There is a new view into consciousness that is coming up that sort of mimics old world views of soul.
The problem was that using the idea of a soul means separating the mind from body and that was not very well received because that brings spiritulism into the picture and we dont want to have to view sometime like an electron as being spiritual.
The idea with pansychism is that everything is conscious to a greater or less degree. For example, a human is more conscious than a cow but a cow is more conscious than a clam. Taking this down farther, an electron would be considered conscious but to a very very less degree than that of any animal or even a plant.
The reason for thinking about this is because it was realized that physical science is not as physical as we would like because it is all based on how matter behaves not what matter really is. This is now being thought of as a possible reason why we have trouble understanding some experiments that can have different outcomes from the same stimulus.
The idea is not that far fetched because recall that when we try to describe some particle interactions we end up saying that it may not be there until we look at it (in a manner of speaking). How could something not be there until we look at it? Also recall that color is not a property of the universe, it is a property of our own minds. We have grouped certain wavelengths into categories so that we can deal with them faster and dont have to identify them all uniquely every time we want to describe the wavelengths they reflect. I also like to bring up the hole in the ground discussion where we give a name to something that isnt really there just to make it simpler to deal with. The hole itself is not there only the ground around it is there, in a completely physical view. If we did an experiment at LHC to determine where holes were in the world, we would have to go by the particles that surround the 'hole' we could not look for the hole itself because we would never find one existing on it's own.
There is a lot more to this though i'll look up some links. Note however this is not science fiction it is a new start to understanding what consciousness really is.
The problem was that using the idea of a soul means separating the mind from body and that was not very well received because that brings spiritulism into the picture and we dont want to have to view sometime like an electron as being spiritual.
The idea with pansychism is that everything is conscious to a greater or less degree. For example, a human is more conscious than a cow but a cow is more conscious than a clam. Taking this down farther, an electron would be considered conscious but to a very very less degree than that of any animal or even a plant.
The reason for thinking about this is because it was realized that physical science is not as physical as we would like because it is all based on how matter behaves not what matter really is. This is now being thought of as a possible reason why we have trouble understanding some experiments that can have different outcomes from the same stimulus.
The idea is not that far fetched because recall that when we try to describe some particle interactions we end up saying that it may not be there until we look at it (in a manner of speaking). How could something not be there until we look at it? Also recall that color is not a property of the universe, it is a property of our own minds. We have grouped certain wavelengths into categories so that we can deal with them faster and dont have to identify them all uniquely every time we want to describe the wavelengths they reflect. I also like to bring up the hole in the ground discussion where we give a name to something that isnt really there just to make it simpler to deal with. The hole itself is not there only the ground around it is there, in a completely physical view. If we did an experiment at LHC to determine where holes were in the world, we would have to go by the particles that surround the 'hole' we could not look for the hole itself because we would never find one existing on it's own.
There is a lot more to this though i'll look up some links. Note however this is not science fiction it is a new start to understanding what consciousness really is.