So, in today's world when do we consider a person to be dead to the point that their soul has left their body? There's been cases of people in vegetative and near-vegetative states (think Teri Schiavo) who've been kept "alive" on machines even though they have little to no brain activity, just enough to more-or-less keep the body running. Since the body is "running" are we preventing their soul from entering the afterlife? And if there soul is still in there it's obviously trapped and unable to control their physical body.
I lean toward the side that brain death--beyond its physical ramifications--means a person is not only permanently divorced from the conscious state, but if one has a soul, it too was tied to the active, conscious mind (not the brain functioning by external stimulation) so when one goes--so too...
They work in concert in driving a human to not merely be animated pieces of meat guided only by impulses/instinct, but born with thought, and a larger "inner being" which separates man from animal, and gives him a higher purpose (with the ability to choose to exercise the sub-categories of that purpose) greater than the often chaotic, destructive drives behind
national affiliation, culture, image and desire.
If the soul leaves upon brain death and any sustaining of the body is just keeping the "meat" running that's another issue altogether, in such a case it's not a moral question on whether it is "right" to keep a body alive for organ harvesting or on family's hope of recovery. Because in one instance the person isn't suffering: no brain activity, no "person" there to suffer. In the other case recovery isn't possible if any soul has left the body causing the loss of higher brain activity resulting in the vegetative state.
To your reference to Teri Schiavo, I think she was long gone by the time her case became a political football. It's not like she was there, but just "buried" in a half-functioning brain. So, all they were doing is keeping a body running. A mechanical process, if you will, but that's not "being alive" as humans understand it..it is not so simple.
So where does that leave the walkers in TWD universe if we're going to believe in and accept the idea of a soul? We're told that resurrection times vary from minutes to hours, does the soul hang around the body for that long? Does the "zombie virus" somehow prevent any soul from leaving the body? In which case is the soul in there witnessing the events around them but unable to really control their actions? (Like in stories and beliefs that people in comas are aware of their surroundings if only on a subconscious level even if they cannot interact with their surroundings.)
The zombie virus kills in a complete manner, so if there's any soul/mind left, it is only during the fevered period, as seen with Jim, Andrea and Tyreese. However, once the virus fully consumed the body, there's nothing there--no soul, no mind.
Perhaps a better example of the course of the hard separation caused by the zombie virus from soul/mind was Shane. After the internal bleeding/organ damage from such an extreme knifing, he was clinically dead--so the flashes of zombie face fury was the
virus activating a lifeless brain with none of what made Shane..
.Shane remaining.
Our is the soul truly gone and the body is just being animated by random electrical impulses generated by the "zombie virus" sort of like making a dissected frog's leg twitch using electrical inputs in a high-school biology class? The walker has no real "awareness" and it's simply the "life" of the virus/pathogen dealing with a more meaningful vessel as opposed to a microscopic one?
This is an interesting idea and its why I feel TWD staff--as much as they try to avoid explanations--have written stories, or planted enough clues that lead to your analysis, and a conclusion that the zombie virus could be nothing other than man made with a specific purpose.
The key leading to the idea that it was a targeted virus is the defining feature of cannibalism. Cannibalism is not even a natural, subconscious trait of the average human, so it is hard to imagine any natural pathogen reanimating a clinically dead body and trigger a need to primarily seek out humans as a food source. If someone wanted to create the perfect, fearless weapon--with the psychological benefit of causing terror in everyone, then a cannibal corpse would serve that purpose.
Whether one used captured zombies (Woodbury, the Wolves), or infected a population so that everyone is a ticking time bomb of death, the zombie virus is a perfect, designer weapon.
In either case, the characters have more-or-less made it clear that they treat the walkers still as "people" on some level as we've seen a number of "mercy kills" of a walker or some suggestion of it being wrong to keep a person "living like this" or in some cases seeing it as "just" in keeping a person "living like this" (Rick wanting to allow the Terminus butchers to reanimate.)
That's a human survivor's desire for comfort in tragic situation. Take Lori: Carl wanted to prevent her from reanimating, but after the amateur c-section, she bled out, lapsed into unconsciousness, and died. At that point, Lori passed on, so there was no "living like that" for her in any case.
The virus also causes delirium; Jim did not want a gun to commit suicide, since he said...
I want to be with my family.
Of course, this came from the mouth of a severely infected person, so "the fever was talking," or he simply had a gross misunderstanding of how the virus ends life.
There's a lot of questions to raise and think about when it comes to any metaphysical aspects of the walkers and the "people" they once where. Jenner insists that the "you part" of the brain never comes back on-line, but in a few, early, cases it seems the walkers have some ability to reach that part of the mind, if only for a brief time as the more complicated parts of the brain deteriorate.
Amy was an early case, but her reaching for Andrea's face was the creature acting by design: rise and feed. She did not recognize her sister at all.
But being able to use that part of the brain and maybe be able to "remember" things like how to use tools and maybe even a glimmer of recognition (Morgan's reaniamted wife seemed to "remember" the house she was last in and wanted to enter it even though no one in the house made any noise.) is entirely different than their being a soul. Again, going back to my frog example. The "zombie virus" can maybe for a time create enough of an electrical connection in those parts of the brain to give the walker a glimpse into those areas of the brain but that's different than a *person* being able to use and access and "know" those parts anytime they want since those electrical connections are always flowing.
Morgan's wife tried to enter the house, but I would argue she "sniffed" out the living inside once she wandered close to the home (remember, in S1, on the store rooftop, the survivors, and later Michonne established that the living's odor attracts zombies).
Then, there was Merle, who did not recognize Daryl at all, and merely moved from one meal to what it thought would be another.
