As you may have noticed it has been quite some time since my last response. My school projects are mounting to a degree that makes participation in extracurricular activities difficult. Since I find the soul argument a little more interesting than the miracle one, and since I'm pressed on time, I'll respond to this side and let the other one rest.
Donald has used the analogy of the soul as software. Though he acknowledges the limitations of the analogy--e.g. that the soul is not simply stored information--I don't think that the limitations of the analogy have been made as clear as they should be. In fact, the analogy seems to result in a form of reductionism.
The point that I want to make about consciousness is twofold:
1. That the type of consciousness we have is intimately related to the types of (biological) beings that we are--that is, the specific type of physiology we have.
2. That the specific identity we have as a token instance of that type of consciousness, is intimately related to the particularities of that specific biological system (including, of course, the "recorded" history of one's biological system).
So, by way of analogy once again, it seems to me that Donald's argument amounts to this: we can take the liquidity of water, remove it, and place it into oil. That is, we can move a soul around, and put it into another body. But is it the same "liquidity" or soul at this point? Hasn't the identity of the phenomenon collapsed?
Numbers of problems arise in this idea. First of all, how can one possibly transport something that is not physical? Can you pick up digestion and move it around? Or is digestion a way of describing certain processes that are taking place? Don't misunderstand me, I think that some things can be transported even though they are not, strictly speaking, physical--we send information through the air waves all the time. But is the human form of life like that? Are humans the kinds of beings that can be removed from their bodies and moved through the air? Can humans be reduced to information that is simply copied and pasted onto something else? Secondly, even if we could put a particular instance of human consciousness into a body of the exact same
type (human physiology), the question remains as to whether identity can remain without putting that particular instance into the particular physiology from which it both arose and was sustained. My argument is that identity collapses at this point.
In short, the idea of souls migrating sounds like a bit of science fiction that I'd prefer to abandon in favor of a more natural approach. I see no reason to believe anything other than that human consciousness is an aspect of particular biological systems, and when those systems which support it collapse and die, then consciousness, which was a product of it, collapses as well. If someone goes even a few minutes without oxygen, then if we get them back their "soul" is radically altered (in fact, both their brain and soul are "mush," if I may be so crude).
Human consciousness is a delicate thing, and cannot survive without the mother system that produced it initially. We can make analogies all day, but do we have any reason to believe that are analogies are anything more than wishful thinking? Do our analogies have ontological import, or are they clever ways of articulating our hope for something that we should learn to live without?
