The Problem of Unconsciousness

======================================== The Problem of Unconsciousness Author: Peter M.K. Chan This is one of the problems raised in my book titled Soul, God, and Morality against the belief in the persistence of persons as souls in a spiritual hereafter. All rights reserved ======================================== Does it take a soul to have a mind? In this short article, I shall refer to those who believe that it is so as soul theorists. I shall contend that this belief is actually vulnerable to a couple of commonsensical facts that have largely been ignored. It is that if human consciousness and memory were really carried by the soul rather than the body-brain, two troublesome questions in particular would have to be addressed. (1) Why should anyone become temporarily unconscious when the body-brain is made to suffer a severe blow or is put under general anaesthesia? (2) Why should anyone fail to remember his/her own past when he/she gets too old or after having suffered certain injuries to the brain? Of the first question, it has always been a second nature of sorts to assume that if it is a fact that a tired body is usually accompanied by a tired mind, and if there is no problem in accepting that a sleeping body is also indicative of a sleeping soul, it should also goes without saying that when the body blacks out, so should its soul. Reasonable as this way of reasoning may seem, let me say that the question has not really been answered. The question is: if it is the soul that carries one