Sorry to be preoccupied. One should take baby steps. If the soul is substantially identical to itself throughout the changes in life, it need reflect nothing but the centrality of certain functions or relations to self- conception. The immateriality may be more analogous to music, insofar as we consider the song to be the same even if it is played at different times, because the song is the relationship of the notes, not the particular performance.
What is useful in suggesting substantial immateriality is the fact that the consciousness seems to come to a point, rather than being altogether diffuse, and that we experience the sense of self- awareness and self- direction as determining our comportment towards experience. In a purely material scheme of things, experience would be forever diffuse, rather than resolving into a viewpoint, and choice would be purely illusory. Although it is possible to conceive of our interior life as illusory, there is no good reason to privilege the inferences and constructions we make from affirming the idea of things as materially composite. In other words, the idea of the soul as substantially immaterial comports more faithfully to our experience of self, without any real reason to eschew it........ |
