Knowledge Tree
soul
Facts (58)
Sources
The Compatibility of Christianity with Panpsychism, Part 1 theologycommons.gcu.edu Sep 2, 2025 11 facts
referenceCartesian dualism defines the human person as a soul in a physical shell, where the person is identical to the soul, and the soul is identical to the mind.
claimThe 'Bodily Soul' view holds that while the soul requires embodiment for proper functioning, a disembodied soul can still retain its identity.
claimRené Descartes equated properties like formal and final causes with souls and, on that basis, denied that every physical particle is ensouled.
quoteIn the Gospels, Christ identifies the greatest commandment as: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” quoting Deuteronomy 6:5.
claimIn Cartesian dualism, the body is viewed as a machine that runs without the aid of the soul, meaning the soul does not provide life to the body.
claimCartesian dualism posits that the soul can continue to live on in a disembodied state after the body dies.
claimSome interpretations of Genesis 2:7 deny that the passage refers to anything supernatural, arguing that the description of the soul being distinct from the dust is merely symbolic.
claimThe author of 'The Compatibility of Christianity with Panpsychism, Part 1' notes that Christ's distinction between heart, soul, and mind in the greatest commandment raises the question of whether this is a metaphysical distinction or a mere logical distinction.
perspectiveThe author of 'The Compatibility of Christianity with Panpsychism, Part 1' suggests that the Apostle Paul affirms a form of substance dualism by asserting the death of the physical body alongside the continued existence of the soul.
referenceStewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro argue in 'A Brief History of the Soul' that the soul has a historical philosophical context.
perspectiveContemporary Christian philosophers generally view the immaterial soul and physical body as more integrated than René Descartes did, aiming to preserve the body's value and its relationship to identity.
Mind and Consciousness - St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology saet.ac.uk Jun 20, 2024 10 facts
claimThe Council of Chalcedon referred to Jesus as having a rational soul and body, which serves as a historical hint of soul-body dualism in post-Nicene creeds.
claimTheological anthropology that recognizes both souls and bodies is often referred to as substance dualism.
claimIt is widely held that persons, subjects, minds, or souls are conscious, but the state of consciousness itself is not conscious, similar to how persons engage in activities like thinking or running, but the activities themselves are not thinking or running.
claimJohn Calvin, in his 1960 work, interprets the biblical passage Ecclesiastes 12:7 as equating 'spirit' with 'soul', asserting that when the soul is freed from the body at death, God becomes its keeper.
claimSubstance dualism, which recognizes the distinct reality of the soul or mind and the body, has been developed by Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, the Florentine Academy, John Calvin, the Cambridge Platonists, René Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Reid, Richard Swinburne, and Alvin Plantinga.
claimMany Christians understand the resurrection of humans as the reuniting of soul and body, resulting in a resurrected body that is imperishable and spiritual.
claimThe Book of Common Prayer invites believers to present their souls and bodies as an oblation to God, reflecting the Christian liturgical use of the concepts of soul and body.
claimThe critique of dualism is often paired with the critique of theism, as the argument that an incorporeal soul is incoherent is often used to suggest that an incorporeal God is also incoherent.
perspectiveA strong historical and contemporary theological tradition contends that while created persons are fully embodied, they are not identical with their material bodies because they contain or are souls that are incorporeal or nonphysical.
quoteMoreover, there can be no question that man consists of a body and a soul; meaning by soul, an immaterial though created essence, which is his nobler part. Sometimes he is called a spirit.
Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2016 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Aug 19, 2003 8 facts
perspectiveThomas Aquinas argued that prayers addressed to saints (excluding the Blessed Virgin Mary) should be directed to the 'soul of the saint' rather than the saint themselves, because the soul is only a complete person when united with the body.
claimThomas Aquinas identified the soul, intellect, and form as a substance, effectively treating them as a single entity within his philosophical system.
claimPlato argued in the Phaedo that the intellect is immaterial because it must have an affinity with the immaterial Forms it apprehends, and this affinity drives the soul to strive to leave the body and dwell in the realm of Forms.
claimModern Aristotelians emphasize that Aristotle was not a 'Cartesian' dualist because he viewed the soul as the form of the body rather than a separate substance.
claimAristotle explained the union of body and soul by defining the soul as the form of the body, implying that a person's soul is equivalent to their nature as a human being.
claimA significant problem with Plato's dualism is the lack of a clear explanation for what binds a specific soul to a specific body, making their union a mystery.
claimAristotle's theory of the soul has been interpreted by many ancient and modern scholars as materialistic because it characterizes the soul as a property of the body.
claimAnthony Kenny (1989) argues that Aristotle's theory of the mind as a form is similar to Gilbert Ryle's (1949) account, as both equate the soul to the dispositions possessed by a living body.
Dualism, Physicalism, and Philosophy of Mind - Capturing Christianity capturingchristianity.com Dec 11, 2019 5 facts
claimSubstance dualism identifies the subject of experience as the soul, which is the entity that experiences qualia, thereby implying that the self is an immaterial substance.
quoteAlexander Rosenberg states: “if the mind is the brain (and scientism can’t allow that it is anything else)… we have to stop taking our selves seriously… We have to realize that there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us. This self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time. There seems to be only one way we make sense of the person whose identity endures over time and over bodily change. This way is by positing a concrete but non-spatial entity with a point of view somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears in the middle of our heads. Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us.”
claimThe author's philosophical arguments, if successful, imply that any subject of conscious experience is a soul.
perspectiveThe author of the Capturing Christianity article prefers the view that a person is a soul that maintains a special causal relationship with their body, rather than viewing a person as a composite of body and soul.
claimRené Descartes held the view that non-human animals lack souls and the ability to feel pain, which he used to justify the practice of vivisection.
Panpsychism - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 5 facts
referenceBuddha Weekly published an article titled 'Why Buddha Nature is one of the most important understandings in Mahayana Buddhism and why Tathagatagarbha Buddha Nature is not the soul' on June 25, 2017.
referenceAristotle discusses the nature of the soul in his work 'De Anima', specifically at 411a7–8.
claimAnimism maintains that all things have a soul, and hylozoism maintains that all things are alive.
perspectiveGerolamo Cardano argued that the soul (anima) was a fundamental part of the world.
quoteGiordano Bruno stated: 'There is nothing that does not possess a soul and that has no vital principle'.
Something Rich and Strange: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 ... smuralis.wordpress.com Apr 16, 2012 3 facts
quoteMy life is wasted like a lamp ablaze
Within a solitary house unused,
My life is wasted and by Love men praise
For sweet and kind. How often have I mused
What lovely thing were love and much repined
At my cold bosom moved not by that flame. ’Tis kindled; lo, my dreadful being twined
Round one whom to myself I dare not name. I cannot quench the fire I did not light
And he that lit it will not; I cannot even
Drive out the guest I never did invite;
Although the soul he dwells with loses heaven. I burn and know not why; I sink to hell
Fruitlessly and am forbidden to rebel.
quoteLanguage of its light
Fills sky in loving delight;
Its dust speaks the innate
Divine words ultimate;
Ceases to be external
In my soul melodies to spell;
On its grass
My heart’s throbs pass;
Beauty shapes up, flows the nectar
My own bounds to blur;
With all then I see
My camaraderie.
quoteWhen through a song I see the world
Then I recognize it, then I understand. Then its own language of light fills the sky with delight,
Then a sublime message wakes up in its dust. Then it leaves the outside, in my soul it comes,
Then my heart trembles in the blades of its grass. In streams of the song’s rasa, the lines of beauty lose own boundaries;
Then I find all with each other in close touch.
Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 2 facts
Theories and Methods of Consciousness biomedres.us Jan 29, 2024 2 facts
claimMaterialists argue that while post-materialists can account for the hard problem of consciousness using an external immaterial substance like a soul or spirit, they fail to explain how this external consciousness is combined or decombined in the brain to create the phenomenal unity of subjective, first-person consciousness.
referenceCrick F published 'The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul' through Touchstone in 1994.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com 2 facts
claimRichard Rorty (1979) argues that while the Greeks viewed the body and soul as separated, they considered sensations to pertain to the body, whereas intellect or reason was viewed as divine and separated from the physical body.
claimIn Aristotle's philosophy, the 'form' of living things is the 'soul', which acts as a vitalist principle that actualizes the matter of the living body, creating a unity rather than a soul-body duality.
Do all non-physicalist theories of consciousness face the interaction ... philosophy.stackexchange.com Nov 17, 2025 2 facts
claimPrincess Elizabeth of Bohemia raised a causation problem regarding dualism, questioning how a non-physical thinking substance (the soul) could affect bodily spirits to cause voluntary actions.
quotePrincess Elizabeth of Bohemia asked: "Given that the soul of a human being is only a thinking substance, how can it affect the bodily spirits, in order to bring about voluntary actions?"
(PDF) Indigenous Concepts of Consciousness, Soul, and Spirit researchgate.net 1 fact
claimDifferent cultures possess distinct understandings regarding the concepts of consciousness, soul, and spirit.
Hallucinogenic Plants and Their Use in Traditional Societies culturalsurvival.org Feb 19, 2010 1 fact
accountThe Huichol people of Mexico consume peyote at the end of long pilgrimages to experience the journey of the soul of the dead to the underworld.
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 1 fact
quoteJohn Locke wrote in An Essay on Human Understanding (1688): "I do not say there is no soul in man because he is not sensible of it in his sleep. But I do say he can not think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it is not necessary to anything but our thoughts, and to them it is and to them it always will be necessary."
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
referenceJonardon Ganeri authored the book 'The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology', published by Oxford University Press in 2012.
Critique of Panpsychism: Philosophical Coherence and Scientific ... thequran.love May 7, 2025 1 fact
quoteAristotle suggested that "soul is mingled with everything in the whole universe."
Life, Intelligence, and Consciousness: A Functional Perspective longnow.org Aug 27, 2025 1 fact
claimThe argument that machines cannot be intelligent because they are too abstract and the argument that they cannot be intelligent because they are too material both imply that subjective experience relies on something mysterious and ineffable, such as a soul or mental processes.
Six Theories of Consciousness - Mind Matters mindmatters.ai Mar 2, 2026 1 fact
claimRené Descartes referred to the mind as the soul when discussing the mind-brain problem.
Altered State of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com Sep 17, 2025 1 fact
claimCross-cultural research indicates that a major variation in practices leading to altered states of consciousness is whether societies believe in possession by spirits or in the soul fleeing or going on a journey.