Matter vs. Soul vs. Spirit

Humunculus dualism

I was recently asked the following question by a Christian: 

What are your thoughts, or have you written anything, on whether we are spirit? I think that we have the Holy Spirit enter into us when we become a Christian, but what’s your understanding of whether we humans are spirit as well as flesh and bone?

As this is such a frequent and pivotal question I thought I would publish my answer here for future reference:

I've long since given up any dualist  "ghost in the machine" concept:

Early man probably noticed the difference between beings capable of cognitive action (animals and humans) and non-cognitive action (like falling rocks and even complex clock work and chains of events). The difference is that on the one hand we have reactive complex adaptive systems (animals and humans) and on the other hand passive systems incapable of a reactive adaptive response.  We now have to add another ingredient: Consciousness: Most people instinctively empathetically construct other people as centres of the first person experience of conscious cognition and don't just see them as unconscious calculating machines.

These two ingredients of a) adaptive reactive cognition and b) and the instinctive empathetic construction of the first person perspective that takes place between normal people were presumably both noted by early man and may respectively account for the  two terns "soul" and "spirit"; Viz: "soul" being recognised as adaptive behaviour and spirit being recognised as the presence of a conscious first person perspective at least in the case of human adaptive behaviour. (And in my opinion, also in the "higher" animals).

But whether or not this is the  Biblical origin behind the words  "Soul" and "Spirit" (that would need a Biblical theme study on these words), I would want to express my current opinion that matter, being Created, Sustained and Managed by an Omnipower is likely to be "miraculous" in its properties. Therefore I have no qualms in proposing that both cognition and the first person perspective are "natural" phenomena of "matter"; but only if its Divinely ordained vitalities are correctly exploited; we are still learning about that one! On this proposal there is no "ghost in the machine": Conscious cognition is matter through and through, but not "matter" of the naive "gritty" or dualistic "billiard ball" sense that most people in the West habitually think of t; rather, matter is haunted and enchanted by God's presence.

I've written a lot on this subject and continue to do so. I am coming to the view that conscious cognition relates to the question of the nature of that enigmatic process of "quantum state reduction". That's what I'm working on at the moment.

See here for my writings to date: 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/search/label/Consciousness

I certainly don't follow the absurd opinion offered up by some subliminal dualists that "consciousness" is somehow an "illusion" in contrast to "matter" which is somehow "real". For me conscious cognition is the cornerstone of empiricism. Without a grounding in experience and conscious cognition the theoretical constructs of science are unintelligible and meaningless.  It is science, the child of conscious cognition, that underwrites the reality of the constructs that provide the means by which conscious cognition can understand itself in terms of so-called "matter". Matter is a rational  and metaphorical construction of conscious cognition: In fact it may even be justified in calling matter a mythical construct, a way of joining the dots of experience. That this intellectual construction activity can be carried in such a systematic way and generate such highly coherent conceptual objects which harmonise our experience, is a testament to the Divinely ordained order of the Creation.