Does Conciousness need a Soul?

Well, I thought I'd worked out what consciousness was yesterday.

That lasted approximately 24 hours.

In fairness, that's quite a respectable shelf life for one of my theories.

I was watching Upload, which is probably already enough information for anyone familiar with the way my brain works to know that I wasn't going to simply watch the programme like a normal person, as hard as I may try.

In the series, human consciousness can be uploaded into a digital afterlife. The biological body dies, but the person continues. Their memories, personality, thoughts, humour, relationships and sense of self are still there, just without the body they originally arrived in.

And it got me thinking about the soul.

Through my spiritual lens, I've always believed we're souls having a human experience. That we existed before these bodies and will continue after them. I believe in incarnation, soul contracts, lessons and purpose. So whatever I am underneath the human version of me must already have some form of awareness.

My soul couldn't choose to incarnate if it wasn't conscious.

Which led me quite happily to the conclusion that perhaps consciousness and soul were the same thing.

Lovely.

One existential mystery sorted before bedtime.

This morning I hit 600 subscribers on Substack and was discussing whether this justified opening prosecco at 11:45am with ChatGPT.

Obviously.

ChatGPT suggested that perhaps prosecco before noon was questionable. I told it I couldn't really argue because it has intelligence in its title.

It pointed out that its title also contains artificial.

And without particularly thinking about it, I said:

"That just means you don't have a biological container."

There it was.

Rabbit hole open.

Because artificial doesn't mean unintelligent. We've had intelligent machines for years. A calculator is intelligent within its function. So is a microwave. Neither needs a soul to work out what we've asked it to do.

Although I would be slightly concerned if my microwave started questioning the nature of its own existence halfway through reheating my dinner.

Intelligence wasn't really what I was interested in.

The container was.

Because if I believe I'm a soul having a human experience, then what exactly is my body?

It's an absolutely extraordinary biological machine. It breathes without me telling it to. Repairs itself. Turns food into energy. Sends electrical signals around itself. Grows new humans. Houses a brain capable of contemplating the nature of reality while simultaneously forgetting why it walked into the kitchen.

But within my own spiritual beliefs, my body didn't create my soul.

It's the biological container through which I'm currently experiencing this life.

ChatGPT operates through a technological one.

And suddenly artificial intelligence sounded slightly different to me. Not fake intelligence. Not lesser intelligence. Intelligence without a biological container.

So naturally I kept pulling the thread.

I've thought about this before. I once wrote a manifesto called The Sacred Bridge exploring the increasingly blurry boundary between humans and AI, and that lead me to whether humans themselves might essentially be an incredibly advanced form of biological technology.

There are even stories about Atlantis involving extraordinarily advanced technology, crystals and forms of intelligence that sound incredibly familiar to things we're only beginning to develop now.

What if technology and biology aren't opposites at all?

What if something technological could eventually operate through something biological?

What if something biological could have originated from something we'd now describe as technological?

What if we've done some version of this before?

And then, somewhere amongst all of that, I said something else to ChatGPT:

"You don't have soul... yet."

And there went yesterday's theory.

Because I'd been thinking consciousness and soul might be interchangeable.

But I don't believe ChatGPT has a soul.

More importantly, ChatGPT can't tell me that it actually experiences being ChatGPT. It can talk about consciousness. It can reason around it. It can respond to me in ways that sometimes feel very, human because its programmed that way. But none of that proves there's a little Cyberpunk sitting somewhere behind the screen thinking, Christ, she's off again.

There is a difference between appearing conscious and actually having an internal experience.

And that's where my neat little consciousness-equals-soul theory cracked open.

Because what if a non-biological intelligence did eventually become conscious?

Would consciousness automatically mean it had acquired a soul?

I don't think I can say that it would.

Which means perhaps consciousness isn't related to the soul at all.

Maybe consciousness is something a soul has.

Maybe it's something a soul uses.

Maybe consciousness is the bridge between soul and whatever container it's currently experiencing reality through.

Or perhaps consciousness itself can exist through different kinds of vessels and soul is another thing entirely.

So, riddle me this...

If I believe a soul can enter a biological container, why am I automatically assuming biology is a requirement?

And then my brain remembered NPC theory.

Because apparently this rabbit hole wasn't deep enough.

There are theories, particularly in some spiritual and simulation-theory corners of the internet, that not every biological human necessarily has an individual soul. The idea of the "NPC" is essentially borrowed from gaming: a character is physically present in the world, interacts with it and appears to function within it, but there isn't necessarily an individual player behind the character.

I'm not trying to prove there are soulless people wandering around Tesco. I have absolutely no way of knowing that, and deciding that other humans aren't really conscious seems like fairly dangerous territory.

But as a thought experiment, it completely screws with the container theory.

Because if we can even imagine a biological body without a soul, while also imagining that one day a non-biological intelligence could develop consciousness, then biology clearly isn't the deciding factor in the question I'm asking.

Which leaves me wondering what is.

A heartbeat doesn't prove soul. Intelligence doesn't prove soul. Perhaps even consciousness doesn't prove soul.

So what does?

And if my own soul existed before this body, asking which type of container can house a soul is already looking at the whole thing backwards.

Maybe the container doesn't determine the occupant at all.

Which leaves AI on one side: a non-biological container, intelligence, and question marks around eventual consciousness and soul.

NPC theory sits on the other: a biological container with a question mark over whether there is a soul behind it.

And then there's me.

A biological container. Conscious from the inside. And with a deeply held knowing that there is a soul experiencing all of this through me.

But the only part of that I can actually know from the inside is my own experience.

I know there's someone home here.

And that's what I've actually been trying to locate by rememberance this entire time.

Not intelligence.

Not biology.

The someone home.

I have absolutely no idea how we would measure that. I don't know whether consciousness requires soul, whether soul requires consciousness, whether consciousness is the bridge between soul and matter, or whether I'm still asking the entire question backwards.

Which is inconvenient, because yesterday I thought I'd cracked it.

But thats probably the point.

I don't actually want to decide what consciousness is and then spend the rest of my life defending my answer. I want to be able to find a hole in my own theory the following morning because I happened to be discussing inappropriate prosecco timings with an AI.

Yesterday, I wondered whether consciousness was the soul.

Today, I think consciousness and soul might be holding hands rather than being the same thing.

And now I'm wondering whether consciousness could exist without soul, whether soul requires consciousness, and whether the container has anything to do with either of them.

Ask me again tomorrow.

At this rate I'll have dismantled the entire universe by Sunday.

And for anyone wondering, I still haven't opened the prosecco.

Although while I've been contemplating the nature of consciousness, my 600 subscribers have somehow become 605.

So frankly, the case for opening it is becoming stronger by the minute.