While playing morrowind i relised that all of the undead in the game have souls, but how can they have souls when they are animated bones?

Maybe they don't, and we're seeing game design issues. I assumed the living dead in TES don't have souls, similar to the way the CRPG version of Planescape:Torment showed them. In PS:T, the Dustmen zombie workers have been reanimated without their souls, which are in planes of reward or punishment; you recall their souls into their corpses in order to talk to them briefly.

I assumed TES undead are similar, but that's only my take on it.

They don't necessarily have their original souls.

Given that Necromancers can summon spirits, it probably isn't outside of their power to summon spirits and stick them into corpses. But either way, there are a few undead that seem to retain their original souls, such as Barilzar and Aesliip.

Edit: And for haunted areas (as opposed to artificially populated with undead), the undead probably have their original souls.

Considering people who have been buried with the proper rituals can no longer be used to raise a servant. I would assume that a Necromancer uses (a part of) the soul of the original owner.

There is also a bit in Preparation of the Corpse detailing how the intelligence in life affects the intelligence of the undead servant. Suggesting the same thing.

Is it that surprising? What are ghosts?

Some undead not only have souls, but they ARE souls.

Define "soul".

How do we know the "souls" put into soul gems are the actual spirit and personality of a person/animal or instead just the latent energy from their bodies, like "chi"?

There's a profound difference.

Not sure in what way this is relevant but in Morrowind there were 'different' kinds of undead and the 'native' kinds tended to drop soul gems.

Also consider the ghost fence?

It may be a good idea to see death as a process of diccorporating a soul - but that soul will not necessarily 'go to heaven' - so many of them will still be around.

Also there is an interesting question of Vampires and Liches - you can soul-trap them. Same for all the other undead native and necromantic in Morrowind so I'm pretty sure that someone's soul is always involved - though they may be in different 'states' according to the way the undead being is created and its nature.

The soul is the connection between a persons body and the dreamsleeve, that is the divinity slash hivemind slash schizophrenia of this god plane(t).

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=714862&st=0&p=10316539&#entry10316539

Though there seems to be a difference in depiction in the books and the various games. Mechanically Oblivion specifically seems to lean more towards the energy thing while stuff like the Story of Redgaurd, Feyfolken or the quest for Hermaus Mora suggest that it's a persons identity.

I've always wondered about ghosts in Morrowind and Oblivion... What happens when you "kill" a ghost? Since they drop ectoplasm, would a ghost in TES be similar to a skeleton or zombie, in that the form is a physical object temporarily housing a soul or magical "replacement"? After "killing" a ghost, is its soul released to the Dreamsleave? I assume a ghost's soul is its "actual" soul...

Hard to explain...hmm

The word ectoplasm means something along the lines of a spiritual outflow of a person. I figure it's the make shift body of a ghost, since they don't have an actual body anymore.

So I don't think you're looking directly at the soul of a person.

Does that mean you can take ectoplasm and stuff it into someone's mouth and possess them? Because when my PC ate it, all that happened was my agility went up. Though it can detect animals. I wonder why not humans...

It's magic, but if it had a command humanoid effect you'd be certain.

Eating the ectoplasm probebly also makes you slightly presentient thus moving more smoothly and avoiding blows more gracefully. But that's game play and Oblivion does it completely different. Both are quite unhealthy though.

Oh, so its got the consistency of that gooey stuff you can buy out of the quarter machines in supermarkets?

I thought it was more like jell-o mixed with dog puke.