What I want to talk about today and what I basically would give a title to this is, you know,

what is a soul and when does it come to be?

Okay.

And I want to talk about that specifically from the perspective of philosophy, the traditional philosophy that I occupy,

a broadly Aristotelian to mystic tradition of philosophy.

Because I think what we mean by a soul is largely misunderstood, and I think it's largely

badly presented by people in this tradition, which makes controversies look even worse than

they are.

So what I want to do first,

I want to talk about what I don't mean by a soul. And I think this is probably what most people do mean by a soul. Okay. If I had a different word than soul, I would be happy to use it, okay? But

everyone insists on using this word. so I'll stick with it.

So let me begin by talking about just what is it that leads something like the Catholic position on these things to sort of become controversial.

So there's three claims I think that are in play here.

Generally we think that lives of human persons are due

inviolable respect from conception to natural death.

That's certainly a view that my tradition represents.

Two, we think that sufficient for being a human person

is the presence of something like a human soul.

Okay?

So if it has a soul, it's a person,

and thereby has rights.

And three, a soul is, once again, present

...