Androids and Wyrwoods have souls, you can even make undead androids (as weird as that sounds), and target them with Trap the Soul. IA can develop souls if given enough time, though I have no idea how. Animals already have souls, they can also be made undead, and be targeted by Trap the Soul. An animated object (such as made by the spell), is just that, an awakened creature/construct/plant I am pretty sure has a soul, but I cannot point to any specific source that says as such off the top of my head. Two rules of thumb I go by: if it can gain class levels, it has a soul, if it can be made undead, it had a soul.
My 2 cents.
I don't think that the souls are based in the intelligence but in the emotion's
And in the free will to impart decision
They don't need a morality because that is something that come with the religion they practice
You don't need to gain classes to qualify for the soul, a class is like a profession whit benefits (and dragons don't want to get classes because most of them are trying to survive the first 50 year to reach adulthood and most of them don't posese the change shape ability so the can get a tutor of that class)
A counter example is sentient constructs. They are still constructs, they still don't have a soul, but they can operate with at least some wrote intelligence, even if its also as alien to normal humans as a dog's thinking may me.
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It could get more or less complicated when you look at things like the mummy's mask adventure path that goes into depth about the Osirion relgion. No spoilers but there's three parts of a being their Ba (personality, or psyche), Ib (emotions, will, and thoughts) and ka (vital spark).
I'm also fairly there were other parts in actual egyptian relgion but you could work with this perhaps. . .
Every being has a spirit (animating life force this includes things like intelligent items), some things have a mind (emotions, desires, will not everything has this e.g. an animated object can have a spirit but no mind its just controlled and obeying simple programming) then finally they have a soul. This is a nebulous thing gained by things that evolve far enough e.g. a human has a soul, androids have a soul, willow the wisps have a soul. A being can possess all three (human mind/soul/spirit), one of them (animated object spirit) or a combination of them (ghost mind/soul).
You still need to decide what constitutes evolved enough as you keep hitting exceptions e.g. free will seems a good start but dominate person denies you that free will.
I'm going to go with a likely unpopular position: Anything that possesses an Int, Wis, AND Cha score has a soul. Whether it is a piece mail thing created temporarily through powerful magic, remnants of an existing soul brought back together briefly from the substance that makes up the plane(s), or the soul of a being that simply responds to and shows up for the magic to work, it qualifies.
Whatever implications that has for moral or ethical concerns is irrelevant to me, and likely adds more weight to anyone that toys with that kind of magic to do so with the right intentions. I am aware of the shadow this casts over a large area of magic that people like to toy around with.
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I'm going to go with a likely unpopular position: Anything that possesses an Int, Wis, AND Cha score has a soul. Whether it is a piece mail thing created temporarily through powerful magic, remnants of an existing soul brought back together briefly from the substance that makes up the plane(s), or the soul of a being that simply responds to and shows up for the magic to work, it qualifies.
Whatever implications that has for moral or ethical concerns is irrelevant to me, and likely adds more weight to anyone that toys with that kind of magic to do so with the right intentions. I am aware of the shadow this casts over a large area of magic that people like to toy around with.
Do AI have all three? I mean full AI like the ones in the computers in Iron Gods not android AI who have a mobile body.
Though speaking of androids given they reset the personality in the body every hundred years or so there is the rather curious question of does that come with a new soul while the old one departs to their afterlife or is it a more efficient version of religions where the soul evolves through various incarnations (worm, animal, human, enlightentment) with the soul learning and evolving through numerous lives?
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"Planar Adventures" has some details about what is a soul and where it come from.
I really don't like that though especially as its a bit contradictory. It say's a soul that doesn't serve a god goes to the plane its suited to but a soul that believes there are no gods or weren't passionate in life just get tossed on the scrap heap. So you have to believe in gods but not a god and be passionate in life only to wind up getting judged by a god whether you get to stay or go to hell. It also runs into issues with things like the Osirion afterlife. Also rather implies that undead have no soul which is problematic in a couple of cases though good undead are rarer now they aren't non-existent.
Do AI have all three? I mean full AI like the ones in the computers in Iron Gods not android AI who have a mobile body.
As far as I am aware (and I have run Iron Gods to completion as a GM), most of the robots that appear in the book that possess an Int score, have all three mental stats. Androids included. Bodies are not required for something to be considered a soul, as far as I am concerned.
Though speaking of androids given they reset the personality in the body every hundred years or so there is the rather curious question of does that come with a new soul while the old one departs to their afterlife or is it a more efficient version of religions where the soul evolves through various incarnations (worm, animal, human, enlightentment) with the soul learning and evolving through numerous lives?
Yes, androids get a new 'soul' every time they reset.
What separates androids from golems and other mindless constructs is that androids are living beings and as such possess souls. Similarly, androids don’t live forever, though barring violence or tragedy their bodies never deteriorate. Rather, an android’s cybernetic mind eventually shuts down and self-restarts after about a century, leaving its body vacant for several weeks as the old soul departs for its final reward in the Great Beyond and a fresh, new soul finds its way into the shell.
Source
I really don't like that though especially as its a bit contradictory. It say's a soul that doesn't serve a god goes to the plane its suited to but a soul that believes there are no gods or weren't passionate in life just get tossed on the scrap heap. So you have to believe in gods but not a god and be passionate in life only to wind up getting judged by a god whether you get to stay or go to hell. It also runs into issues with things like the Osirion afterlife. Also rather implies that undead have no soul which is problematic in a couple of cases though good undead are rarer now they aren't non-existent.
Liking it or not, it is not contradictory. The Material Realm is a sorting ground for the souls that are born into it. Also, religions that exist on the Material Plane can be, and often are, wrong and filled with misinformation and lies spread by beings that want to sow confusion. Undead are often at the center of this issue, as I have seen much push back against the inherent evil that they are and why it should be that way. Undead are a mockery of life, a negative image of what it should be. Undead hijack the living to exist. They feed off the energy that fuels a soul's existence. If they do have a soul, they have something that is akin to anti-matter, where normal souls are normal matter.
Hell (or rather, THE Hells) is just one of the places your soul could end up. Belief in the gods is not required and even atheist souls, or those that refuse judgement, have a place to be (The Boneyard). The only real defining matter one where you end up has to do with how strongly you resonated with one of the alignments (or if you were foolish enough to bind yourself to a powerful being that can pull strings).
The bigger problem is that there aren't creatures that don't posses a charisma score, and I'm fairly sure either very few things that don't if not none that don't possess a wisdom score. Even a flower, should it be modeled as a creature, would have a charisma and wisdom. So does every daisy and blade of grass your character steps on have a soul, I think not...
The bigger problem is that there aren't creatures that don't posses a charisma score, and I'm fairly sure either very few things that don't if not none that don't possess a wisdom score. Even a flower, should it be modeled as a creature, would have a charisma and wisdom. So does every daisy and blade of grass your character steps on have a soul, I think not...
That is why I require possessing all three mental ability scores to determine if something has a soul. Everything is capable of gaining a soul (due to how souls enter into the Material Realm) but not everything is suitable for such a thing (hence requiring mental scores). Not every blade of grass has a soul, but every awakened blade of grass does... or more realistically, a large gathering of grass that has been awakened. There existing myriad souls out in the ethers looking for a way to exist in the Material Realm. Many kinds of magic allows for them to take shortcuts.
A really good question to ask is what is it about LIVING bodies that make them the most ideal vessel for souls to manifest within?
Ah Idk I was reading your first post as an or despite you obviously capitalizing AND, but I did and my brain just ran with it.
This is something I pondered over too and I was on the fence about for a long while and think it brings up very overlooked parts of the Golarion story. While Necromancers are usually pretty despised, would animating objects and nurturing them to have true souls be considered incredibly irresponsible/blasphemy? It's definitely a large part of what I'm trying to explore here.
I don't see why animating objects and nurturing the souls they may develop would be irresponsible or blasphemous. The entire reason Necromancers (specifically the ones that animate the dead) are vilified if because of the energies they toy with and the lack of compassion they have for how it violates the natural order of the soul cycle. Whether or not the Necromancers are aware of this is one matter, but In the grand scheme of things, the universe does not care that they are ignorant. It labels them with the Evil tag all the same.
But, back to the animator of objects. In the creation of golems and the like (permanently animated), the animating force (aka the soul) is bound to the form of the construct and serves as a means to fuel its existence. This tends to drive the elemental forces (such as in golems) mad and allows them to go berserk if their creator loses control of them. Naturally, that makes me imagine that the existence of those 'souls' are not a very pleasant experience. At the very best, the drain on the soul might be so minor that it amounts to little more than a constant ache.
But that last bit is merely speculation. It does, however, lead me to the thoughts below...
Since DeathlessOne seems to get what I'm putting down I'm going to quote them again here. The idea that objects can't possess souls was never in the window for me. Like I pointed out with the wyrwoods and androids it does exist canonically. Therefore why do living bodies nurture souls so much more often? Like I said before some of that must have to do with game balance but overall I think it is something Paizo simply... hasn't maybe explored like they should. If anyone has anything new to add or maybe more thoughts feel free to keep it going or message me.
I believe that the reason that living bodies are the ideal hosts for souls is because of how those bodies react to positive energy. Souls are born in the Positive energy plane and are radiated out through the cosmos, from the hearts of the stars. Living bodies drink in positive energy. They can metabolize the energy into healing and other beneficial effects, depending on the magic involved. Constructs (barring the rare exception) do not react to positive or negative energy. It does nothing to them.
I'd like to think (read: reason) that living bodies expire when they've used up all their ambient positive energy and the soul they harbor has no more means to sustain the life of the body (some souls are either 'stronger' than others or some bodies more efficient with metabolizing the positive energy, hence longer life spans). In effect, that soul has lost its 'positive' charge and is now capable of transitioning between the planes to make its way to the Outer Planes. Without the body alive to contain it, and nothing anchoring it, it continues on its path. I imagine this is a slow transition, with the soul 'sort of' existing in two places at once. Kind of like a tether still linked to the body until it has fully transitioned into the Outer Planes.
This could be why powerful healing effects like Raise Dead, Resurrection, and the like can bring back the dead to life. Dumping positive energy back into the body reignites the connection between the soul and the body, and powerfully 'yanks' the soul back into the body (to explain the temporary level loss, aka the damage to the soul from the powerful 'yank').
Those are just the simple musing I've had on the subject matter. Hope they were helpful.