Do humans have souls? | Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder 

Do you think souls are real?

The Ancients in the East understood it much better: You are not a human being having an experience in the Universe, you are the Universe having an experience in a human being.

I had a heart attack in 2020 and spent 4 minutes in cardiac arrest. It was a highly fascinating experience, I can tell you. But not in the way you might think. I was in the hospital, in quite a lot of pain (I barely noticed when they did a Covid test) Doctors were asking me lots of questions, they were working to treat me and I asked someone to remove my prosthetic leg. I started to explain how to do that when the nurse just did it. I was being impressed with the nurse and thinking he must have done this before when there was what I might call a discontinuity. There was no discontinuity in my thought. I was thinking the same thing after things changed as I was before, as if there was no interruption. I had no sense of waking up or coming to from unconsciousness. It felt like I was never unconscious, but several things changed. I was now laying flat, I was now completely naked and someone was messing with me down there (shaving my pubic hair, turns out) and someone was pounding the ever living hell out of my chest. I was very confused when I realized the pounding was someone performing CPR on me. I remembered my Red Cross classes and the warning to never perform CPR on someone who was awake, so I asked if it was a good idea for them to be doing that while I was awake. This alerted the doctor, who was actually getting ready to pronounce me! that I had come back. I had been dead for 4 minutes. But for me it was like no time at all passed from the time my heart stopped to the time it restarted. If that is what being dead is like, then it is no different that what I experienced before I was born. And so being afraid of what comes after life is quite literally being afraid of nothing. Is this what being dead is really like? I don't think I have the answer any better than anyone else who has had an NDE, even the more "typical" kind. Though you never really hear about the kinds of NDE I had, because it seems quite boring: What did you experience? I experienced nothing at all. Oddly, I find this just as interesting as NDEs when something does happen. It seems that with ever NDE I have heard about it seems to align with whatever the person believes. I am an atheist and believe nothing happens after death, so my NDE was nothing. I don't believe NDE's really tell us anything about life after death, because no one who has reported having an NDE has actually died in the biological sense. "Legally dead" is not the same as biologically dead. Biological death is "true death" that is, the permanent cessation of biological functions in an organism. Legal death is just the cessation of measurable biological functions in an organism. Yet there are many examples if the cessation of measurable biological function is just temporary. These functions can be restarted, even in humans if conditions are right. By definition, you can't come back from biological death, so anyone who has "come back from the dead" was never really dead.

I saw a video on RU-vid a few years ago between two neuroscientists and they were discussing the idea that brains might just be filters that allow us to experience consciousness on an individual level, the same way our eyes are filters that allow us to experience reality. They argued reality doesn't cease to exist if you close your eyes or go blind, so perhaps consciousness is the same, maybe it already exists as some fundamental property of the universe that we don't understand yet.

The Universe is far more fantastic than anything our minds can imagine

We as humans need to be a lot more humble about what we think we "know" about reality.

Her book on existential physics was eye opening, a very non-dismissive and articulate book exploring topics on souls, gods, creation of the universe etc. Need more openness like this in the science world

Our whole lives are made up of the qualitative, not the quantitative - when we say "I love you so much" how much is that? it can’t be measured, it has no definable boundaries or depth, that feeling can’t be pointed to and has no physical location, yet love is one of the most real things a human being can experience. All things are like this. The blueness of the sky, the joy your favourite song brings you, the pain of losing someone you love. these things are immeasurable, meaningful and deeply mysterious. To think this can all be explained away by particle physics is ludicrous. It is dangerous to use oversimplified scientific concepts to explain away your life when things are so clearly more mysterious than we could possibly ever imagine or know.

It's not wanting something else, its the fact that consciousness doesn't seem to need to exist in order to function in the universe. How did you get tuned into your head and not someone else's? There is something unexplainable about it, and that's good.

Even if we don't have a "soul" just.. what we are is a wonder of its own.

This series is beautifully shot and edited. Absolutely gorgeous work!

Understanding is never ending. This is true because there is always more to learn. Be sure that we haven't found all there is to find.

We either as the human race have a soul or don’t. What is most important is that we treat each other with care because we are individually only alive on this earth for a short time!

My fave cold hearted German physicist.

Caveat: My bachelor's degree is in biology so I know just enough to be dangerous. That we are made of particles is not the most amazing thing; the fact that none of the particles that were "you" twenty years ago are still a part of you is the most profoundly amazing thing to me. How did the concept of "me" survive the rejiggering? That's the thing that has me enthralled and curious about the world and everything in it.

I don’t think people believe that people have souls, they believe we are souls, and they believe that our bodies are what we have.

Imagine just being a fundamental particle but there is YOU. It is an incredible to be alive in a speck of time and space. Super grateful! Thanks, Sabine, my fellow elementary particles :D

But there aren't just particles, there's also space, as well as the interactions between particles/waves, fields, and space. Also, the fact of the matter is we simply do not have an objective way to describe subjective experience.

Thank you! I get so irritated with people who don’t understand how miraculous our world is. There has to be more but they don’t even know the first thing about how things really work.

I just stumbled across her RU-vid channel yesterday....the first video I saw was "Artificial Intelligence: What's Next?" And it FLOORED me. Hands down _the_ best summation, explanation, and honest appraisal of the AI situation as of now. No hype. No click bait. But thoroughly entertaining, fascinating, and super well presented. How had I not heard of her RU-vid stuff before? It's the best science and science adjacent content I've probably ever come across. I feel lucky that ALL her old videos are new to me.... :D

My question is: Why am I me? Everyone has a consciousness and a personality. But why am I this one among many and why do I experience myself?

I don’t usually enjoy videos which combine such rapidly changing images but this one is very well done! The absence of music is also a plus! Whoever put this together is very talented, and Sabine’s delivery is very effective - professional, yet it feels like she’s talking personally to us.

I agree with her point that we have certain identity of our own based on a distinct atomic arrangement. If that information could be extracted by some means, we can build technologies that haven't been realised yet such as replication, teleportation etc.

I like how she opened with how she would rather leave consciousness for neuroscience (s) and maybe the soul concept may be tied to that or not. Particles, in principle, make up everything but not everything is living. If living comes because of the arrangements or configuration of these particles, can we create (from scratch or by rearrangement of existing particles of a non-living thing or by using particles of a once existing living thing make another or the same thing? Maybe the science is not yet on that level or maybe there is something beyond the particles. I love science because it's a field where doubts and questions are entertained and nothing is written off simply because you can't prove it yet or do not understand it. Oh and that it can go back and correct what was misunderstood before. On this matter, if you are not one who ascribes to the concept of the soul, it's best to say it's not proven than to assert it doesn't exist.

But if we put ourselves onto a computer, what happens with personal identity. Is it us, or is it simply a copy?

I don't have soul. I am a soul.

In Indic philosophy of vedanta there are these two concepts of Atman and Brahman. Atman is the unchanging self that many would simplify to the idea of soul, brahman is the reality beyond all ideas of separation so you can think of it as a fabric and the creases and folds are all the different things we se as separate objects but are ultimately the fabric. The Atman referrs to the awareness of existing, so it is not exactly the mind, the mind is described as the ability to intellectualise, you would be still aware of your existence if all your senses were stripped of you, your ability to intellectualise be taken from you and your memory also taken from you. So the Atman is simply the awareness that you exist. In specifically the Advaita school of vedanta the Atman is described as being the same thing as Brahman, so this awareness is the only thing that exists while all the notions of difference and separation is considered false or maya. Vedanta makes it clear that the Brahman is something that cannot be intellectualised. Imagine looking at something, you can look at it from a separate perspective separately but not all perspectives at the same time so you cannot really comprehend the complete picture, you need to break the object down into separate perspectives and attempt to comprehend it, similarly there are infinite ways to see the Brahman but no way to understand it completely so the notion of a separate existence arises from a skewed awareness of our own existence. Basically everything there is is the awareness of existing its just that human beings are one packet of reality that happens to have a memory and intelligence so it tries to attribute qualities to the perceived separate objects seen by the atman.

Sabine has a very weird idea of a “hopeful message”. If we had computers that could reconstitute individual humans from their constituent atoms, then we would also have computers that could invent humans-any sort of humans-from scratch. There’s a reason Mary Shelley’s famous novel is classified as a “horror story”.

A problem I have this view is that she assumes that other people have consciousness. You can observe other people's particles, not their consciousness. You can observe your consciousness but not particles responsible for it. It is a big leap of faith to assume consciousness emerges from particles as to believe in a supernatural entity like a soul.

I'd love sciente to solve the mystery of the consciousness, but I still can't handle the fact that whatever physical phenomena cause it, there's still an ethereal place where my senses produce images, sounds and other sensations. So, even when I could agree that consciousness is an emergent property of organized matter, I still find it perplexing that there's a critical point where matters starts projecting mental images *somewhere*.

Nice video but I think that, as there are higher dimensions too, one of the most scientific ways to study the soul is through the theory of information. Our inner voice and counciesness affects the quantum realm and Dr. Donald Hoffman has an interesting approach on it.

The word ‘soul’ is just a description we use to describe something phenomenological that cannot be nailed down to either material or something outside of it, but it perhaps could be something that works between the two! Again, it’s just simply a word to describe something in phenomena that has yet to be discovered, much like all things science uncovers in its language to describe phenomena!

Love Sabine and I'm several paygrades below her in understanding. I also believe we are embodied minds embedded in dynamic environments. Should we ever be able to upload ourselves to the cloud, must we simulate the environment too? The bacteria in our guts? Fatigue, hunger, pain? What good would consciousness be on a hard drive without the sensory and perceptual apparatus simulated too?

Uploading memory and uploading our subconscious is entirely different thing. Modern physics and science is still at a very young stage to differentiate between soul and memory.

I do believe in the soul. As someone with a background in science, I realize that specialization and compartmentalization of subjects into physics, biology etc. (and their sub-divisions) is necessary. But a truly unified theory of the universe and understanding of the nature of reality cannot come unless there is a cross-disciplinary integration of learnings from each stream. What she says here @1:08 troubles me because physicists MUST probe the nature of consciousness, not just neuro biologists. The soul experience is an intimate experience that many people have and cannot be dismissed as something imaginary since it is not testable and demonstrable in a lab. That just means that it is something that cannot be proven in a conventional sense, not that it doesn't exist. We hardly understand the universe we live in and to say that it is not necessary to invoke anything other than the fundamental forces as we know them now is hubris.

Some rationalists have described the soul as the image of the body stored as a memory. I think that the mere question of what the soul is reflects the existance of it, maybe it can't be measured, and that's where logical positivism reaches it's limits.

I like the spliced in shot with the sand going through the person’s fingers. So many fine grains of sand. Easy to think of how the human body also has so many fine grains, but of all sorts of other particle types. It seems just logical and right that the assembly of the right types of so many particles would allow for the making of us.

It is fascinating to know that elementary particles can arrange themselves in such a way that they can see colors, hear sounds, think and feel. I am the embodiment of the laws of nature. My experience of existence is really what a group of properly arranged particles experiences. I don't think there is a division between life and inanimate things. Each atom is a component particle of life and thus is the basic manifestation of life. Atoms will communicate and combine to create more and more complex life. My thoughts are literally the collective thinking of atoms.

For what is worth Buddhism 'SEEMS ' to posit what Sabine is saying . The Buddha talks of a human being composed of the aggregates. The five are categorized as 1. Matter 2. Consciousness 3. Perception 4. Feeling 5. volition Furthermore The Heart Sutra also seems to confirm Sabine's points by reminding us "...form is emptiness ...emptiness is form..." In the sutra, Avalokiteśvara addresses Śariputra, explaining the fundamental emptiness (śūnyatā) of all phenomena, known through and as the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (saṅkhāra), perceptions (saṃjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna). Avalokiteśvara famously states, "Form is Emptiness (śūnyatā). Emptiness is Form", and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty-that is, dependently originated.

It is difficult to say definitively whether there is a dimension without matter or thoughts, as our understanding of the universe is limited by our current scientific knowledge and technological capabilities. However, some theories in physics, such as string theory and M-theory, suggest the existence of multiple dimensions beyond the three spatial dimensions and one time dimension that we are familiar with.

Wish I could talk like this every time someone asserts a 'soul' into a conversation...Just getting that person to explain what they mean by a 'soul' soon gets into a mish mash of 'feelings' and differences of opinion amongst the believers...I don't use the word unless I'm talking about music

Always great to hear Sabine's take on the world. I'm no scientist, but she certainly reduces and removes all the gobbledygook from the subjects that she talks about, and makes science simple.

Thank you for this lucid and accurate explanation which explains what it means when something is said to exist but not in a material sense (soul, heaven, ghost, god, etc) yet it somehow affects us or is us or occupies a space within us. It means we do not require it in our lives. You might even say it is irrelevant.

Thank you for this video ~ it is exactly what I’ve been searching for. 💜

I don't know about a God or soul but I'd like to think that some type of 'perception' of an existence or environment continues to take place In some form after you pass. The idea that you just appear out of nowhere after billions of years to peer through these goggles for what amounts to about a half a second In the grand scheme of things only to disappear again back Into blackness for the rest of eternity seems like the biggest cosmic joke ever.

Is it possible that in the last minutes of life, a person’s brain could “switch off” the perception of time? And further, might it create or re-create dreamy moments of pure happiness for what could feel like an eternity?

The question "do we have souls, or are we just particles?" already has a flaw built into it, because it assumes that particles do not have souls

Where does the word "Particle" comes from? Is in this case the written/spoken word "pixel" breaking the wave function? From within the "Standard Model"? Is Physics without "Human language" (not mathematics) possible? Is Physics without "physicians" possible?

I am a physicist and I will explain why our scientific knowledge refutes the idea that consciousness is generated by the brain and that the origin of our mental experiences is physical/biological (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). My arguments prove the existence in us of an indivisible unphysical element, which is usually called soul or spirit. Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but I will discuss two arguments that prove that this hypothesis implies logical contradictions and is disproved by our scientific knowledge of the microscopic physical processes that take place in the brain. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams). 1) All the alleged emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective/arbitrary classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described DIRECTLY by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option is possible; in this case, more than one possible description). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes and not the emergent properties (=subjective classifications or approximate descriptions). This means that emergent properties do not refer to reality itself but to an arbitrary abstract concept (the approximate conceptual model of reality). Since consciousness is the precondition for the existence of concepts, approximations and arbitrariness/subjectivity, consciousness is a precondition for the existence of emergent properties. Therefore, consciousness cannot itself be an emergent property. The logical fallacy of materialists is that they try to explain the existence of consciousness by comparing consciousness to a concept that, if consciousness existed, a conscious mind could use to describe approximately a set of physical elements. Obviously this is a circular reasoning, since the existence of consciousness is implicitly assumed in an attempt to explain its existence. 2) An emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess. The point is that the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what exists objectively are only the single elements (where one person sees a set of elements, another person can only see elements that are not related to each other in their individuality). In fact, when we define a set, it is like drawing an imaginary line that separates some elements from all the other elements; obviously this imaginary line does not exist physically, independently of our mind, and therefore any set is just an abstract idea, and not a physical entity and so are all its properties. Since consciousness is a precondition for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and abstractions, consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property, and cannot itself be an emergent property. Both arguments 1 and 2 are sufficient to prove that every emergent property requires a consciousness from which to be conceived. Therefore, that conceiving consciousness cannot be the emergent property itself. Conclusion: consciousness cannot be an emergent property; this is true for any property attributed to the neuron, the brain and any other system that can be broken down into smaller elements. On a fundamental material level, there is no brain, or heart, or any higher level groups or sets, but just fundamental particles interacting. Emergence itself is just a category imposed by a mind and used to establish arbitrary classifications, so the mind can't itself be explained as an emergent phenomenon. Obviously we must distinguish the concept of "something" from the "something" to which the concept refers. For example, the concept of consciousness is not the actual consciousness; the actual consciousness exists independently of the concept of consciousness since the actual consciousness is the precondition for the existence of the concept of consciousness itself. However, not all concepts refer to an actual entity and the question is whether a concept refers to an actual entity that can exist independently of consciousness or not. If a concept refers to "something" whose existence presupposes the existence of arbitrariness/subjectivity or is a property of an abstract object, such "something" is by its very nature abstract and cannot exist independently of a conscious mind, but it can only exist as an idea in a conscious mind. For example, consider the property of "beauty": beauty has an intrinsically subjective and conceptual nature and implies arbitrariness; therefore, beauty cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. My arguments prove that emergent properties, as well as complexity, are of the same nature as beauty; they refer to something that is intrinsically subjective, abstract and arbitrary, which is sufficient to prove that consciousness cannot be an emergent property because consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property. The "brain" doesn't objectively and physically exist as a single entity and the entity “brain” is only a conceptual model. We create the concept of the brain by arbitrarily "separating" it from everything else and by arbitrarily considering a bunch of quantum particles altogether as a whole; this separation is not done on the basis of the laws of physics, but using addictional arbitrary criteria, independent of the laws of physics. The property of being a brain, just like for example the property of being beautiiful, is just something you arbitrarily add in your mind to a bunch of quantum particles. Any set of elements is an arbitrary abstraction therefore any property attributed to the brain is an abstract idea that refers to another arbitrary abstract idea (the concept of brain). Furthermore, brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a conceptual model used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes; interpreting these sequences as a unitary process or connection is an arbitrary act and such connections exist only in our imagination and not in physical reality. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole is an arbitrary abstract idea , and not to an actual physical entity. For consciousness to be physical, first of all the brain as a whole (and brain processes as a whole) would have to physically exist, which means the laws of physics themselves would have to imply that the brain exists as a unitary entity and brain processes occur as a unitary process. However, this is false because according to the laws of physics, the brain is not a unitary entity but only an arbitrarily (and approximately) defined set of quantum particles involved in billions of parallel sequences of elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. This is sufficient to prove that consciousness is not physical since it is not reducible to the laws of physics, whereas brain processes are. According to the laws of physics, brain processes do not even have the prerequisites to be a possible cause of consciousness. As discussed above, an emergent property is a concept that refers to an arbitrary abstract idea (the set) and not to an actual entity; this rule out the possibility that the emergent property can exist independently of consciousness. Conversely, if a concept refers to “something” whose existence does not imply the existence of arbitrariness or abstract ideas, then such “something” might exist independently of consciousness. An example of such a concept is the concept of “indivisible entity”. Contrary to emergent properties, the concept of indivisible entity refers to something that might exist independently of the concept itself and independently of our consciousness. My arguments prove that the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property implies a logical fallacy and an hypothesis that contains a logical contradiction is certainly wrong. Consciousness cannot be an emergent property whatsoever because any set of elements is a subjective abstraction; since only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, consciousness can exist only as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because we know that there is a correlation between brain processes and consciousness. This indivisible entity is not physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties; therefore this indivisible entity corresponds to what is traditionally called soul or spirit. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience. Marco Biagini

Don't go to a physicist to ask a question about souls... in the same way you don't go to a chemist to ask a question about baking bread.

So when she says “all things are reducible to the elementary particles + gravity” why could it not be also the case that “all things are reducible to the elementary particles + consciousness”? Before gravity was formally theorised we didn’t dispute its existence, because it was intuitively true. Might it not be the case that we’re in the same position with consciousness?

Not many know the soul and are so aware like this, sometimes for many of us it can be hard to live and comprehend with knowing. With me being so young I’ve gone through things at a young age. Now only being 14 and being aware and having awakening and have woke up, it’s taken months to accept it but I finally have I can live with knowing and I try not to overthink it. I know we are all here for a reason and to learn different lessons. We have to learn tings for our souls and to become better versions of ourselves. We will go through the worst and best times in our life’s but it has to happen for us to learn,grow, and there’s a reason why they happen and we should learn from them.

The understanding of consciousness will solve it one day.

In the OSI layer of communication, the physical layer is at the bottom most layer. It provides the foundation for communication just like the elementary particles. The higher levels are required to set the rules of protocols. It would not be too far-fetched to extend this to soul. Meaning of life cannot be explained at the level of the elementary particles as much as communication protocols can be explained by ones and zeros.

Yes but can you replicate and control that same consciousness after or do you have to sacrifice one for the other?

Two different physical systems that give the same outputs do not necessarily give rise to the same conscious experiences. Therefore, we need to be careful before uploading our minds into computers, because they might not be conscious.

I've never thought of a Soul this way before but it came to me while watching this vid that the human body is born as a body, and a Soul is 'grown' throughout it's life. And maybe not all bodies grow one.

- She forgets to mention that by some recent estimates, we call around 95% of the mass in the universe "dark matter", which stays for 'something we know very little about'. So particles may well not be the whole story. - Another thing that particle physics does not easily explain is the very essence of our life, the existence of our own experience, that is, consciousness. - A remote argument against reductionism and in favor of dualism is that in a similar way as two subatomic particles are capable of influencing each others' spin at a distance (see quantum entanglement), there might be a similarly "immaterial" connection between two different substances, for example, between the physical and the 'conscious' substances/universes without there needing to be any direct physical contact between the two substances. - Moreover, our understanding of the universe is extremely limited by what we can see and measure of it. For what we know, there might be other bubbles or multiverses, made of completely different substances, or where completely different types of logic yield. And so again, particles might not be the whole story. - One more thing. While it might be true that **in principle** we could deterministically calculate for example all the behaviors of a human during his/her lifetime, this is true only in theory but not in practice. In practice this cannot be possibly done because some physical processes are chahotic (search for chaos theory for further information) and cannot be predicted in the long run. I am a great fan of this channel, but I found this video quite limited. Otherwise, keep up the good work!

But a more interestjng question in my opinion is can we create a soul? By that I mean can we create a way to keep a humans consciousness alive or stored in some place even after they die?

Towards the end her understanding of the soul was more in line with what I imagine it to be. Not the particles that make us directly but the structure and the information contained in it! the soul is really the information that contains us! And that information could have in principle every medium on which it is encoded. Not only the neruons in our brain or the bits on a harddrive, but could even reemerge in different universes with different laws of physics! The information of our existence came to be once! Even without a medium, it will stay in the realm of the abstract indefinetly! In that sense the soul is truly indestructible! Think of it this way... The universe existed since 13,8 billion years. All that time had been passed before you suddenly came to existence. It happened once, and that's enough for it to happen again. You will reemerge again, no matter how long it takes, because the information that makes you is in its essence indestructible! You cannot destroy information!

How particles are arranged and interact to create consciousness is a mystery. Science has no competency to resolve the issue of soul at this stage. Giving any conclusion on the issue is deemed to be mere ignorance. It is ridiculous to think that uploading all information of a human body in a supercomputer will make the computer conscious carrying the identity of that man.

I am what stars are made of. I am a part of something so vast that I can not even wrap my head around the idea of it...that in itself, is enough of an explanation of where my soul comes from to me.

"Your soul is the entire universe" -Alan Watts

The more I learn about physics, the more I believe in souls. If consciousness is emergent from dead matter, then this dead matter must not be dead. It must be alive, energetic, and encoded with information. Is that not a human being as well? Is the universe, down to its most finite forms not a reflection of us? Therefore, a reflection of itself?

So like…. How do we know we aren’t already a part of some shape or form of computer containing the information required to make an individual? Isn’t this kinda what we call the universe?

How can we confirm that anything exists outside our personal experience, if no one can get out side of said experience?

This is an interesting topic to me because I wonder what makes me me, what makes me unique in this universe. If we are simply a configuration of particles then there is no uniqueness in the universe.

"emergent" only makes sense if there is a conscious being that modells reality. without consciousness there are no emergent phenomina but just particles moving within spacetime.

I’ve never understood how mathematics fits in the world of physics. A mathematical formula does not have mass, nor speed. It is not made of atoms. The formula can be written with chalk on a board. The chalk is somewhere specific, but the formula it represents isn’t just on the blackboard……. So does maths not exist then?

I love when scientists try to explain our state of being when they don't anything about how we were created. It may have been a big bang. But how did that happen? They don't know, no more than they know anything about the afterlife....

I don't think of the soul as a physical thing, but I do think the old fogeys were onto something with the language: The soul is the part of yourself that keeps the past in check. Neurologically I would even dare to say the soul is made of our thoughts and concepts (stuff from past experiences, memories and stuff). where something like the spirit is made up of emotions and feelings that function as the part of ourselves that needs to make a prediction about the future, (notice how you can raise someone's spirits by helping guess more positively?). And while I don't believe in God? There is a uber Judgemental and "know-it-all" voice that helped me come to that conclusion, so take that however you want. It's an easy way to deduce the present (not the past, and not the future; BUT your soul and spirit are a part of you (which what makes things so confusing.)

So when you've uploaded all the information about the configuration of the particles in your body into a computer and then you'd use a particle-3d-printer to print out an exact copy of your body with every single particle in the right configuration - would this copy be alive?

It's my (limited, to be sure) understanding that information can not be destroyed, merely converted. Therefore, the specific configuration of the particles that make up a living being have been measured, so to speak, and have become an information pattern - indestructible, but convertible. Somehow, I don't find this in conflict with the idea of a soul.

Yogis of ancient India spent thousands of years in answering this question that I believe was finally cracked by Buddha. He gave a term “anatta” which translates “non-self” or “non-soul”. The ego is an illusion of identity created by a mind that is best understood in terms of complex systems.

The soul-body or consciousness-matter interaction problem is only a problem if you have already assumed that only things made of the "same" substance (matter) can interact with each other. But the truth is we do not really know exactly what "matter" is, and so we do not know why it and it alone should be able to interact with itself. In order to define what matter is, we would have to reduce it to another substance (e.g. water is an arrangement of H and O atoms, atoms are an arrangement of electrons, protons and neutrons; subatomic particles are arrangements of quarks; quarks are... what?). This way, we either go on to infinity, or we end up with something non-reducible of which we cannot define the nature, only the interactions. So ultimately you just end up with "interacting" unknown things of which you don't know what makes them able to interact in the first place. You just know they do. The same holds for the interaction of matter and consciousness (whatever it is). We know, through experience, that some material phenomenon Xm is linked to conscious experience Xc, e.g. light is linked to perception of colour, and that some conscious experience Yc is linked to a material phenomenon Ym, e.g. experience of fear is linked to your body running away. We don't have to be able to explain, in principle, why they CAN interact, when it is an empirical given that they DO interact. It seems sensible to me to just suspend my judgment about either alleged "substance" and how they interact, since either way of describing the world is coherent but has the same ultimate hole at the very bottom - we will never know what any substance is, and so we cannot rationally justify what it does, only describe how it does that.

I don’t get why they don’t interview a metaphysician (philosopher) or possibly a neuroscientist on this matter. This lady doesn’t even know the name of the field that studies the possible existence of souls.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A SOUL .. You ARE a the SOUL. YOU HAVE A BODY.

Regarding her concept of uploading the body into a computer here’s an easy thought experiment: Imagine there is an exact copy of you standing next to you - would you sacrifice yourself without a doubt? (For, there stays an exact copy of you in the world, there shouldn’t be an issue with that) - if you would say „no“ then you understand the problem with consciousness and why such thing as uploading your SELF into a computer is ridiculous- at least as long as it is not understood how „self“ arises. So yea, be indeed careful with false promises.

Do they absolutely ignore the possibility of multiple dimensions? The problem is they cannot comprehend the existence of a soul just like they deny the existence of a creator because all that is unseen cannot be measured. Do they ignore all the signs they are surrounded with? Only if they contemplate on their own existence with an open heart they will find the right way.

If you were to simulate the fundamental particles on a computer, you would need to use a random number generator each time a quantum wavefunction collapses, since their behavior is fundamentally non-deterministic. Maybe the soul in some way corresponds to that "random number generator" in reality. It is what "chooses" what becomes real/experienced out of all the possibilities.

I have a piano in my room from which I can hear Beethoven's pathetique. I will soon be able to explain how that can be by describing the piano by means of particle physics ....

I tend to go with Sabine on the physics of "souls", there is no evidence as such for the existence of something separate from our physical bodies. Some days I feel there must be something else, some truth in the descriptions of an afterlife, but the important thing I think is to lead our lives as best we can, rather than to think of some future state which might be imaginary.

2:32 Her definition of 'emergent' is quite peculiar, since it is the exactly the opposite of what I learned as a student in the 90s. To say that something is 'emergent' is tantamount to say that it cannot be reduced... So how was that now something 'emergent' can be reduced?

I don't understand why people resist saying, "I can't know". They're usually willing to admit they don't currently know, but can eventually figure it out or someone else will, but to admit they can't know just seems impossible for them.

"The soul can exist as long as it never interacts with the physical world."" Lol, another way of saying "no there is no such thing as a soul stupid".

Sabine is a hardcore physicalist and a Perma-skeptic just about everything. My question is: How can we reconcile entropy with the emergence of life, evolution and especially Consciousness which is the only thing that gives us access to reality?

I went to a medium before but idk if I should believe it or not…. My ex girlfriend setup the appointment and she said she didn’t put any of my info when she made the reservation. We had to wait a year from when we bought the tickets before we were able to meet with the medium. My best friend passed away he was like my brother, we grew up together and we always were close anyway when we got to the mediums place she had us wait like 15 mins before we started so she could eat. I didn’t give her any of my info when I went in. When the medium started she said did you have a brother or best friend pass away? She knew how he passed away even though it wasn’t posted on social media anywhere on how he passed. She matched his personality exactly as well. Also before I left my house I said out loud “if this is real bro please let me know”. She knew I was skeptical and she said he told her that I said that before I came. Also on the way to the medium my headlights started going on and off, it never did that before and never did it after that day. She said did you notice any lights going on or off in the last few days? There’s no way she could of known either of those things, I didn’t even tell my ex either that I said that or that my lights did that. Another thing I recently started my own business at that time and she said did you start a new job or something? I am a very skeptical person but I want to believe it was real and he was really there. Those few things she said I don’t know how she would know so I am 90% sure it was real and 10% is wondering how she could’ve known!?

I think it's about confusion between information and concept. Definition of human comes from the need to understand new concepts. Information is just the intersection of concepts with material world. The set of possibilities dynamically loaded with probabilities define the alive entity and is itself an implementations of concepts with the purpose to bring new concepts in this world. Soul is like a class of equivalence regarding the set of concepts thatan entity represent, a gate by which new concepts will come. Heaven, truth, religion, everything we invent is about harmony of concepts.

I have a meteorite. When I hold it, I like to remind myself that this peace of space iron is 'space dust'. When a star dies, it expels it's mass outward.....and that is often iron. The iron that is the space dust I'm holding.... is made of the same iron that flows through my heart. Without it, I die. .....the point is: in order for you to exist, stars had to form and die first, in order to make the particles that you call you. You are literally made of stardust! You're also conscious.....and you part of the universe. You're as much a part of the universe as everything else in the universe is. You are the universe experience itself subjectively. Think of how much matter the universe contains..... all made of the same things we are made of and, somehow, we are lucky enough to be a part of the universe that is conscious and self aware.

I'm paraphrasing, but I think it's Sagan who said that after we die, we commit the atoms of our bodies back to the stars, from whence they came.

Might not the soul be a kind of broadcast determined or generated by our physical particles and their interactions?

Uploading someone to a computer. Then forget to make backups and the computer crashes. Would someone be hurt ?

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but it is the way those atoms are put together." - Carl sagan

I love Sabine! She's such a bright light of knowledge and wisdom!

Upon rumination, I think this is why, ultimately, statements like this wrankle: we have a mysterious (in the sense that we don’t know how it works) phenomena in qualia, or self awareness, the experience of being conscious of oneself. It’s a phenomenon too which we have ZERO idea how it works. None. Zilch. There’s some… I wouldn’t even call them theories…notions…about how it works. (I say notions because no theory, whether it’s IT or a relativist idea etc, provides any idea of HOW their theory would actually work.) When the idea of a dualist solution comes up, the dogmatic physicalist protests, pointing out that it’s a completely mysterious explanation and that it couldn’t possibly be true. But when they propose the explanation MUST be a purely physicalist one, they IGNORE the fact that that explanation is EQUALLY unexplainable. One is clearly favored by the physicalist simply because they ASSUME that’s where the answer MUST lie. This is dogma. Especially when one considers, as Chomsky accurately has pointed out, the definition of “physicalism” has been in constant flux since the time of Newton. New facts (such as Quantum Mechanics) were initially dismissed because they didn’t fit the (then) current definition of physicalism. But when they were proven to be true by the eventual advances in experimental science, that definition would be then adjusted to encompass the new phenomenon. It’s moving the goal posts. So when someone says a dualist solution if impossible because it doesn’t fit our current understanding of physics, forgive me if that sounds specious. I’m not at all saying that a purely physicalist (according to the current definition) solution is definitely NOT forthcoming. I’m saying it’s WAY too early to be so dismissive of the idea. The scientific method is not a cudgel to be used to batter down ideas. As if to say “since you can’t PROVE it to me now, it must be absolutely false.”

Souls are not made of atoms , they are pure energy

I was expecting Michio Kaku. Love Sabine. I'm not as "hopeful" as she appears wrapping up though. Sure, in principle we could recreate you and your identity whether on a computer or in a physical body. But I think we can pretty easily conclude that it still wouldn't be you, it would just be someone exactly like you. It kind of baffles me I've never seen anyone put forward this thought experiment. Imagine we live in a future where we can upload your entire brain to a computer or 3d print an exact copy of you. This technology is touted as buying immortality, or an afterlife. You let them take all the scans and create this copy of you and one day get a phone call asking if you'd like to come and watch yourself "wake up" for the first time. Let's say they've uploaded your mind in a computer simulation. You get to watch this computer world and the copy of yourself interacting with people, creating art and whatever it is you might be doing were you to wake up there one morning. This person is just like you in every way. They even think they ARE you... but they're not... YOU are still in the real world watching them. You leave wondering, if I didn't wake up in that computer world today what reason do I have to believe that when I'm dead it would be me waking up there and not just some doppelganger?

I'm in my early 70's so death is getting closer. I would like to think there is something else but really I have huge doubts. I suspect the sensations and visions some people describe are merely the shutting down of the brain. I hope I'm wrong.

Very interesting idea to upload the configuration of an entire human being on a computer. With multiple such humans in a computer, the universe itself can be simulated within a computer. Who is then to say that we are not already in a simulation. The question that I have though is that a human genome can occupy about 700 MB of data. What would it then take to upload the configuration of an entire human being? Do we have the capacity at the current technological levels?

I don’t get why you would ask a physicist this question. I could see asking a biologist, specifically, a neuroscientist, but I really don’t see how it connects particularly with physics.