Very interesting article here explains a lot about consciousness.
Is "the soul" just electromagnetic energy our brains create while we're alive? Or are they entirely different concepts? Is it matter and soul or matter and energy? Is consciousness just a wave of electromagnetism the mind develops throughout our lives?
I side with science. I completely agree with the article and do believe that consciousness is a weak magnetic field we observe while we're alive. And when the brain doesn't have the ability to produce that electromagnetism, I'll die.
However, I like to think that it is somehow possible there could be an afterlife. The only way I could see the afterlife existing from this data is if we somehow kicked the brain to overdrive using outside electromagnetic fields, like what they do to jumpstart the heart, to allow the person to live again.
Some people say they've died and seen the afterlife. Maybe that afterlife is a prime form of electromagnetic energy I haven't experienced yet. I consider consciousness to be a wave rather than a particle, because waves are ever changing, whereas particles don't.
If you ever heard of Occam's Razor, it states that the simplest solution is usually the best one. While philosophers and theologians write books on consciousness and the afterlife, maybe it's just as simple as one word: electromagnetism.
The article goes on to say that this may be the reason why AI hasn't become aware yet: we need to develop AI with an electromagnetic field to produce its consciousness.
I certainly don’t think the “soul” have anything to do with being “alive”, being “conscious”.
But I think when we talking about life, especially about the brain, it is far more complex than just “one thing” that make any organism “living”.
Especially when there are many organisms that don’t have brains, eg
- plants and fungi are living organisms that have no brains, therefore these organisms have no consciousness,
- nor of any unicellular organisms, eg microorganisms from the species of Bacteria and species of Archaea.
- Even some animals don’t have brains or central nervous system, such as sponges, corals, sea urchin, and some other invertebrates.
There are no evidence that all living organisms require consciousness to be “alive” or “living”.
But I think your topic is focusing on only humans, since you had brought up soul and afterlife. Although I would agree with you sciences provide better understanding of human biology than those in philosophies or religions, I don’t it is simply electromagnetism.
As I said the brain and life are far more complex than just “one thing” being the answer, like the link you cited regarding electromagnetism, answers that may require neurologists or neuroscientists, or at least biologists who are quite familiar with human biology.
I am neither. My education in biology ended in Year 9 high schools biology (1981), however I did pick up a few things on biology, in the last 19, nearly 20 years. But I am DEFINITELY NO biologist or expert on the subject.
What I can only is my opinion as to what I have learned over the last 19 years.
I think there are multiple factors that make humans “living organisms”.
The human hearts, for instance cannot functions without the brains that control automatic motor functions. So the brains sent signal through the nerves, and these nerves use nerve impulses or electrical impulses that cause the brains to pump blood throughout the body, and back to the heart. The blood or more precisely the red blood cells carry the all-important, oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body, before these blood cells return to the lungs with carbon dioxide, and go through the pumping heart again.
Brain require oxygen to remain healthy. So just as hearts require the brains to function, the brains cannot functions without electrical stimulating the pumping action of the heart muscles.
So the nerves, or more precisely neurons or nerve cells, played vital functions to (almost) every anatomical and physiological body parts.
Electrical pulses or electrical signals are what provide nerves the functions they have, which have nothing to do with magnetism side of electromagnetism.
But as
@ChristineM said, “electrochemical”, and as
@exchemist and
@Polymath257 have explained about the “electrochemical” being involved, not magnetism.
The nerve cells induced chemical reaction that produce the electrical signal, that pass on from one neuron to the next neuron, then to next, next...
Magnetism played no role here, as your link suggested.
I am probably not wording my attempt at explanation, right, so anyone with better grasp about neurons and electrochemical can correct me as to how neurons work.