Do Elephants Have Souls? (2013)
There are a few possibilities.<p>No souls: you take a definition of &quot;soul&quot; as something supernatural and reject it&#x27;s existence.<p>Binary souls: souls exist in some beings in an absolute way either existing or not. A body gains a soul at some point during birth or development and loses it at death.  Some creatures have them others do not.<p>Continuous souls: everything has one, some more than others.  A rock has a tiny bit, a tree some more, an intelligent animal more, and a human the most.  Soul develops as you gain consciousness in childhood.  A philosopher has more soul than a comatose person.<p>Souls can be an emergent phenomenon out of certain kinds of complexity like consciousness.  Souls can also be something outside physics as we understand it now.  You can accept or reject either one.<p>Whatever elephants have, there is quite a lot of it.   You wouldn&#x27;t be so wrong calling it soul.