The Soul – From a Religious-Philosophical Conjecture, Towards a Scientific-Medical Matter

Currently, on Western sciences of health, the word “psyche” (from the Greek ψυχή) is closely associated to the concept of mind in all its aspects: awareness (consciousness), emotion (affect), and cognition (intellectual activity). The mental activity can be elevated until sublime issues like altruism, values, and morals. Even spirituality is a human dimension associated to mind, although considering its transcendent and sacred questionings such as meaning and purpose of existence. All this set of mind manifestations are described and studied by neurophysiological and psychobehavioral disciplines. Scientific canons attribute all these manifestations to brain properties and neurotransmitters activities. Notwithstanding, this plain viewpoint overlooks some phenomena that put mind manifestations far beyond biological and material capabilities. For these cases, the only interpretation for “psyche” is soul, meaning a subtle and unmeasurable aspect of the human being, the immaterial nature of the entity.