Just what exactly is spirituality?
I recently came across one of the person metrics used by corporates these days called "spiritual intelligence" but let's just for the moment let the non-sequitur pass and think about the implications.
If you look up the definitions of spiritual you get the usual references to things of or pertaining to spirit but if you keep tracking it down, eventually it all depends on how this word spirit is defined.
Dictionary.com defines it variously as a principle of conscious life which animates the body, a supernatural incorporeal body, an attitude or principle that inspires or animates, a temper or disposition, soul, fairies, sprites, elves, angels, demons, and so on. So what are we to make of all that?
Just to get into the discussion on spirituality, we have to implicitly accept a few statements:
- That there is something called a soul
- That there is some incorporeal part of a human being
- That something mediates between consciousness and the body, something incorporeal but which represents the self
Now for someone who rejects the idea of sprites and demons, angels and elves, this is all very fanciful stuff. The bit that deserves closer scrutiny though is the assumption that there is something in us which is incorporeal and which is sometimes called the soul, something connected in some way with consciousness.
We are capable, as humans, of self-consciousness and that gives rise to the impression that inside us there is something looking out, something which is different from our brains, and which appears to us to exist apart from our body. This is what consciousness is, that impression that we are separate from our bodies and it is that experience that encourages us to theorise that there is something called a soul.
In fact, it's what Daniel Dennett calls the first-person viewpoint. From behind our eyes, it looks that way but in order to trust our perceptions, we generally require some corroborating evidence. Our eyes mostly give us reliable impressions of the way the world is, and so do our ears. It's understandable then that we get the notion that our thoughts too have the same validity. But of course, we should never believe everything we think.
This whole area is a fruitful area of scientific research - a collaboration between neuroscience and philosophy
You can hear about Dennett's ideas at the TED Conference talks site but essentially he is saying that for any real knowledge we need to use the third-person viewpoint. That's because the first-person viewpoint is essentially believing your own thoughts. I think, therefore it's true! It's unreliable at best, and at worst it's delusional.
The idea that there is something immaterial that constitutes a soul of a person is a consequence of the way the brain works, and the way our perceptions work. This approach means that we can understand how it is that a brain can evolve to be conscious, and also that consciousness itself is susceptible to scientific analysis. We don't need any longer to postulate a soul to explain the way consciousness works, nor rely on notions of incorporeal aspects of human beings - consciousness is a property of certain evolved brains.
So when it comes to people trying to measure things like spiritual intelligence they are taking a big step backwards, dragging us into mystical notions of what consitutes consciousness and self-perception.
If the place you work for brings this up and tries to use it in their HR processes, refuse to cooperate on intellectual grounds - it's in everyone's interests to refer them to Dennett. Spiritual intelligence makes as much sense as leprechaun eggs.
