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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <1526@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 08:07:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1526
Posted: Sat Aug 17 08:07:21 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 07:07:06 EDT
References: <1195@umcp-cs.UUCP> <540@utastro.UUCP> <1206@umcp-cs.UUCP> <542@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 28

> 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.
> 
> Padraig Houlahan.

This is actually a reverse case of the seemingly standard "take a word  ("xxx")
that doesn't describe something real or that is rooted in a fallacy and just
use it to describe an existing phenomenon so that "xxx" will magically
exist---only the word is now pointing to a different thing and no one told the
speakers of the language".

The reverse is "take a word ("yyy") that has negative connotations in some
field of study and use another word to describe the same phenomenon (or a
long explanation without a specific word), whilst denying that you are
referring to "yyy" at all.
-- 
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
					Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr