it to say that there is plenty of room to expand a conversation like this!

So… if you feel like I have left out your favorite argument or your favorite consideration, please understand that I have not done it to purposely weaken one side of the argument or another, or to play favorites. I have simply done it because I felt that introducing another concept might have made the article a little bit less accessible.

And bear in mind that all of that is simply keeping the conversation in the realm of what you might call “philosophy.” The conversation could easily be further expanded to include religious doctrines, theological opinions, etc., and that could be an entire presentation all on its own.

What I did present was simply designed to be an introduction to the issues.

Although I may certainly get into further theoretical issues in the future, understand that this website is mostly about some very practical concerns about how to Alzheimer’s Proof your care environment. Or, indeed, I get into how to Alzheimer’s Proof your own diet and lifestyle to reduce your own risk of developing diseases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Of course, I have further content along those lines planned. So, I invite you to bookmark the page and check back!

Thank you for reading or watching!

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, below.