Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!harpo!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!mhuxt!mhuxr!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr 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