Questions about the soul

I used to think I was not a dualist, taking in the critiques of Descartes with his ridiculous partitioning of mind and body and strange notions of how they interacted and affected one another. The upside-down image on the back of the retina that needs to be re-rotated for the benefit of some strange homunculus, looking at periscopically it via the pineal gland. How would he even know which way was up? Much more insidious was Descartes' identification of the self, 'I', with thought. I think therefore I am. Hegel pointed out that only stopping up the eyes and ears made this mode of existence possible. But the identification of the self with thought, and obsession over the existence of consciousness, has continued to dog Western philosophy and its latter day manifestations as pseudoscience.

Materialism posits that all facets of existence can be reduced to physical arrangements of matter and energy in space and time. I have no qualms about this idea. The problem is that we still don't know exactly how it happens in a way that produces our everyday experiencing. I venture to hypothesize that while individual consciousness manifests as the complex patterns of activation of many different neurons in the brain, together with the chemical signals that they use to communicate with one another, it is also determined by the people around us and the cultural legacy of historical brain activity in many, many people now dead who first came up with concepts such as the soul and God, and found words and language to communicate them with their contemporaries.

It would be a sad thing if our ability to transcend our individual existence once again in this same way became bogged down by neurobiological hyperbole.