Soul dualism or a dualistic soul concept is a range of beliefs that a person has two (or more) kinds of souls. In many cases, one of the souls is associated with body functions (“body soul") and the other one can leave the body (“free soul”). Sometimes the plethora of soul types can be even more complex. Grasping soul dualism can help to understand many shamanistic beliefs better.

Several Eskimo groups believe that a person has more than one types of souls. One is associated with respiration, the other can accompany the body as a shadow. Soul concept of Eskimo groups is diverse and not alike. In some cases, it is connected to shamanistic beliefs among the various Eskimo groups. Also Caribou Inuit groups believed in several types of souls..

Traditional Chinese culture differentiates two hun and po spirits or souls, which correlate with yang and yin respectively. Within this soul dualism, every human has both an ethereal hun 魂 "spiritual soul; spirit; mood" that leaves the body after death and a substantive po 魄 "physical soul; spirit; vigor" that remains with the corpse. Chinese traditions differ over the number of hun and po souls in a person, for example, Daoism has the sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 "three hun and seven po".

Richard G. Swinburne (born 26 December 1934) is a British philosopher of religion. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a very influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason.

Swinburne received an Open Scholarship to study Classics at Exeter College, Oxford, but in fact graduated with a first class BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Swinburne has held various professorships through his career in academia. From 1972 to 1985 he taught at Keele University. During part of this time, he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen from 1982 to 1984, resulting in the book The Evolution of the Soul. From 1985 until his retirement in 2002 he was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford (his successor in this chair is Brian Leftow).