Rick says- I've been perusing and diving into various sections of Mike's FFA, with more fustration than less and more critical than less, tossing it into a heap of books by my bedside in frustration each time. But last night, at the end of the day that Alcor had that Mike Perry wake for Mike, as I waited for a signal from Mike from beyond, I indeed got something that might have been a signal. I opened the book at random, expecting similar frustration, but was instead greeted by Mike's explanation of John Locke's idea of the soul.
I had read Locke's political theory at McMaster U in 1979 and vaguely recall his name, of course, as critical in philosophical and political history, but not much detail so instead I asked GeminiAI a question about Mike's summary of Locke's understanding of soul and got a pretty good response. In this sense, I now think that I can rely on Mike in the quantum realm to help me look at key passages in his FFA Forever for All, to come to further grips with what we're looking at in terms of the identity and personality and consciousness and living forever.
Mike Perry is more in line with John Locke!?-- and Locke is more in step with cryonics, than I would have ever guessed years ago. That there is a new discovery-for-myself that was very interesting. Thanks Mike!.
ME
Did John Locke write about the human soul?
GEMINI AI
Yes, John Locke wrote extensively about the human soul, though he approached the subject through the lens of **empiricism** and **epistemology** rather than traditional theology.
His most famous reflections on the soul are found in his masterpiece, ***An Essay Concerning Human Understanding*** (1690). Here are the key ways Locke addressed the subject:
### 1. The Rejection of "Innate Ideas"
Locke famously argued that the human mind is a ***tabula rasa***, or blank slate, at birth. By doing this, he challenged the traditional view (often associated with Descartes) that God had inscribed the soul with "innate ideas" (such as the concept of God, basic mathematical truths, or moral laws). For Locke, the "soul" or mind acquires all its content through sensory experience.
### 2. The Distinction Between "Soul" and "Thinking"
Locke was very careful about assigning a specific metaphysical nature to the soul. He argued that we cannot know if the "soul" is a material substance or an immaterial spirit.
* Because we have no sensory experience of the "substance" of the soul, he argued that human reason cannot prove what the soul *is*.
* He famously suggested that God could, if He chose, "superadd" the faculty of thought to matter. This sparked a major controversy in his time, as critics accused him of suggesting that the soul could be material (and thus potentially perishable), which bordered on heresy.
### 3. Personal Identity: Consciousness, Not Substance
Perhaps Locke’s most influential contribution to the study of the soul is his theory of **personal identity**.
Before Locke, it was widely believed that the soul was a stable, unchanging substance that linked a person's life across time. Locke broke with this by arguing that personal identity consists not in the substance of the soul, but in **consciousness**.
He argued that you remain the same person only as far back as your memory reaches. If you could transfer your consciousness into another body, you would be the same "person," even if the soul-substance were different. This shifted the focus of philosophy from the *metaphysical nature* of the soul to the *psychological continuity* of the self.
### 4. Immortality
Locke was a professing Christian and believed in the immortality of the soul and a future life of rewards and punishments. However, he maintained that the immortality of the soul was a matter of **faith and divine revelation**, not a matter that could be settled by philosophical demonstration. He believed that even if we cannot scientifically prove the soul is an immaterial, indestructible substance, God's promise of the Resurrection is sufficient ground for the Christian to believe in its immortality.
### Summary
Locke’s approach to the soul was **secular and analytical**. He avoided making bold claims about the "essence" of the soul because he believed such things were beyond the reach of human observation. Instead, he argued that we should focus on what we can actually observe: the conscious mind, memory, and the stream of thought that constitutes a person's identity.
In short: **Locke did not try to define the soul as a theological entity; he tried to define it as a psychological one.**
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