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From: polard@fortune.UUCP (Henry Polard)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <5486@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 16:07:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: fortune.5486
Posted: Wed Aug 21 16:07:37 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 13:54:14 EDT
References: <1195@umcp-cs.UUCP> <540@utastro.UUCP> <1206@umcp-cs.UUCP> <542@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: polard@fortune.UUCP (Henry polard)
Organization: Fortune Systems, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 32
Summary: 

In article <542@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:
>
>SOUL: The spiritual or immortal element in a person. [Oxf. Am. Dict.]
>
>You say we know nothing about "the method taking us from this life to the
>next". Implicit is the concept of something that survives us after death.
>This has been traditionally identified with the soul. You can't have it both
>ways. You cannot say that the soul does not exist, and then say that
>something survives us after we die and goes into the next life.
>
>Now you may have a new definition of "soul" that is completely different
>from anything like the above, but this is just pussyfooting around.
>
>A rose by any other name is still a rose.
>
There are many notions of what happens after death.  According to 
some Buddhist traditions, for example, there is no such thing as a "soul";
rather there are components of a personality which may disintegrate at 
the time of death and behave differently from each other.  
The Oxford American Dictionary, while an excellent guide to conversational
English, is a poor guide to religious and philosophical usage.  I think
a dictionary of philosophy would have a more interesting definition of the 
word "soul".
In any case, the way we describe the universe may not have much to do 
with the way the the univers actually is.


-- 
Henry Polard (You bring the flames - I'll bring the marshmallows.)
{ihnp4,cbosgd,amd}!fortune!polard
N.B: The words in this posting do not necessarily express the opinions
of me, my employer, or any AI project.