The Emergent Dualism and the Bodily Hoduth of the Soul, A Comparative Study

AbstractEmergent dualism is a recent view about the nature of the soul introduced by William Hasker in 1999. He moves away from the main stream reductionist and physicalist theories about mental properties and mind and advances a view which has affinities with MullaSadra's bodily Hoduth of the Soul. In this paper, we examine these tow theories comparatively.A working theory about the nature of the soul have to provide us with plausible answers to two main problems: the problem of pairing and the problem of the survival of the soul after the bodily death. Emergent dualism endorses the emergence of a novel substance from a physiological base which has irreducible mental properties and is a distinct endurable entity. While this theory has similarities with Sadraean view, there are differences in the way of articulating the arguments as well as background metaphysical theories. These differences are particularly important in addressing the problem of the survival of the soul after the bodily death.