Death and Immortality Since the time of Plato and before, humans have pondered the existence of a soul and the afterlife. I will present my case for the existence of a soul and the possibility of surviving physical death. For the purposes of my argument I will define that the meaning of mind and soul are the same thing. The two main accepted views of the human condition are the physicalist and the dualist. The physicalist sees the human condition in a purely physical state. That is to say, the human mind and consciousness are confined to the human body, and therefore when the body dies, the mind also dies. The dualist view holds that the human condition is composed of two parts. The first part is the physical body and the second is the non-physical soul or mind. I present my argument in this form; (1) Physical objects such as the human body must obey physical laws; (2) Nonphysical objects such as the human mind/soul do not have to obey physical laws; (3) Human beings have both physical and nonphysical properties; (4) Therefore the mind/soul does not die with the physical body. To begin my argument I will define my concept of the human soul and physical body which is similar to Descartes'. Descartes made the distinction that the mind and the body are two separate things. The mind is a thinking, non-extended thing and the body is an extended, non-thinking thing. In which he concludes that the mind can exist without the body (Skirry). The words, mind and soul in this case are interchangeable and demonstrate two distinct parts that make up a single person. Now let's explain the interactions of the mind and body. Since the mind and body make up a person as a whole, it is...... middle of paper....... It is fair to say that the mind does not have to obey the physical laws that affect it the death of our bodies and the mind can potentially continue to live in its non-physical form separated from space and time. However, I cannot discuss what form our mind or soul will take and what the nature of that existence will be. It would be very difficult to define such existence through pure a priori reasoning alone, however we cannot deny the validity of the duality of our existence nor deny that we actually have a soul. Bibliography: Calef, Scott. "Dualism and the mind". Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Internet (2005): n. page Network. April 27, 2014.Robinson, Howard. 'Dualism'. Plato.stanford.edu. Np, 2003. Web. April 26, 2014. Skirry, Justin. "Descartes, René: mind-body distinction". Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Internet (2006): n. page Network. April 26. 2014.