Post Author: Bill Pratt

Joseph Owens’ book, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, argues for the existence of an immaterial human soul.  In part 1 of this post, we looked at three of his arguments for an immaterial soul: 1) the human intellect’s ability to know things as universals, 2) the human intellect’s ability to know in a way that transcends time, and 3) the human intellect’s ability to reason and pursue science.

In part 2, we will look at more reasons to think that there is an immaterial human soul.

First, Owens argues that man’s ability to reflect on himself entails an immaterial soul.  Material things cannot perceive themselves.  “An act of seeing or of any other external sense is always different from the thing it perceives.  It cannot perceive itself.”  Think of a movie projector at a theater.  The projector is able to project all sorts of images on the screen, but it would it be impossible for the projector to project itself on the screen.

But the human intellect is able to perceive itself.  Owens elaborates:

Men experience this self-knowledge through reflection.  The reflection is complete.  It is not a case of one sense perceiving the operations of another sense, as an internal sense attains the workings of the external senses.  It is a case of the intellect making itself and its own activities the object of its full reflective gaze. . . .  It is a complete bending back to view its own self.

Material things cannot accomplish this complete bending back, so the intellect must not be material.

Second, Owens explains that the human power of free will negates the possibility of a completely material intellect.  Why?  The acts of material substances are determined by their physical form.  If the human intellect were completely material, then all the actions of the intellect would be determined by physical processes.

Man, however, is aware that he has, at least sometimes, the power to choose without those choices being determined.  Owens explains, “This power cannot come to him from anything [material], for what is [material] is already determined to a definite way of acting. Free choice is an activity that functions beyond the limiting conditions of matter, and cannot proceed from a principle that is [material].”

To summarize, given the human intellect’s abilities of 1) knowing things as universals, 2) knowing things in a way that transcends time, 3) reasoning and doing science, 4) self-reflection, and 5) free choice, the intellect must consist of an immaterial component.  It cannot be completely material as material objects cannot do any of these things.

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Another chapter from Joseph Owens’ book An Elementary Christian Metaphysics urged me to write.  This chapter has Owens explaining why he believes humans have an immaterial soul.

He first points out that “actions and reactions in the material universe take place under the conditions of singularity.”  He explains that an “individual ball hits an individual wall.”  The reason for this is that “matter in the real world limits a material form to being under designated quantitative dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness. . . . One throw with the shovel removes only one shovelful of earth.”  Things of matter are individual and singular.

Owens argues, however, that the human intellect attains things as universal, not just as individual or singular.

It knows a [thing’s] nature not as something restricted to the singular thing before its gaze, but as applicable to all individuals of the species.  It knows it in a way that breaks through the individuating conditions of matter.  It knows it in a way that is not possible for a merely material knower.  The universal way in which the human intellect knows things, therefore, marks it as a cognitive principle that is to a certain extent functioning independently of matter.

The human intellect is able to escape the individuality of matter because it knows things as universals.  For example, we can know what human means without seeing every single instance of a human.  We are able to universalize what a human is in our minds.

Secondly, Owens notes that the human intellect is able to know things in a way that transcends time.  Time and matter go together, so anything that eludes time is also independent of matter.

The individual sensible thing is continually changing from moment to moment.  As perceived by the senses, it is attained under these changing conditions.  A leaf is seen as swaying in the wind, as green in summer, as multicolored in autumn, as decaying and falling in the frosty weather.  Under the universal aspect of leaf, however, it is known by the intellect in a way that transcends time.  It is known under an aspect that can be applied to any leaf at any time, an aspect that does not undergo any changes with the passage of time. . . . In attaining its object as immune to the changes of time, the intellect is operating in a way that cannot have its source [in] matter.

Third, Owens argues that science and reasoning could not exist unless the human intellect could go beyond time and space.

The scientific reasoning of one man becomes the common property of all who pursue the science from one generation to the other.  The enormous body of knowledge is not lost with the death of the individuals who so far have been bringing it into being.  It is not limited to the conditions of individuation and change, conditions inevitably imposed by matter.  Scientific progress, accordingly, requires that the intellects through which it takes place function in a way that is independent of the strictly material principle in the knowing subjects.

In part 2 of this post, we will continue to look at the case that Owens builds for arguing that there must an immaterial part of man.