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reductionism, soul-of-the-gaps, personal identity

Reductionists take talk of the soul as another example of the positing of an entity in order to fill the gap in our knowledge with a purported explanation.  They might as well call their target the "soul of the gaps."

On the other hand, David K Johnson (who argues the soul of the gaps) is perfectly capable of taking the question of identity through time seriously.  He calls this the problem of personal identity.

What I don't get, however, is why he completely ignores the question of personal identity when discussing the soul, and vice versa.  It doesn't occur to him that the question of the soul and of personal identity are the same question from two different perspectives.

What if the soul is not a hidden entity we posit to explain but simply our identity under a different description?

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