Non-Self: An Analytic Approach

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1. Soul and Self

For most people in the Western Hemisphere, soul is something very familiar. At least we believe it is. Its existence is taken for granted. If you deny or doubt it, chances are that you will be regarded as someone who is not normal, or at least not a good, morally praiseworthy person. There is no question that beliefs in the existence of soul have constituted an essential core of most Western religions. Much of Western culture may not be appropriately understood without a proper understanding of the concept of soul. A philosophical examination of this familiar concept may, however, reveal to us rather perplexing questions on the very existence of soul.

After all, this is the 21st Century. Our finest scientists have been teaching us that we are living in a fundamentally physical world. Many of us naturally get curious about the nature of soul and its mode of existence: How and where does the soul, which has been thought to be completely immaterial, exist in this fundamentally material world of physics? For many people in East Asia, where they have had no idea of soul for most of their history, the concept of soul often sounds like a beautiful fairy tale that is too good to be true.

Soul is something immutable, indestructible, and permanent, as Westerners have understood it. It has been said to exist independently of the body that only temporarily houses it. Most Western philosophies and religions have understood the soul as an incredibly mysterious entity. Many people of this century still accept the nature of soul in this exceptional way. I say this is an exceptional way because no other thing in the physical world is believed to have any of these unusual and marvelous characteristics. Is there any other entity in this world that is indestructible? A moment of thought will readily reveal to us the answer that no real thing in this world, which is fundamentally materialistic, is immune to destruction. Nothing else is indestructible. Give it a try and think of anything else that cannot be destroyed. You will soon be frustrated.

Then, is there anything else that is immutable, that is, anything that does not change for eternity? Can anything else exist for eternity? All our experiences, everything we have read about the world, and a long spell of intensive contemplation will tell us that the answer is no to these questions. No one has ever experienced anything that is immutable, indestructible, and everlasting. Somehow, however, people have come to believe that soul is an exception to all these facts and principles of the material world and that soul has all these wonderful other-worldly characteristics. This highly unusual ontological treatment of soul should naturally raise a number of serious philosophical questions.

Why do we believe that soul, if it really exists, is so exceptional? What is it that makes soul such an extraordinary thing? How did we come to believe in such a mysterious entity when we cannot in this physical world encounter anything of such a nature that even remotely resembles the nature of soul? We do not seem to have a clear idea of what it is like to be immutable, indestructible, and permanent. If we all have souls, how is it possible that we do not even know what it is like to have souls? The concept of soul is quite a subtle metaphysical concept, which is difficult to grasp unless one has much philosophical training.

We have been told by our Western clergymen for thousands of years that we have souls. If we had not been told so, very few of us could have come up with this sophisticated and abstract idea on our own that everyone possesses an extraordinary ontological entity, soul, that provides the very essence of our existence. Let me here introduce a perspective of cultural diversity on this issue. If you now go to East Asia where most people are not familiar with Western religions or philosophies, you will find there about two billion people who do not have the concept of immutable, indestructible, and permanent souls. The concept of soul has not been naturally given to us. For most people, it has been acquired through a prolonged learning process.

It would be shocking news to most Westerners that Buddhism, one of the major religions of the world, does not recognize the existence of self or soul. Buddhists believe that there is no self or soul. It is not because all Buddhists have somehow chosen to give up their souls, but because they do not think that there exists a self or soul to begin with. By ‘self,’ what Buddhists mean is the essence of a person, that is, the one essential part of a person that makes the given person the person he or she is. In this originally Indian tradition, self is taken to be immutable, indestructible, and permanent.

This Buddhist concept of self is, I believe, in fact identical with the philosophical concept of soul in the West. Whatever nature or function that soul might have, it has been believed that soul is something that makes a person the person himself or herself. Also, as we saw above, it is thought to be immutable, indestructible, and everlasting. These ‘job descriptions’ and characteristics of soul are exactly what Buddhists had in mind with the concept of self when they denied its existence.

It must be noted that not all Buddhists identify their concept of self with the Western concept of soul. However, I choose to set aside their subtle differences and instead use these two concepts interchangeably because the subtle differences do not affect the main points of my discussion. This is also consistent with the common practice of contemporary Buddhologists in the West. The goal of this chapter is to illuminate the Buddhist thesis of non-self – that is, the Buddhist claim that there is no self or soul – under the light of contemporary analytic philosophy. It will be pointed out that certain well-known, widely-accepted, and influential arguments of Western philosophy support the ‘radical’ Buddhist thesis of non-self.

2. Transporters Are Better

Let us conduct a series of thought experiments popular in contemporary Western philosophy. These philosophical scenarios are designed to show you that you might, contrary to your belief, not in fact believe in self or soul. Suppose that you are living in the 24th Century and that space travel is readily available to the general public. Assume that you want to go to Mars to see your sister and her newborn baby. You can’t wait. There are in this future two popular methods of transportation available to you: a traditional rocket and a newly-developed transporter. The rocket fare is, not surprisingly, quite expensive (minimum $99,900 for a round trip) and it takes a month to reach Mars. Your return trip of course requires another month. This ‘time-honored’ method of transportation costs you a good deal of money and time. Also, you need to spend an entire month, for just one way trip, within a very small space – especially when you can afford only an economy class ticket.

In contrast, the company that runs the transporter system charges $999 for a round trip, and it takes only a few minutes for them to send you to Mars. They use a well-maintained high-tech system for their fancy transporters. They scan your body quite thoroughly, down to the last molecule, and then electronically send all the gathered information on the constitution of your body to their station on Mars. Your body on Earth is then immediately ‘dissembled’ into many molecules and soon scattered and dissipated. You have no conscious experience in this process. You do not feel any pain at all, so this is never a traumatic experience.

On Mars, with the electronically transmitted information on your body, highly trained mechanics reconstruct your body masterfully, molecule-for-molecule identically, using locally available materials. This process also takes place instantly and you do not feel anything.^[2] Your body is rebuilt in a machine molecule-for-molecule identical with its predecessor on Earth. You of course look exactly alike. You feel you are yourself. And you have all the same mental states – the same memories, emotions, temperaments, etc. In other words, you do not feel any difference and no one else will find any difference in you. Now, ask yourself a question: Which of the two methods of transportation would you like to choose, rocket or transporter?

Most of us would prefer the high-tech, fast, and affordable transporter to the rocket. The rocket is too expensive and too slow, and to stay in a small spacecraft for months would be, not to speak of some motion-sickness, very unpleasant. In contrast, the transporter option is affordable and fast, and it involves no unpleasant experiences. Accidents happen in this method too, but no more often than with rockets. For several years, I have asked hundreds of my students this question of preference. More than three quarters of students preferred the transporter option. These students did not notice, however, that the transporter system only scans their bodies; it does not scan their souls and collect any information about them. If there is soul, as most Westerners believe, it is only God who can create or destroy it. Machines can do neither. Souls are therefore left out when the machine on Mars reconstructs their bodies successfully.

So, when your body is ‘dissembled’ on Earth for transportation purposes, your soul is, if it exists at all, also released – it will float around with no body to anchor to. When your body is reconstructed on Mars, it can have no soul because the machine cannot recreate it for the body. But, since one will have exactly the same brain and other body parts, he or she will still have the same mental life, same personality, same everything, and apparently this prospectus satisfies my students’ expectations alright. Although almost all the students in my classes were Christians who believed in souls, many of them chose the transporter system that would have them lose their souls.

Does this thought experiment not show us an indication that people in the contemporary world, down deep in their minds, do not really believe in souls? Again, as I wrote earlier, the concept of soul is in fact quite a sophisticated, difficult, and subtle metaphysical concept for many of us to comprehend and accept – unless we have been told repeatedly for all our lives by our priests that we have souls. The choice of the transportation method and its metaphysical implication could be quite embarrassing to some people. Notwithstanding this perplexity, however, perhaps you should not dismiss this thought experiment too soon. This metaphysical scenario deserves a philosophical contemplation. Perhaps there really is no soul, or, at least, you do not in fact believe it.

3. The Journey of Soul and Self

A chronological survey of the changes in the concept of soul reveals that the concept of soul as an immutable, indestructible, and everlasting entity has not always been accepted. The ancient Greek word “psyche” meant ‘soul.’ It is the etymological origin of many English words that are related to research areas of mental phenomena such as psychology, psychiatry, psychopathology, etc. Originally, however, “psyche” meant ‘the breath of life.’ In Greek, “psyche” reads “p-shee-khe.” Presumably it was an onomatopoeia that described the sound that people made when they died. We do know that people often make this kind of sound with their last breath. After the last breath of a dying person left the body, there was no life there, and people might have thought that the last breath was the very thing that held the life of the body.^[3]

It is interesting to notice that this ‘breath of life’ came to mean, as centuries passed by, quite a different thing – the soul – which is immutable, indestructible, permanent, and divinely beautiful. The Pythagorean School in ancient Greece believed in the transmigration of soul. Socrates and Plato learned from the Pythagoreans and made it clear that the soul had all those wonderful characteristics – it is immutable, indestructible, permanent, and beautiful. Although “psyche” meant ‘the breath of life’ in the time of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, it came to mean, after several centuries, such a marvelous entity with the subtle imagination and arguments of great philosophers. These Greek philosophers caused the meaning of “psyche” to undergo a dramatic change!

The soul has often been understood as something that is responsible for our mental phenomena. Socrates and Plato’s view of soul (5th Century BCE), except for their claim of its transmigration, was consistent with the Christian doctrine of the immortality of souls, and the faith in the immortal soul has dominated the belief systems of Western people for millennia. To witness any slight change in the concept of soul, history had to wait until Descartes attempted to secularize the concept of soul in the 17th Century. Descartes used in his Meditations the words “mind” and “soul” interchangeably. The mind, which is soul for Descartes, is a thinking substance. The essence of mind is, according to him, thinking – in other words, the mind is not a mind unless it thinks. The focus on the immutable, indestructible, and immortal nature of soul was shifted and replaced by Descartes’ emphasis on the thinking nature of mind.

In Descartes’ philosophy, however, the mind still is a substance, something that can exist on its own independently of the brain/body. Most people in the 21st Century would find this view of the independent mind somewhat hard to swallow. As we have come to acquire more information on the way the brain functions since the 19th and 20th Centuries, the concept of mind has transformed itself continuously and has finally come to be understood, especially among scientists, as consciousness or a stream of consciousness that occurs on the surface of the brain when it functions properly. The mind understood as consciousness or a stream of consciousness may not be able to exist without its physical basis, that is, the brain and its proper functions. Many of us now believe that the mind ontologically depends on its bodily basis. For these people, the traditional adjectives of soul – immutable, indestructible, permanent, and divinely beautiful – no longer apply to the mind or consciousness.

We have observed above how the concept of soul has made a series of dramatic changes and repeatedly undergone transformations. This fascinating story of the journey of the concept of soul might be summarized as follows:

the breath (of life) → soul (that is immutable, indestructible, and permanent) → mind (as a substance that thinks) → consciousness or a stream of consciousness (that ontologically depends on the brain and its functions).

The concept of soul as an indestructible, immutable, and permanent entity fits only in the second stage in this series of transformation. Let us now ask a crucial question: Why should we consider, to understand the nature of soul, only the second stage of the meaning of “psyche” and not any others? Why should the view of the two famous Greek philosophers – Socrates and Plato – and the Christian Church be preferred to the view of our very ancient ancestors who lived a simpler and more straightforward way of life or the view of contemporary neuroscientists who are no doubt some of the best minds of our time? The concept of soul as an immortal entity which gives an individual his or her essence (her own identity) is only one of the many possible ways to understand the word “psyche.”

4. Why Only Humans?

Consider another thought experiment that may indirectly support the Buddhist view of non-self. This philosophical scenario comes from an SF story. Suppose that a group of scientists build Trump’s android (robot) replica. This android is a silicon-based machine, but it is made in such a way that every part of its body is a silicon-based counterpart of Trump’s organic body, and each silicon part performs exactly the same causal functions of Trump’s corresponding body part. The android will look, walk, and talk like Trump. This surely is a possible scenario. It is clear to us all, however, that the android does not have a soul. A soul is not something that can be created in a lab and installed in the android’s body by a group of scientists. Neither is it something that naturally pops up (emerges) from the android’s silicon-based brain.

Now, imagine a situation in which Trump has a little accident and loses a tiny tip of one of his fingers. Doctors replace it with a silicon-based material in such a way that it performs exactly the same causal functions of the lost part of his finger. Trump feels just fine with the replaced part, and his finger performs in just the same way as his original fingertip did. No one, including himself, notices a difference in any way. This is certainly a metaphysically possible situation. Unfortunately, Trump keeps losing bits of other parts of his body and those wonderful doctors take no time to replace these parts with silicon-based materials that perform exactly the same function. Trump loses parts of his body bit by bit and not constantly but one part at a time, and he feels no difference at all with the replaced parts of his body. He performs his daily jobs equally well for an extended period.

Suppose that 20 years have passed since doctors began these ‘siliconizing’ processes in Trump. All the parts of his body, including all his brain cells, have been replaced by silicon-based materials. Trump still functions just the same, and we believe that he is the same person who has the same soul. However, after 20 years, there is not even one carbon-based cell left in his body. Every corner of his body is now made of machine parts. We must now admit that as long as the material bases of Trump are concerned, he is not different at all from an android. He is an android in every part of his body. But, wait a minute! Remember that we agreed above that no android can have a soul. It then logically follows that we should not recognize this Trump as having a soul because he is an android. We have not been able to identify anything strange or lacking about this android Trump – in his job performances, everyday interactions with other people, the way he expresses his emotions, etc. However, it turns out that he does not seem to have a soul.

We have here encountered a difficult logical problem that demands clarification. There is a dilemma. It is our irresistible intuition that Trump, even after 20 years of repeated body-part replacements, still has the same soul because he is causally and historically connected to the ‘flesh and bone’ Trump that he was 20 years ago. However, again, we agreed above that no machine, no matter how indistinguishable a replica it may be, can have a soul. The following is our dilemma: If this silicon-based Trump, after 20 years of changes, has a soul, the android replica of Trump that was put together 20 years ago should also have been recognized as having a soul. If this silicon-based Trump does not have a soul, however, it would be difficult for us to see why the carbon-based Trump had to be thought to have a soul 20 years ago.^[4] After all, we do not see what it is that is so special about carbon-based stuffs, but not silicon-based materials, that can house souls inside.

If we believe that no human has a self or soul, as Buddhists claim, there is no puzzling logical problem involved in this thought experiment. On this view, both Trump and his android replica lacked selves or souls to begin with, that is, 20 years ago. The android Trump of the present time does not have a soul, either. Of course not. There is here no recalcitrant logical or metaphysical problem that bothers us. If we choose to believe that Trump had a soul 20 years ago and also has the same soul now, however, we create a dilemma that cannot be solved, as we have seen above. This problem seems to provide us with another motivation to deny that there is soul or self.

5. Two Western Philosophers on Non-Self

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher in the 18th Century, asked us a strikingly simple question and showed us a straightforward way to refute the existence of self. If you have a self, it must exist in your mind, not in your body. Then, close your eyes and search every corner of your mind looking for your own self. Would this introspection, however thorough it may be, ever give you a positive result – could you come across your self in your mind? Hume’s answer is a straightforward no. No introspection can give you such an experience. You may encounter some specific memories of your feelings, thoughts, shape of your body reflected in the mirror, etc., but you can never come across your self itself. From this thoroughly empiricist point of view, we cannot really recognize the existence of self or soul. Since it is in principle impossible to empirically verify the existence of self/soul, if you are an empiricist in a strict sense, as I suppose many of us are in the 21st Century, I do not see how you can reasonably accept the existence of self/soul.

Let us take up one more thought experiment with a pair of examples. Suppose you are on a tour of a university campus. You visit, along with your tour guide and other prospective students, a good number of buildings, libraries, laboratories, administrative offices, and sports facilities. You also meet and chat with professors, students, and staff members. It takes several hours to complete the tour. At the end of the tour, however, suppose that you become somewhat curious about the location of the university. You whisper to yourself: “I have seen many buildings, students, professors, etc., but I have not yet seen the university itself. Where is it?” Well, what do you think should be the answer to this rather unusual, ‘philosophical’ question?

The university does not really exist independently of, and separately from, all the buildings and people working and interacting with each other in those places. All those buildings and people are the university. The university does not exist in some special place separately from its buildings and people. The truth is very different from what we may think it is. If one believes that the university itself is some kind of metaphysical entity that belongs to a separate ontological category, he or she is making a category mistake^[5].

Another good example that tells us of the same category mistake is a military unit, say, a division. A division does not exist separately from all its soldiers and officers, weapons and equipment, buildings, etc. That is, all those people and equipment are themselves the very division. In other words, the division does not belong to a different ontological category than its constituents. If you think that the division is an independent entity, you would be making a category mistake. We can think of more examples that reveal the same philosophical point: city, basketball team, class of 2025, etc.

The aforementioned examples of university and division are meant to suggest that we can say the same of self/soul and all the elements of a given person. A person has a body and a variety of mental states. What is it, then, that makes the given person the person he or she is? In other words, what is this person’s self or soul, and where is it if he or she has one? It is clear that none of the parts of the body is a self or soul. Similarly, no individual mental state is a self or soul, either. Just as there is no university or division that exists in some special metaphysical space separately from its constituents, there may be no self or soul that exists independently of, and separately from the person’s body and various mental states. The body and all the psychological states may well be the very person herself!^[6] If so, to think of soul/self as an entity that belongs to a separate ontological category is to make a category mistake. There may exist no such a separate entity. The body and mental states may be all that there are with the person.

6. A Buddhist Argument for Non-Self

I have so far presented a series of thought experiments and well-known arguments in Western philosophy that I believe support the Buddhist claim of non-self. The historical Buddha presented basically the same line of philosophical arguments. Let me now bring in one representative Buddhist argument. Buddhists have developed various arguments for over 2.5 millennia attempting to support this teaching. Among all these arguments, dependent arising, which I believe is the most important concept in Buddhism, clearly reveals how Buddhists understand the idea of non-self.

According to the Buddha’s dependent arising, things arise, abide, and cease depending on their conditions. Nothing arises (abides, or ceases) on its own. This view has an intuitive appeal to those of us who believe that the world is fundamentally physical and that the causal relations between physical entities hold up this world. If everything comes into existence, lasts, and ceases to exist depending on its conditions, as Buddhists claim, the following conclusion should be in order: Nothing can have its own intrinsic nature that makes it itself. For, if things cannot even exist independently of conditions, they can never possess their own intrinsic natures (essences).

Also, since at least one of the given thing’s many conditions must change at any instant, and since this change results in the change of the given thing at that moment, Buddhists believe that everything changes constantly and nothing stays the same. Nothing can have its own intrinsic nature for any duration of time, and everything is empty of essence.^[7] Some examples will help explain these.

Suppose you have an electrical outage. You want to light a candle to keep reading a book. You strike a match on the rough and dry surface of a match box. You do all this in your room where there is no wind. The match ignites, and you successfully light the candle. The candlelight shines through the room, and you can read the book. You get the power back after an hour, and you put out the candle. We undergo this kind of experience once in a while. Let us now ask a somewhat philosophical question: What is it that makes the candlelight the candlelight itself? In other words, what is its intrinsic nature?

To answer the question, let us go over the series of events that bring about the candlelight. The candle is lit by the ignited match. The ignition of the match, however, requires numerous conditions to be present and satisfied – for example, the match should be struck on a rough and dry surface with the right amount of force from your hand, there should be no wind, there should be enough oxygen, there should be no rain, and so on and on. If any of these conditions are not met, there would be no ignition, and there would be no match flame. Even if you have a match that is already lit, if you want to light the candle for reading, you need to bring the lit match close enough to the candle, there should be enough oxygen, there should be no rain or strong wind, and you need to wait until the candle catches fire, etc., etc. Even if the candle is successfully lit, if you want to have it last for a while, there should be enough oxygen continuously available, the wick of the candle should not be too short, there should be no wind or rain, no one should put it out, etc., etc. To have the candlelight cease, you need to blow the flame out with your mouth or do something else.

All in all, the arising, lasting, and ceasing of a candlelight require innumerably many conditions to be satisfied. It is impossible for the candlelight to exist on its own independently of these conditions. It cannot have any nature of its own because everything about it has come from these conditions. The candlelight does not have its own intrinsic nature (or, essence) because it cannot even exist on its own. The same line of argument applies to everything else in the world. Nothing in the domain of existence can arise, last, and cease independently of other things, and nothing can have its own intrinsic nature.

It might be suggested that the candlelight still has its own unique nature of illumination although its existence depends on its conditions – say, oxygen, the chemical substance of the candle, the wick made of the right materials, dry atmosphere, etc. The nature of illumination is quite different from the natures of all those things, and, in this sense, the property of illumination may be regarded as a completely new nature that emerges from all the things it comes from. A closer examination of this situation reveals, however, that these conditions cannot be made to create a new intrinsic nature of illumination. Let me explain this point with an example.

Suppose you borrow money from ten different banks and purchase a very large house. You like the house and feel good inside it. The house has properties that are quite different from the large amount of money you borrowed from the banks. And you are truly happy that the house is yours. The truth is, however, that it does not actually belong to you. The banks, not you, in fact own the house. As long as you have borrowed the money from the banks, you do not own the house.

Let us now go back to our example of the candlelight. If the candlelight owes its illuminating nature to all those indefinitely many conditions, it does not have the illuminating nature as its own. This illuminating nature comes from and thus belongs to its conditions, not to the candlelight. The candlelight does not have its own intrinsic nature (essence). And, again, the same line of argument applies to every other entity in the domain of existence. Nothing in the world has its own intrinsic nature (essence).

With the foregoing discussion of dependent arising, we can see why no person can have a self or soul. A self or soul is what makes a given person the person he or she is. A self or soul functions as an intrinsic nature or essence of a person. However, we have seen above that nothing in this world has its own intrinsic nature or essence. Persons are not exceptions. No person has a self/soul which is supposed to be his or her essence. Persons, like all other entities, are empty of intrinsic nature.

7. Non-Self and Moral Virtues

Buddhism has been one of the world’s major religions and regarded as a system of respectable moral teachings. If Buddhists do not even believe in the existence of self or soul, however, how do they instill moral rules and norms in society and lead people to altruistic ways of life which promote the Buddha’s teaching of care and compassion? We may well be concerned about the moral implications of non-self. But this question can be answered in Buddhism in a somewhat simple and straightforward way.

For Buddhists, there is no self or soul. If one believes that she does not have a self, she is not going to be attached to it. She is not going to be obsessed only with her own well-being because, after all, there is no her-self to begin with. In other words, she is not going to be self-ish – she is going to be completely unselfish! She will then begin to have more time and psychology to pay attention to and take care of the welfare of other people. If she suffers, that is bad. She needs to take care of and eliminate her suffering. If someone else is suffering, that is equally bad. Since she does not have a self, suffering is something that should be eliminated whether it is hers or another person’s.

The same point may be explained from a slightly different angle. As soon as we realize that we have no selves, we begin to feel much less concerned, anxious, and stressed about ourselves – about our future, welfare, how others think of us, the way to save our faces, etc. How much of our lifetime do we spend taking care of these concerns for our ‘selves’? Well, most of it. Once we decide to let our selves go, as the Buddha teaches us to, we will come to have much more time and psychology left to use to think and take care of others’ suffering and welfare. This is the way that the Buddhist thesis of non-self encourages and promotes an altruistic way of moral life.

It is interesting to notice that our ordinary English vocabularies also implicitly reflect the close relation between the Buddhist view of non-self and a morally praiseworthy life. Such words as “unselfish” and “selfless” have been used to describe, praise, and encourage morally good actions for other people in need. The wisdom included in our linguistic intuition is that we need to let go of our sense of ‘self’ to live a morally better life. There seems to be no question about it. In contrast, however, words like “selfish,” “self-centered,” and “self-important” always carry negative implications. These words themselves warn us that actions based on a keen sense of self should be avoided to stay on the right track of morality. And it seems that these language phenomena suggest to us that we in fact agree, albeit subconsciously, with the Buddha’s teaching of non-self as long as its moral implications are concerned.

Review

Non-Self

What is it that never changes in you and thus makes you always the same you? Your face, height, and weight change as time goes on. Scientists also report that even those which have been used for identifying individuals, such as DNA, fingerprints, or the irises, always change little by little.

Not only your body but also your thoughts, emotions and volition that make up the world of your consciousness change. Your love, friendship and trustfulness do not remain constant. The same goes for your knowledge and intelligence. Not to mention the money and wealth that you might have for now. Your social status and reputation also do not last.

Nothing that constitutes your mind and body can be your eternal and immutable essence. Relationships that you start and carry in society do not make you always the same you because they change constantly. Thus, Buddhism teaches that there is no permanent, immutable, and indestructible soul or self that makes you always the same you.

We find it hard to believe that non-sentient beings in nature have soul or self. Also, sentient beings less intelligent than humans do not seem to have soul or self. Neither does artificial intelligence that humans create.

Science reports that genes and the neural systems in our brains are constantly changing. Our relations to the environment always change as well. Hence, none of these can make the immutable essence that makes one always the same one. Science does not recognize the existence of permanently immutable and indestructible soul or self that the world’s other major religions teach. Science agrees with Buddhism in this regard.