William Hasker

An argument is presented, based on a common-sense interpretation of an everyday experience, for emergent dualism as the best available account of the origin of the human mind/soul. Emergent dualism is superior to subjective idealism in that it honors the common-sense conviction that the things we encounter have a real, physical existence, separate from our mental perceptions of them. It is superior to materialism in that it allows for our mental states to have real, physical effects, distinct from the effects of the physical states that accompany the mental states. It is also superior to materialism in allowing for a real, unified self that is not merely a collection of physical particles. These features allow emergent dualism to provide a foundation for libertarian free will; belief in such free will is another deliverance of common sense that cannot readily be reconciled with materialism. Emergent dualism is superior to standard varieties of dualism in giving a plausible account of the minds of non-human animals. Perhaps surprisingly, emer­gent dualism is superior both to traditional dualism and to standard varieties of materialism in combining readily with theories of biological evolution, in which natural selection promotes both the physical and mental development of complex organisms.

This essay presents William Wainwright’s conception of religious reasoning. He rejects the view that proper reasoning in religion must be limited to “neutral technical reason” (NTR), modes of reasoning that are neutral and acceptable to all parties in a religious disagreement. He emphasizes that religious reasoning, as seen in outstanding practitioners from different religious traditions, incorporates additional elements, such as appeals to revelation, emphasis on religious reading, rhetoric, acknowledgment of mystery, and especially “passional reason,” in which the arguments presented and the conclusions accepted depend essentially on the state of the reasoner’s heart. The essay goes on to consider how Wainwright deals with issues surrounding religious diversity: he rejects all of the standard methods by which it has been argued that differences in belief between traditions either do not really exist or do not ultimately matter. Special attention is given to religious pluralism, as advocated by John Hick and Peter Byrne. This leads to a consideration of exclusivism, in which it is held that the fundamental doctrines of one religion are true, and those of other religions, insofar as they differ from those of the favored religion, are false. Wainwright finds the standard objections against exclusivism to be ineffective or inconclusive. Finally, the essay addresses a question suggested but not resolved by Wainwright’s work: Does religious diversity have the consequence that truth in religion is not accessible to us?

The Thomistic doctrine of the soul as the form of the body has many of the right intentions. It aims to promote a close integration of soul and body, and more broadly of the human person with the overall world of nature. Emergent dualism responds that all creatures possess souls if the biological organism has developed in a way that enables it to be the “emergence base” for a soul. This chapter explains a brief survey of Aquinas's view of the soul, following the exposition of that view by Eleonore Stump. The human soul is different from other subsistent immaterial forms, in that the human soul, unlike an angel, does configure matter. The distinctive nature of the human soul, as contrasted with the souls of animals, makes it plain that humans are not merely animals; rather, they are “rational animals”, with all that implies.

We have a conception of the human person as constituted in part by a self, a unified, coherent center of consciousness which is a rational agent, capable of being responsive, and responsible, to other agents. There are, however, empirical phenomena — in particular, commissurotomy and multiple personality syndrome — that seem to threaten this unity both theoretically and practically. As a counterpoise to these phenomena, this chapter puts forward the unity of consciousness argument, deriving from Leibniz and Kant. While this argument might seem to conflict with the empirical evidence of disunity, the chapter maintains that there is no inconsistency between the evidence and the argument. The combination of the two, in fact, both places a barrier in the way of a materialist account of mind and consciousness, and at the same time points out a severe difficulty for standard (especially Cartesian) varieties of dualism. The chapter closes by sketching out my own preferred view of the metaphysics of persons, emergent dualism.

My comment on Jim Sterba’s bookFootnote1 will consist in a critique of what I take to be the central argument of the book, an argument that a certain kind of evil that is prevalent in our world is logically inconsistent with the existence of a good God. For our purposes here, the argument can be summarized briefly; if my objection as given here succeeds, the entire argument will fail to establish its conclusion. It begins with a statement of an alleged moral principle, then makes some assertions and draws a conclusion based on that principle. This principle is the Moral Evil Prevention Requirement 1.

Emergentism provides a remarkably appropriate fit with an evolutionary account of the history of life on earth. Emergentism presents us with a compelling picture of the co‐evolution of mind and brain. Among the emergentist options, emergent dualism is the one that best satisfies the requirements of both good philosophy and sound theology. The common versions of creationism are generally modeled on the dualism of Rene Descartes, according to which body and mind are two radically different kinds of substances. The body is physical through andthrough; it has all the natural, physical properties we are familiar with through the physicalsciences, but in itself it has no trace of mental properties such as thought or even sensation. The mind is the “thinking thing”; its essential characteristic is consciousness and conscious thought, with everything that goes along with that.