In conversations with my boyfriend, I generally feel like I'm at an advantage on the whole "what role does the soul play?" discussion because it's a discussion that came up in the Buffy-verse, so we (on this corner of the Internet) developed ways of thinking about it (even if show runners don't). I will admit to thinking of it as the empathy gland.

I get the sense that if you asked the SPN people, you'd get A)Lots of different answers and B)A lot of incoherent "It's a soul. It does...soul...things. Look, it's important, okay?" The best answer I think we've gotten canonically is that it's your gut, in the sense of "gut feeling". My handwavium is that, in the past, they've said "soul" when they mean "spirit" (in the sense of disembodied, complete self)

Why they don't take an official stand and deal with "soul", "spirit", and other similar issues on any show that has ghosts and monsters from the get-go, I do not know. It just seems like poor planning.

Why they don't take an official stand and deal with "soul", "spirit", and other similar issues on any show that has ghosts and monsters from the get-go, I do not know. It just seems like poor planning.

I still can't reconcile how some ghosts (spirits, whatever) can suddenly become tangible (i.e. John in AHBL II) and touch things, etc. There's not a lot of consistency to the 'verse when it comes to lore and rules for creatures, so I've decided to let it flow over me, pretty much, and go with the emotional pieces.

And the pretty boys.

Oh, shiny. Pretty boys.

I'm just going with sheer force of will and badassery, which is visible in both Mr. and Mrs. Winchester, and that's why they could affect stuff to save their kids. Just like any large emotional trauma creates poltergeists or other nasty (or not nasty--like the death omen in The Usual Suspects) spirit that lingers.

Thank you, Jim.

(Unspoilery tweeted picture above.)

I think these live in Belinda's world. They should so do a show with Belinda as the big bad.

(Picture is from Jim's picture tweets)

Why does the person HAVE to die at the end of their contract?

Maybe the answer will become more clear when Sam is eventualy re-souled. But my first reaction is Because. My second slightly more articulate response is that a desouled body is pain-free, worry-free, angst-free, as seen in Sam. That's not fun for evil Hellions. Hence death of the body.

I wonder now if Sam will come together with absolutely no memory of Hell, since his "conciousness" was never there. I'm sure I could spout nonsense revolving around the mind-body problem, but I've forgotten most of Philosophy 101, and my grasp of the subject was always nebulous.

pot pie:

If asked what the mind is, the average person would usually respond by identifying it with their self, their personality, their soul, or some other such entity. They would almost certainly deny that the mind simply is the brain, or vice-versa

Another important argument in favor of dualism is that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different, and perhaps irreconcilable, properties.[23] Mental events have a subjective quality, whereas physical events do not. So, for example, one can reasonably ask what a burnt finger feels like, or what a blue sky looks like, or what nice music sounds like to a person.

Philosophers of mind call the subjective aspects of mental events 'qualia' or 'raw feels'.

If consciousness (the mind) can exist independently of physical reality (the brain), one must explain how physical memories are created concerning consciousness. Dualism must therefore explain how consciousness affects physical reality. One possible explanation is that of a miracle, proposed by Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche, where all mind-body interactions require the direct intervention of God.

Interactionist dualism

Seth has a clear and distinct idea of his mind as a thinking thing which has no spatial extension (i.e., it cannot be measured in terms of length, weight, height, and so on). He also has a clear and distinct idea of his body as something that is spatially extended, subject to quantification and not able to think. It follows that mind and body are not identical because they have radically different properties.[8]

At the same time, however, it is clear that Seth's mental states (desires, beliefs, etc.) have causal effects on his body and vice-versa: A child touches a hot stove (physical event) which causes pain (mental event) and makes her yell (physical event), this in turn provokes a sense of fear and protectiveness in the caregiver (mental event), and so on.

Four varieties of dualism.

1. Psychophysical parallelism, or simply parallelism, is the view that mind and body, while having distinct ontological statuses, do not causally influence one another. Instead, they run along parallel paths (mind events causally interact with mind events and brain events causally interact with brain events) and only seem to influence each other.... only one type of substance, the monad, exists in the universe, and that everything is reducible to it, he nonetheless maintained that there was an important distinction between "the mental" and "the physical" in terms of causation. He held that God had arranged things in advance so that minds and bodies would be in harmony with each other. This is known as the doctrine of pre-established harmony.

2.Occasionalism is the view espoused by Nicholas Malebranche which asserts that all supposedly causal relations between physical events, or between physical and mental events, are not really causal at all. While body and mind are different substances, causes (whether mental or physical) are related to their effects by an act of God's intervention on each specific occasion.

3.Property dualism asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. Hence, it is a sub-branch of emergent materialism.[9] These emergent properties have an independent ontological status and cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the physical substrate from which they emerge. A form of property dualism has been espoused by David Chalmers and the concept has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years,[38] but was already suggested in the 19th century by William James.

1.Epiphenomenalism ... It consists of the view that mental phenomena are causally ineffectual, where one or more mental states do not have any influence on physical states. Physical events can cause other physical events and physical events can cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything, since they are just causally inert by-products (i.e. (continued...)

( continues...)

epiphenomena) of the physical world.

2.Non-reductive Physicalism is the view that mental properties form a separate ontological class to physical properties: mental states (such as qualia) are not reducible to physical states. The ontological stance towards qualia in the case of non-reductive physicalism does not imply that qualia are causally inert; this is what distinguishes it from epiphenomenalism.

I haven't read nor understood all of this, or even if any of it applies to Sam's situation. I disregarded any of the monist solutions, but there were several more interesting entries in wiki about Free Will and Self that I haven't had the energy to read yet.

Sam's reveal has clarified it for me--he's the only human we've seen without a soul

What about Aaron, who we saw in the episode where we met Balthazar? Wasn't he missing his soul until Balthazar was forced to return it?

I wonder now if Sam will come together with absolutely no memory of Hell, since his "conciousness" was never there

I'm not sure what to hope for, from a storytelling perspective. Because at the moment the "happy ending" we're looking forward to, the return of Sam's soul to the empty shell currently travelling about with Dean, would seem to promise a whole boatload of traumatized/freaked-out/climbing up the walls and across the ceiling Sammy. That's if indeed he's awake and aware of what's going on while he's locked in with Lucifer and Michael. It wouid make for an interesting fanfic, but I think it would be a pretty grim set of episodes watching Sam fight his way through something like that. (Or maybe not, considering Show doesn't tend to linger over aftereffects very often.)

Dean came back with his memories intact, and he came back with angelic intervention. If Sam comes back without the aid of benign powers I wouldn't think whoever is helping him would be interested in cushioning his psyche by helping him forget.