Aristotle, and following him Aquinas, thinks of the soul as the life-principle of a living body, that which animates the body's matter. A natural conception, but a dubious one, as it seems to me, one not up to the task of accounting for conscience. We humans are not just alive, we are also conscious both in the mode of sentience and in the object-directed mode as when we are conscious of this or that. The philosophers' term of art for this object-directed type of consciousness is intentionality. A special case of object-directed consciousness is knowledge of things and states of affairs. Beyond this factual knowledge there is presumably also moral knowledge, knowledge of right and wrong. Whether or not conscience is indeed a source of knowledge, it is a faculty of moral discernment and evaluation. An exercise of this faculty results in an occurrent state of consciousness which is a state of conscience.
So life, consciousness, and conscience are all different. Panpsychism aside, something can be alive without being sentient, a unicellular organism, for example, and of course anything sentient is conscious. Now we are not merely sentient, but also conscious of this and that. Beyond this, we command a faculty of moral discernment and evaluation which is what conscience is.
It is clear that to be alive is not the same as to have a conscience. Plants and non-rational animals are living things but have no conscience. My cats, for example, are alive, and moreover they are conscious, but they cannot tell right from wrong. If they think at all, they do not think in moral categories. They do not evaluate their actions or omissions morally. They lack the capacity to do so. Humans have the capacity for moral discernment and evaluation, if not at birth, then later on, whether or not they exercise it, and whether or not their consciences have been well formed.
Now the soul is presumably the seat of conscience: it is in virtue of my having a soul that I have a conscience, not in virtue of my having a body.* But then it would seem to follow that the soul of a man cannot be a mere life-principle. For it is not in virtue of my being alive that I have a conscience. The argument, then, is this:
1) Being alive and having a conscience are different properties. Therefore:
2) It is not in virtue of my being alive that I have a conscience.
3) It is in virtue of my having a soul that I have a conscience. Therefore:
4) The soul cannot be merely the life-principle of my body.
Possible Objection
At best, what you have shown is that the soul cannot be merely a life-principle. But what is to stop this principle from doing other jobs as well? However it is with non-rational animals, in a human being, the soul is not merely (i) a life-principle but also (ii) the locus of conscience, (iii) the subject of intentional states, and (iv) the free agent of one's actions.
In a later entry I will respond to the objection.
__________
*If there is post-mortem judgment, it will be the soul that will be is judged, and judged morally, not the body, which implies that the soul is the seat of conscience and free agency. "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his immortal body soul?"
Comments