Soulless?

[jake-the-peg]

If you were to somehow get the chance to meet a neanderthal how could you tell if he had a soul?

Please don't reply and tell me that there is no such thing ( I agree ) I'm interested in answers from people who believe because I'd like to know if they agree with each other

[Octavius]

It depends on your interpretation of what the soul is.

The Ancient Greek word for 'alive' is the same as 'ensouled'. So the earliest philosophical view might be taken to be that the soul is what makes living things alive.

Plato, probably quoting Socrates, considers the soul to be the essence of a person that reasons, decides and acts. He considered this essence to be an incorporeal occupant of the body with its own separate, and immortal, existence.

Given that it would appear apes have the capability to decide and act, then I would imagine similarly that the neanderthal would also.  Therefore they have soul and "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" would have been sung around the cave.

[MargeB]

I don't know what a soul is. It holds no meaning for me.

In xtian circles, it's memory, will, intellect. It juuuuust sooooo happppens that when their 'soul' must be getting damaged, Alheimers patients have an uncanny knack of seeing bits of their brain decay. The bits that happen to light up during memory tasks.

Neanderthalus had the biggest brain>body ratio of any primate ever...so....

Not much good evidence of tool use though.

What could soul mean? 'Self-reflection?'