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In an important, recent book, Robert Koons and George Bealer correctly point out that for the last fifty years or so, materialism has been waning (Koons & Bealer (2010), xvii-xxi). In this article I hope to contribute to the aforementioned decline by presenting what to my knowledge is a new argument for a substantial, simple, spiritual soul - a type of conceptualist argument.
The conceptualist argument
Even if spirits/souls do not exist, it seems that we have an understanding of what it would be for such things to be real. Thus, we can understand what it would be for demons or angels to exist, Cartesian egos to obtain in some possible world, and God to be a spirit. In light of this, I shall advance a type of conceptualist argument for substance dualism - minimally, the view that we are spiritual substances that have bodies - based on the understandability of what it would be for something to be a spirit, e.g. what it would be for God to be a spirit. After presenting the argument formally, I shall clarify and defend its various premises with a special focus on what I take to be the most controversial one.
The conceptualist argument
Here's the argument:
(1)
If a person S understands what it is for something to be an entity (or purported entity) e, then S has an adequate concept of e.
(2)
If S has an adequate concept of e, then S has a distinct positive concept of e.
(3)
Therefore, if a person S understands what it is for something to be an entity (or purported entity) e (e.g. a divine spirit), then S has a distinct positive concept of e.
(4)
We understand what it is for God to be a divine spirit.
(5)
Therefore, we have a distinct positive concept of God's being a divine spirit.
(6)
If thinking (i.e. conscious) matter is metaphysically possible, it is not the case that we have a distinct positive concept of God's being a divine spirit.
(7)
Therefore, it is not the case that thinking (i.e. conscious) matter is metaphysically possible.
(8)
We are either thinking (i.e. conscious) matter or thinking (i.e. conscious) spirits.
(9)
Therefore, we...