[Abstract]

there is no clear answer, nor will there ever really be a clear answer to such a question. But regardless of the fact I intend to give at least two of my sense to this thread with my own view of that which is the soul.

As a man of at least moderate religious faith I honestly believe in the idea of the soul, but as an intellectual I have gone to far greater lengths to find a basis for this belief of mine, the following is a bit of what I have concluded. First and foremost, the shear scale and complexity of the workings of human thought, the fact that the chemical signals used by our brain to control movement are controlled by similar signals controlled by more and so on leads one to believe that somewhere along this big line is something far beyond the scope of our current, and rather meager, scientific understanding (hence the 'soul' of which you speak). Building from there it is an easy correlation (at least for me) that this unexplainable thing does indeed exist outside of the normal concepts of life and death, and could very well be a tangible energy that can separate from a dead being for reincarnation or some other such thing.

This being said, the exact nature of this higher level of thinking... at least in the way i described it does not separate us from beasts and animals as the same principle applies to their own thought processes. Except in the scope and complexity of such thoughts... you see animals react to external stimuli along a genetically constructed reaction basis. That is to say they react as the chemical signals logically tell them to and so there is no need for such a 'soul' to function the creature... humans on the other hand make choice and act upon a much more complex set of principles called that makes up our psychological being... could it be that this area studied by psychology is the closest thing we have to the study of the soul? But that is, sadly, the end of the logical inferences that I could find upon the subject matter... further expostulations are welcome on the subject and could spark a new epiphany upon the subject for me. But as it stands now I will have to leave my post with this collection of wanton speculation.