Arguments against Soul

[Belacqua]

Its history is what? I don't understand your question. 

The concept of soul as used by Aristotle makes sense to me, and requires nothing magic. If people use it in that way, it's a useful term. The modern "spirit energy" version isn't persuasive.

Okay, let's see if we can come to some common understanding, what is a 'persons being' that you seem to favour ?

Here's what I wrote two pages ago:

So, to repeat, here is Aristotle's definition. "Soul" is the morph part of hylomorphism. It is the form of the body, as opposed to its matter. In this case "form" means more than "shape." (A newly-dead body has the same shape, but not the form, in this sense, of a living body.) Form here means shape but also the functions, interactions, and operations. The things that the body does, by its nature. 

When the body dies, the matter is still there (at first) but the soul is gone, because it is no longer capable of doing human things. 

I think using the word "soul" in this way is still useful, because it gives a more general word to the totality of a person. It includes habits, mental memory, body memory, dispositions, many other things. If you wanted to avoid the word "soul" because of its modern implications you could substitute some longer phrase, like "all the memories, thoughts, habits, and dispositions of what I am." 

The only thing spooky about soul, in this sense, is the Christian idea that at death the soul is transferred from its first, fleshly body into a different body, made of some different matter. And the Christians who assert this, if they're honest, recognize that this belief about the transfer of the soul is not at all provable, but only faith-based.