You're close to the fundamental problem here but don't go far enough.
All one needs to do is look at Oliver Sack's books to understand that either of these must be true:
1. Consciousness is a physical system. This is the simplest explanation and accounts for all observed phenomenon.
2. Consciousness (or "soul") is metaphysical but is such a blank slate or so dependent on the physical state of the brain that we can exclude all consideration of it. Memory is clearly physical otherwise brain damage wouldn't ruin only some memories or the ability to comprehend certain things (such as right-left agnosias where someone loses the concept of the left side of the world both currently and in recalled memories). Brain chemistry very _obviously_ influences mood. Mind-altering drugs can induce temporary personality changes. It goes way beyond simple "radio receiver" analogies like alcohol inducing distortions. Your ability to understand anything at all, your ability to remember anything at all, even your personality can be dramatically affected by brain chemistry and physical state.
There are just so very many examples of real situations involving the brain that require extremely complicated hoop-jumping to maintain the idea that "you" are anything beyond the physical process happening in your brain. They all devolve into claims that the metaphysical essence is so dependent on and influenced by physical brain processes you can just cut out the metaphysical part with no loss.
If a stroke or dementia can make me a much angrier or violent person then what need is there for a soul?
Occam's razor. In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions. In essence, they provide guardrails to keep discussions centered within the realm of reason when venturing to the edge of our knowledge and beyond.
Except it fails the deeper you go in understanding physical phenomena.
We should not exist per Occam.
If you can hold on your awareness that the atoms of your body are not 'matter' but signatures of energy bound in a field, then the physical brain is much harder to consider the real and constructing element of reality.
I think many of these discussions are just measuring the difference in what we each perceive as the lowest building block.
Everything we are is wavelengths of energy. This isn't something metaphysical. Electron, proton, nuetron are all combinations of quarks which only exist independently as a discrete quantized energy in a field. The orderliness of the field is dependent on how much energy is exchanged for (converted to) mass. What is mass? Voltage - per modern understanding of physics. So the defining characteristic of reality is potential.
If we exist in this way as a consciousness then there is every reason to believe consciousness is pervasive in the universe
We barely exist. Our history spans only a brief part of the Universe's history, we are confined to an infinitesimal bubble of all the space that is available. When we consider the Universe as a whole, Occam is correct. We are not even a rounding error.
But also: the Universe itself should not exist, per Occam. Yet it does. And we do. So let's work with that.
Yeah, it's interesting to think about. I've often wondered what would happen if a structurally identical configuration of matter and energy representing "me" manifested somewhere.
Taking it further, is the atomic world the only medium where this "me" could be represented? What if there were a perfect digital model of "me"? Would that be conscious?
What other mediums might be able to support something similar to our notion of consciousness?
> What if there were a perfect digital model of "me"? Would that be conscious?
If it is a perfect digital model of you, yes. Since you feel consciousness, the digital copy must also feel it. Otherwise it would not be "perfect".
In the case of the model, "feeling" means that some bits (probably a big number - billions or trillions) inside the model would flip their state.
> What other mediums might be able to support something similar to our notion of consciousness?
I believe that the mind is sustained by a particular set of physical atoms. A human brain is ~1.5 liters of water plus ~0.5 kgs of other stuff.
In theory you could represent consciousness using whatever else physical objects you wanted. In practice, the mind-bogglingly big numbers and processes involved that make it difficult. If you used grains of sand to represent atoms, each neuron would take ~450 liters / 16 cubic feet of sand to model, assuming that you can make each individual grain of sand act as an atom.
There's also the fact that modeling how atoms behave exactly seems to be extremely computationally expensive. Apparently Quantum Mechanics don't like being modeled on a non-quantum computer, and you rapidly reach the "you would need a computer the size of the whole universe in order to model that" limit very quickly. So your grains of sand would need to be Quantum-aware Grains of Sand.
You might end up needing a Jupiter-worth of grains of Quantum sand. I don't recommend using this approach. Definitely don't try to model the human brain using pebbles.
All one needs to do is look at Oliver Sack's books to understand that either of these must be true:
1. Consciousness is a physical system. This is the simplest explanation and accounts for all observed phenomenon.
2. Consciousness (or "soul") is metaphysical but is such a blank slate or so dependent on the physical state of the brain that we can exclude all consideration of it. Memory is clearly physical otherwise brain damage wouldn't ruin only some memories or the ability to comprehend certain things (such as right-left agnosias where someone loses the concept of the left side of the world both currently and in recalled memories). Brain chemistry very _obviously_ influences mood. Mind-altering drugs can induce temporary personality changes. It goes way beyond simple "radio receiver" analogies like alcohol inducing distortions. Your ability to understand anything at all, your ability to remember anything at all, even your personality can be dramatically affected by brain chemistry and physical state.
There are just so very many examples of real situations involving the brain that require extremely complicated hoop-jumping to maintain the idea that "you" are anything beyond the physical process happening in your brain. They all devolve into claims that the metaphysical essence is so dependent on and influenced by physical brain processes you can just cut out the metaphysical part with no loss.
If a stroke or dementia can make me a much angrier or violent person then what need is there for a soul?