Alexander Pruss's Blog

One of the old puzzles of Christology is why it is that in us the soul and body together compose a person, but they do not do so in Christ. ...

Corruptionism is the Christian view that at death we cease to exist, and only return to existence at the resurrection of the dead. There are...

This is an attempt to make an argument for the natural immortality of the soul from the premise that the soul has a proper operation that is...

Aquinas argues that because the human soul has a proper operation—abstract thought—that does not depend on the body, the soul would survive ...

Some dualists say that the soul is a fundamental entity. I think we’re not in a position to think that. Compare this. We have no reason to ...

Consider the simple theory of visual sensation on which for me to have a visual sensation as of y is for x to stand in a “vision relation”...

A question I haven’t seen explored much by contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is that of matter ill-suited to the form. Is it metaphy...

Roughly, Aquinas thinks of a substance as something that: is existentially independent of other things, and is complete in its nature. ...

Corruptionist Thomists think that after death and before the resurrection, our souls exist in a disembodied state and have mental states, bu...

Yesterday I realized something that should have been obvious: there are two separate interaction problems for dualism. Metaphysics: How do...

Here’s an interesting thesis: If x has the y s among its parts, and for each z among the y s, x can survive losing z without gaining a...

Some people think that self-consciousness is a big deal, that it’s the sort of thing that might be hard for an artificial intelligence syste...

According to dualist survivalism, at death our bodies perish but we continue to exist with nothing but a soul (until, Christians believe, th...

Consider this argument: It is possible for me to exist disembodied. It is not possible for an animal to exist disembodied. So, I am...

Yesterday, I mentioned that one might reinterpret the quantifier symbols in a language so as to introduce doppelgangers: extra quasi-en...

(Premise) I am the only entity that has all the conscious states I presently have. (Premise) I am breathing. (Premise) My soul isn...

I have a post on soul-body interaction on Biola's Center for Christian Thought blog that may be of interest to my readers here.

Consider this argument: If Christianity is right, every assertion of rightly interpreted Scripture is true. Genesis 1-3 is rightly in...

I bet a lot of people when they think about the soul imagine something nebulous—a kind of glow, or gas, or force-field, or the lik...

The following scenario is adapted from Keith Laumer's story "The Body Builders" : Technology reaches the point that our...