What is a human soul? Assuming the soul exists, ‘when’ was it created and how does it interact with the body? Would a brain-damaged person be a soul-damaged person, too? If a person’s brain were 100% replaced with electronical components, would s/he still be the same person? Can a machine be a person (as long as ‘on the outside’ it behaved like one)? Does a robot have ‘free-will’?

1. GHOST AND SHELL
Body, Soul & Resurrection

3. Can machines be persons?

6. Can robots dream?

7. Key Questions
• What is a human soul? Assuming the soul exists, ‘when’ was it created and how does it interact
with the body? Would a brain-damaged person be a soul-damaged person, too?
• If a person’s brain were 100% replaced with electronical components, would s/he still be the
same person? Can a machine be a person (as long as ‘on the outside’ it behaved like one)?
Does a robot have ‘free-will’?
• Are you defined by your memories or your actions? If you erase a person’s memories, have you
changed who she is?
• At the Resurrection, are you given the same (albeit improved and ‘glorified’) body or a
completely different one? If it’s a different body, wouldn’t this imply that we’re a different
person in heaven (since persons are body and soul)? And how, of course, can it be the same
body we have in heaven? What about destroyed bodies, etc.?

8. < Substance dualism >

10. • God created the soul and ‘inserted’ it into the physical body (at some
point) i.e. the soul and the body are two separate substances
• Resurrection: We are given a new body, same soul
• Strength: Most intuitive, best explanation for freedom of choice and make
sense of many Bible passages (Matt 10:28, Luke 23:46, etc.)
• Weakness: How do we explain interdependencies between body and soul?
Why and how does, example, brain damage affect the soul? Why does the
soul depend so much on the body? What, then, would be the value of the
physical body?

11. < Emergent Dualism >

13. • Given particular arrangements of atoms and molecules in the brain, new
laws and systems come into play; these new or emergent laws then give rise
to a new entity
• As magnets generated their own magnetic field, so organisms generate their
conscious field i.e. the whole is more than the sum of its parts
• Conscious mind is an ontologically distinct entity from the physical brain
• Resurrection: God will sustain the mind even after the body has died, and
grant it a new body!
• Weakness: Does this mean animals also have souls? What makes humans
special? Wouldn’t the new resurrection body generate its own soul?

14. <Constitution / Physicalism>

18. • Option 1: Persons are constituted (or ‘made up of’) by physical bodies
without being identical with these physical bodies. E.g. statues are
constituted by marble, stone, etc. but they are not identical with the pieces
of marble and stone
• Crucial aspect of personhood is capacity for intentional mental states
• Option 2: Persons are the highest outcome of increasingly complex systems.
‘Simple organism’  Symbol-processing organisms  ‘going Meta’
• A full account of human life does not require an ‘immaterial soul’
• Resurrection: It is still the same body that God resurrects (although
glorified!)
• Strengths: Persons remain part of natural world (no need ‘outside
interference’)