Second, a substance is a continuant—it can change by gaining new properties and losing old ones, yet it remains the same thing throughout the change.

The soul also contains faculties of smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Taken together, these five are called sensory faculties of the soul.

The human soul, while not by nature immortal, is nevertheless capable of entering a disembodied intermediate state upon death, however incomplete and unnatural this state may be, and, eventually, being reunited with a resurrected body.

Finally, a substance has causal powers. It can do things in the world. A dog can bark, an acorn can hit the ground. Substances can cause things to happen.

What are these supreme tasks and situations? Swinburne claims they include developing a friendship with God, learning to care for others who have that same friendship, caring for and beautifying God’s creation, and the like. Heaven is not a reward for good behavior; it is a home for good people.

Substance dualists are also property dualists, because substance dualists believe that both the ego and consciousness itself are immaterial.

For example, certain mirror neurons are activated in a chimpanzee’s brain when it reaches for food, and those same neurons are activated when the chimpanzee watches another animal reach for food. Scientists think that mirror neurons are the neurological bases for various conscious activities such as experiencing empathy, comprehending the actions o

The second preliminary is this: We should interpret a biblical passage in light of what its original audience would have understood it to mean. Now it is widely acknowledged that people all over the world throughout the ages have been substance dualists who depict life after death as involving the departure of the soul. This belief predates the bib

In such a world, there could be mindless zombies with brains and nervous systems but without consciousness. This is what we mean when we say that the existence and nature of matter are independent of the existence of consciousness.