3. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part I

Today, we're going to continue the discussion where we left off last time. We were talking about two main positions regarding the question, "What is a person?" On the one hand, we have the dualist view. That's the perspective we spent a fair bit of time exploring during our last meeting. The dualist view posits that a person consists of a body and a soul; strictly speaking, we should say that the only part essential to the person is the soul, although it has a rather intimate connection to a particular body.

That's the dualist view. In contrast, we have the physicalist view, according to which there are just bodies. A person is just a body, as we might put it. Now, the crucial point here, the point I was turning to as we ended last time, is that although a person on the physicalist view is just a body, a person isn't just any old body. A person is a body that possesses a certain set of abilities and can engage in a specific array of activities.

People are bodies that can think, that can communicate, that are rational, that can plan, that can feel things, that can be creative, and so forth. Now, we might argue about what the exact best list of those abilities is. For our purposes, I think that won't be crucial, and so I'll sometimes talk about this set of abilities without actually having a canonical list. Just think of them as the set of abilities that people have—the things that we can do that other physical objects, like chalk, radios, and cars, cannot do. Call those the abilities that make something a person.

In fact, to introduce a piece of jargon, we could call those the "p-abilities," with "p" standing for "person." Alternatively, we could discuss the various kinds of ways. This is the physicalist's way of thinking about it. According to the physicalist, a person is simply a body that has the ability to fulfill the various p-functions. Therefore, we can describe a person as a p-functioning body.

Or we could say that a person is a body that is p-functioning. It's important to see that the idea is, although it's a body, it's not just any old body, and indeed, it's not just any old human body. After all, if you were to rip out your gun and shoot me in the heart, I would bleed to death. Well, we would still have a human body in front of us, but we wouldn't have a p-functioning body.

We don't have a body that is capable of thinking, planning, communicating, being creative, or having goals. Therefore, the crucial aspect of being a person is having a properly functioning body. Now, what is a mind from this perspective? From the physicalist view, it is still perfectly legitimate to talk about minds. The point, however, is that from the physicalist perspective, it is most accurate to say that discussing a mind is a way of addressing the various mental abilities of the body.

We nominalize it. We talk about it using a noun, "the mind," but discussion of the mind is simply a way of referring to the abilities that the body possesses when it's functioning properly. This is similar, let’s say, to talking about a smile. We believe that there are smiles. Physicalists don't deny that there are minds, just as we don't deny that smiles exist. We all believe that there are smiles.

Physicalists don't deny that there are minds, just as we don't deny that there are smiles. We all believe that there are smiles. But what is a smile? It is just a way of talking about the ability of the body to do something. This characteristic action we perform with our lips, exposing our teeth, and so forth, is what we call a smile.

A rather dorky smile, but there's a smile. Now, if you were listing the parts of the body, you would list the teeth, the lips, the gums, and the tongue, but you wouldn't list the smile. So, should we conclude as dualists that smiles are extra non-physical things that have a special intimate relationship with bodies? You could imagine a view like that, but it would be rather a silly perspective. Talking about a smile is just a way of discussing the body's ability to smile. There's no extra part—the smile that, if you're not careful, might lull you into thinking there must be a thing called "the smile," leading to all these metaphysical conundrums.

Where is the smile located? Well, it seems to be in the vicinity of the mouth. But the smile isn't the lips, and it isn't the teeth. So it must be something non-physical.

No, that would just be a silly way to think about smiles. Talk of smiles is just a way of discussing the ability of the body to smile, to form a smile. That's an ability that we have; our bodies have it. Similarly, then, according to the physicalist, talk of the mind, despite the fact that we have a noun there, is just a way of talking about the abilities of the body to do various things. The mind is just a way of discussing the fact that our body can think, can communicate, can plan, can deliberate, can be creative, can write poetry, and can fall in love.

Talk of all those things as what we mean by the mind, but there's no extra thing, the mind, above and beyond the body. That's the physicalist view. So it's important, in particular, to understand that from the physicalist point of view, the mind is not the brain. You might think, "Look, according to physicalists, minds are just brains."

And that wouldn't be a horrendously misleading thing to say, because according to the best science that we've got, the brain is the part of the body that is the seat, house, or underlying mechanical structure that gives us these various abilities. These functions are functions that we have by virtue of our brain. So that might tempt you into saying that the mind, on the physicalist view, is just the brain. But we probably shouldn't say that. After all, if you shoot me, there's my corpse lying on the stage. Well, there's my brain.

My brain is still there in my head, but we no longer have a person. The person has died. The person, it seems, no longer exists. Whether it is best to say something or not is a question we will have to consider in a couple of weeks. However, it seems pretty clear that the mind has been destroyed, even though the brain is still there.

So, I think that, at least when there's a need to be careful—maybe we don't normally have the need to be careful—but when there is a need to be careful, we should say that talking about the mind is a way of discussing the functioning of the body. Our best science suggests that a well-functioning body can perform various tasks, can think, plan, and fall in love, by virtue of the brain functioning properly. That's the physicalist view. Now, if we take this view and consider the dualist perspective, what does death mean? Death is presumably the separation of the mind and the body, possibly leading to the permanent separation and destruction of the body.

What is death from the physicalist view? Well, there is no extra entity like the soul; the mind is simply the proper functioning of the body. Therefore, the mind ceases to exist when the body's ability to function in that way has been compromised. Death is roughly the end of this set of functions. This explanation could probably be refined further, and in a couple of weeks, we will dedicate a day or half a period to improve it. However, from the physicalist point of view, there is nothing mysterious about death, at least regarding the basic understanding of what occurs during death.

I've got a stereo. Suppose I hold up my boombox for you, and it's playing music. That's one of the things it can do. If I drop it on the ground and smash it, then it can no longer function properly.

It's broken. There's no mystery why it can't function once it's broken. Death is basically just the breakdown of the body from a physicalist point of view, so that it no longer functions properly. One other point worth emphasizing in sketching the physicalist view is this: as I said, physicalists don't deny that there are minds. Even though we say we're just bodies, that doesn't mean that we're just any old body.

It's not as though the physicalist view is merely body-thinking. No, we are bodies that truly do think. So there are indeed minds. We could, from the physicalist point of view, refer to those as souls. Just as there is no danger in discussing a mind from the physicalist perspective, there wouldn't be any serious risk in talking about a soul.

And so, in certain contexts, I'm perfectly comfortable in my physicalist moods. I'm perfectly comfortable talking about this person's soul—it's got a good soul, a bad soul, or how the soul soars when I read Shakespeare or what have you. There's nothing upsetting or improper about the language of the soul, even from a physicalist point of view. However, in this class, just to try to keep us from getting confused, as I've indicated before, I now want to remind you that I'm going to save the word "soul." I’m going to at least try to save the word "soul" for when I'm talking about the dualist view. So we might put it this way: the neutral term is going to be "mind." We all agree that people have minds, which are sort of the house or the seat of our personalities.

And the question is, what is a mind? The dualist position is that the mind is a soul, and the soul is an immaterial object. So when I use the word "soul," I will try to reserve it for the concept of the soul, which is something immaterial. In contrast to that, we have the physicalist view.

Physicalists also believe in minds, but minds are just a way of talking about the abilities of the body. They do not believe in any immaterial object above and beyond the body that is part of a person. To keep things clear, I will say that physicalists, or materialists, do not believe in souls. For the purposes of this class, I'm going to reserve the word "soul" for the immaterialist conception of the mind. Though in other contexts, there is no harm in talking about souls.

All right, so these are the two basic positions: the dualist view on one hand and the physicalist view on the other. The question we need to turn to is, I take it, that just as the dualist view is familiar, so too is the physicalist view. Whether or not you believe it, you are familiar with the fact that some people hold this belief, or at least you wonder whether it is true. Does science require that we believe in the physicalist view or not? The question we want to address, then, is which of these two views we should believe: the dualist position or the physicalist position? The question, presumably, is, well, should we believe in the existence of a soul?

Both sides believe in bodies. As I say, the dualist position, as we're understanding it, is not a view that says there are only minds and no bodies. Dualists believe that there are bodies. They believe that there are souls as well as bodies. Physicalists believe there are bodies but no souls.

So, there's an agreement that there are bodies here—physical bodies. Physicalists believe that there are bodies but no souls, and thus, there is consensus on the existence of bodies. Here is one: each one of you is sort of dragging one around, and there is agreement that there are bodies.

The question is, is there anything beyond bodies? Is there anything beyond the body? Is there a soul? Are there souls? This is the question that will concern us for a couple of weeks.

Well, if we ask ourselves what reasons we have to believe in a soul, we might start by asking what reasons we have to believe in anything. How do we prove the existence of things? For many familiar, everyday objects, the answer is fairly straightforward. We prove their existence by using our five senses; we simply see them. How do I know that there are chairs?

Well, there are some chairs in front of me. I open my eyes and see them. How do I know that there is a lectern? Well, I see it and I touch it.

I feel it. How do I know that there are trees? I see them. How do I know that there are birds? I see them.

I hear them. How do I know that there are apples? I see them. I taste them. And so forth.

But that approach pretty clearly isn't going to work for souls, because a soul— and again, we've got in mind this metaphysical view according to which it's something immaterial— isn't something we see. It's not something we touch, smell, or hear. We don't directly observe souls with our five senses. You might wonder, "Well, don't I sort of directly observe it in myself that I have a soul?" Although I guess there have been people who have made that sort of claim, it seems false to me.

I can only ask each of you to sort of introspect for a second, to turn your mind's eye inward and ask, "Do you see that?" I don't see a soul inside you. I don't think so. I see things outside me. I feel certain sensations in my body, but it doesn't seem as though I observe a soul. Even if I believe in a soul, I don't see it.

Well, how do we prove the existence of things we can't see, hear, taste, and so forth? The usual method—maybe not the only method, but the usual method—is something like this: sometimes we posit the existence of something that we can't see in order to explain something else that we all agree takes place. Why do I believe in the existence of atoms? I don't see individual atoms.

Why do I believe in those so small that I can't see them? Because atomic theory explains things. When I posit the existence of atoms with certain structures and specific ways of interacting, combining, and building up, suddenly I can explain all sorts of things about the physical world. So, I infer the existence of atoms based on the fact that doing so allows me to explain things that need explaining. This is a kind of argument that we use all the time. How do I posit, and why do I believe in X-rays, even though I don't see them?

Because doing that allows me to explain certain things. Why do I believe in X-rays even though I don't see them? Because doing that allows me to explain certain concepts. Why do I believe in certain planets that are too far away to be observed directly through a telescope? It's because positing their existence helps explain certain phenomena, such as the rotation of stars and gravitational fluctuations. We make inferences about the existence of things we can't see when this process helps us explain something we cannot otherwise clarify.

This pattern of argument, which is ubiquitous, is called inference to the best explanation. Now, I want to emphasize this bit about best explanation. What we're justified in believing are those things that we need not simply when they offer us some kind of explanation, but when they offer us the best explanation that we can think of. So, look, why am I justified in believing in germs, various kinds of viruses that I can't see, or bacteria, or what have you? Because doing that allows me to explain why people get sick. But there are other things that would allow me to explain that as well.

How about demons? I could believe in demons and say, "Why did the person get sick and die?" Well, it was demonic possession. Why am I not justified in believing in the existence of demons? It's a possible explanation. However, what we seem to be justified in believing is not just any old explanation, but the best explanation.

So we've got two rival explanations: germ theory and demon theory. We need to ask ourselves which of these does a better job of explaining the facts about disease: who gets what kinds of diseases, how diseases spread, and how they can be treated or cured when they affect someone. The fact of the matter is that demon theory doesn't do a very good job of explaining disease, while germ theory does a much better job. It's the better explanation.

And so we're justified in believing in germs, but not in demons. It's a matter of inference—not just to any explanation, but to the best explanation. So, what we need to ask ourselves is this: the soul can't observe souls, but here's a possible way of arguing for them. Are there things that need to be explained that we could explain if we posited the existence of a soul, an immaterial object, above and beyond the body? Are there things that the existence of a soul could explain—and explain better—than the explanation we would have if we limited ourselves to bodies?

You might put it this way: This is sort of the easiest version of this kind of argument for our purposes. Are there things about us that the physicalist cannot explain? Are there mysteries or puzzles about people that the physicalist simply cannot address? If we become dualists, can we explain these features? Suppose there is a characteristic like feature F. Then we could say, "Look, although we cannot see the soul, we have reason to believe in the soul because positing the existence of a soul helps us explain the existence of feature F, which we all agree we possess."

Suppose it were true that you couldn't explain love from the physicalist perspective. We all know that people do fall in love, but souls would allow us to explain that. Well, boom, we'd have an argument for the existence of a soul. It would be an example of inference to the best explanation. Now, the crucial question, of course, is what the relevant feature is. Is there some feature that the physicalists can't explain, which would lead us to appeal to something extra-physical for an explanation? Alternatively, can the physicalist only do a poor job of explaining it, and if we were to appeal, as demon theory did, to something non-physical, would we then provide a better explanation?

If we could find the right feature F and make the argument that physicalists can't adequately explain it, while dualists do a better job, we would have a reason to believe in the soul. Like all arguments in philosophy, this would be a tentative argument. We might have some reason to believe in the soul until we encounter a new argument later on, but at least it would provide some justification for that belief. So, what might feature F be? Is there any such feature F? It's probably also worth emphasizing that what I am really doing is running through a series of arguments.

Inference to the best explanation is not a single argument for the soul; rather, it is the name for a kind of argument. Depending on what you fill in the blank with—what pet feature or fact you are trying to explain by appealing to the soul—you get a different argument. Let's ask ourselves: Are there things that we need to appeal to the soul to explain about ourselves? Here’s a first attempt. Actually, let me start by saying I am going to distinguish two broad families of characteristics we might appeal to.

We might say one set of approaches focuses on ordinary, familiar, everyday facts about us: the fact that we love, the fact that we think, the fact that we experience emotions, and so on. These are sort of ordinary features of us. I'm going to start with those, and then I'll eventually turn to another set of possible things that might need explaining, which we might think of as extraordinary or supernatural things. Maybe there are certain supernatural aspects of communication from the dead or near-death experiences that need addressing. So, we'll get to those, but we'll start with the sort of ordinary, everyday, humdrum facts about us. Even though they're ordinary and familiar, it could still turn out that we need to appeal to souls in order to explain them.

So, to start, how about this? Let's begin with a familiar fact, which I've already drawn your attention to a couple of times: you can have a body that's dead. You can have a corpse, and that's clearly not a person. It's not a living being; it's not a person.

It doesn't do anything. It just lies there. Whereas your body, my body, is animated. I move my hands around. My mouth is going up and down.

It walks from one part of the stage to the other part of the stage. Maybe we need to appeal to the soul in order to explain what animates the body. The thought would be that when the soul and the body have been separated, as the dualist explains, the soul has lost its ability to give commands to the body, and so the body is no longer animated. Thus, we have a possible explanation for the difference between an animated body and an unanimated or inanimate body. It is the soul in contact with the body in the right way. One might say, look, the physicalist can't tell us that because all the physical parts are still there when you have a corpse—at least if it's a fresh corpse before decay has set in.

So, we need to appeal to the existence of a soul in order to explain the animation of bodies like those you and I have. Well, I said I was going to run through a series of arguments, but that doesn't mean I'm going to endorse each one. It doesn't mean I think all the arguments are valid. Now, I announced on the first day of class that I don't personally believe in the existence of a soul. As such, it shouldn't be any surprise to you that, as we go through each of these arguments, I will say, "I'm not convinced by it, and here's why."

Now, as I think about it, the argument I’m about to sketch, which I’ve just started outlining, fails. I hope you’ll consider it and eventually come to agree with me. Yes, these arguments don’t really work after all. But what’s more important to me is that you at least reflect on each of these arguments. Is this a convincing argument for the existence of a soul?

If you think so, what response do you want to offer to the objections that I'm giving? If this argument doesn't work, is there another argument for the existence of a soul that you think is better? Alright. So, the first argument: You need the soul in order to explain the animation of the body. From the physicalist point of view, of course, the answer is going to be too quick.

To have an animated body, you need to have a functioning body. It's true that when you have an animated body, it needs to be functioning. When you have a corpse, you have all the parts there, but clearly, they're not functioning properly. This simply shows us that the parts have broken. Remember my stereo?

I drop my stereo. It falls on the stage. It doesn't work anymore and stops playing music. My boombox also stops playing music.

That's not because we previously had a CD inside of it. We dropped the whole thing. It's not as though there was something non-material there before. You have all the same parts, but the parts are now broken. They're not connected to each other in the right way. The energy is not flowing from the batteries through the wires to the CD component.

There's nothing mysterious from the physicalist perspective that a physical object can break. Although we need to offer a story about what makes the parts work when they're connected with each other and interacting in the right way, there's no need to appeal to anything beyond the physical. Well, suppose we try to refine the argument. Suppose we say you need to appeal to the soul in order to explain not just the fact that the body moves around and flails, but that the body acts purposefully.

We need something to be pulling the strings, to be directing the body. That's what the soul does, according to the dualist. In response, the physicalist will argue that while it's true that bodies don't just move around in random patterns—human bodies don't do that—we still need something to direct them.

But why couldn't that just be one? One particular part of the body plays the role of the command module. Suppose I have a heat-seeking missile that tracks down the plane. As the plane tries to dodge it, the missile corrects its course. It's not just moving randomly; there better be something that explains and controls the motions of the missile. But for all that, it could just be a specific piece of the missile that does it.

More gloriously, we could imagine building some kind of robot that performs a variety of tasks. It doesn’t move randomly; rather, the tasks are controlled by the CPU within the robot. The physicalist argues that we don't need to appeal to anything as extravagant as a soul to explain that bodies don’t just move randomly, but move in purposeful ways and are controlled. For each objection, there is a response. The dualist might counter by saying that, in the case of the heat-seeking missile, it’s doing things, but it’s simply obeying orders.

And the orders were given to it from something outside itself. Something programmed the robot or the missile. So, don't we need there to be something outside the body that programs the body? And that could be the soul. That's a harder question.

Must there be something outside the body that controls the body? The possibility, of course, is one to consider: Why not say that people are just robots, and we receive our commands from outside? I mean, from a familiar religious perspective, God creates Adam out of dirt, out of dust. Adam is just a certain kind of robot, then. God essentially breathes into Adam, which can be seen as "turning him on."

Maybe people are just robots commanded from outside by God, but that doesn't mean that there's anything more to us—the robot. That's one possible response. A different response, of course, is: why couldn't we have robots that just build more robots? And then if you ask, where did the commands come from? The answer is, well, when they were built.

They were built in such a way as to have certain instructions that they begin to follow, just like people have a genetic code. Perhaps there are various instructions that we begin to carry out or certain innate psychological traits, or what have you. Well, the argument quickly becomes very messy, and the fan of the soul begins to want to protest, "But look, we're not just robots. We're not just robots with some sort of program in our brains that we're following."

We've got free will, and robots can't have free will. Therefore, there has to be more than just physical things. This is an interesting argument, but I think it's a new one. We started with the idea that you needed to appeal to souls in order to explain why human bodies move, why we're animated, or why we move in non-random ways. I think it's fairly clear that you don't need to appeal to souls to understand that.

An appeal to a physical body suffices, I think, to provide an explanation for the difference between an animated and an inanimate body, and to explain how bodies will move in non-random ways. If the brain is our CPU, then we will behave in deliberate, purposeful ways, just as a robot behaves in deliberate, purposeful ways. Therefore, this initial argument, I believe, is not compelling. Still, we might wonder, what about this new argument? We stated that there is a family of arguments, all of which have the general structure of inference to the best explanation. You need souls in order to explain feature F. When you plug in a different feature F, you generate a new argument.

The one we started with— you need the body to explain the animation. You need the soul to explain the animation of the body. That argument, I think, doesn't work. But now we've got a new one: you need the soul to explain the animation of the body.

That argument, I think, doesn't work. But now we've got a new one. You need the soul in order to explain free will. Let me come back to that argument later. It's a good argument. I mean, it's an argument well worth taking seriously, but let's come back to it later.

First, let's go through some other concepts that could be considered as candidates for feature F. Suppose someone argues, "Yes, it's true that we don't need to appeal to souls to explain why bodies move in a non-random fashion, but people possess a very special ability to appeal to souls in order to provide explanations for this movement. This ability is unique to humans, and therefore, the argument continues, physical bodies alone could not possess it. Physicalists cannot explain this phenomenon. It is the ability to think and reason."

People have beliefs and desires, and based on their beliefs about how to fulfill those desires, they make plans. They develop strategies and reason about what to do. This creates a tightly connected set of facts about us: beliefs, desires, reasoning, strategizing, and planning. The argument is that to explain this, you need to appeal to a soul; no mere machine could believe.

No mere machine has desires. No mere machine could believe. No mere machine has desires. No mere machine could reason. Now, it's easy to see why you might think that sort of thing when you stick to simpler machines. It's pretty clear that there are many machines to which it doesn't seem natural to ascribe beliefs, desires, goals, or reasoning.

My lawnmower, for example, doesn't want to cut the grass. Even though it does cut the grass, it doesn't have the desire to do so. How shall I get that blade of grass that has been eluding me? So it's easy to see why we might be tempted to say that no mere machine could think, reason, or have beliefs or desires. But that argument is much less compelling nowadays than I think it would have been 20 or 40 years ago.

In an era of computers, with quite sophisticated computer programs, it seems, at the very least, natural to talk about beliefs, desires, reasoning, and strategizing. Suppose, for example, we have a chess-playing computer. On my computer at home, I've got a program that allows my chess computer to play. I myself stink at chess; this program can beat me at chess. I'm blind.

So, I move my bishop. The computer moves its queen. What do we say about the computer? Why did the computer move its queen, or its virtual queen? Why did the computer move its queen?

Well, the natural thing to say is that it's worried about the fact that the king is exposed, and it's trying to block me by capturing my bishop. That is what we say about computer playing programs. Now, think about what we're doing. We're ascribing desires to the program. We're saying it has an ultimate desire to win the game, certain subsidiary desires to protect its king and to capture my king, and undoubtedly, other subsidiary desires to protect its various other pieces along the way. This includes blocking certain paths or making other pieces on my side vulnerable.

It's got beliefs about how to achieve its goals, and then it puts those combinations of beliefs and desires into action by moving in a way that's a rational response to my move. So it looks as though the natural thing to say about it is that it does have beliefs. It does have desires. It does have intentions. It does have goals.

It makes sense. It accomplishes all of this. It's rational to a limited extent. It is only able to play chess, but within that scope, it is effectively doing all these things.

And yet, we're not tempted to say, are we, that the computer has a non-physical part? We can explain how the computer does all of this in strictly physical terms. Of course, once you start thinking of it this way, it's natural to talk this way across a variety of things that the computer may be trying to do. Now, of course, it's perfectly open to you as dualists to respond by saying, "Yeah, although we personify it—we treat it as though it was a person, as though it had beliefs and desires and so forth—it doesn't really have the relevant beliefs and desires because it doesn't have any beliefs and desires; no physical object could have beliefs and desires."

And in response to that, I just want to say it's just prejudice. Of course, it is true that if we simply insist no physical object could really have beliefs or desires, then it will follow that when we are tempted to ascribe beliefs and desires to my chess-playing computer, we're falling into an illusion that will follow once we assume those beliefs or desires. But what reason is there for saying it has no beliefs or desires? What grounds are there for withholding ascriptions of beliefs and desires from the computer? That's far from obvious.

Well, here's a possibility. Desires, at the very least, seem to be closely tied to a series of emotions in typical cases. You get excited when you're playing chess at the prospect of capturing my queen and defeating me. You feel worried when your pieces are threatened. And, of course, more generally, you get excited when your heart races, like when your girlfriend or boyfriend says they love you. You have that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you receive a bad grade on a test.

Maybe what's really going on is the thought that there's an aspect of desire that has a purely behavioral side. That's moving pieces around in a way that would make sense if you had this goal. And maybe machines can do that. But there's an aspect of desire—the emotional side—that machines can't have. However, we clearly do have it.

And maybe we want to build that emotional side into discussions of desires. So, if we want to say that machines don't have a mental life and couldn't have a mental life, what we really mean is that no machine could feel anything emotionally. Let's make a distinction. Let's say there's a way of talking about beliefs and desires that simply involves responding in a way that makes sense, given the environment. Perhaps computers and robots could do that.

But there's clearly a side of our mental life, the emotional side, where we might really worry: could a robot feel love? Could it be afraid of anything? So, look, again, our question was, do we need to appeal to mean something about us? The physicalist says no. The dualist says yes.

If what we mean is the mental aspect, specifically the behavioral aspect of the mental, where even a chess-playing computer likely possesses it, then that's not a very compelling argument. Physicalists will say that this aspect of the mental is quite clear and can be explained in physical terms. But let's switch the argument. What about emotions? Can a robot feel emotions? Could a purely physical being fall in love?

Could it be afraid of things? Could it hope for something? The latest version of our argument, then, is that people can feel emotions. But if you think about it, it's pretty clear that no robot could feel emotions. No merely physical thing could feel emotions. Therefore, there must be more to us than just a purely physical existence.

That's the argument we'll start with next time.