Will You Let Me Keep Your Soul?

DNA or Deoxyribonucleic acid is complex molecular structure that stores biological information used in the development, functioning and reproduction of all living organisms, including viruses. DNA is “quantifiable” using DNA sequencing techniques. Many techniques have been developed by geneticists since 1972.

Graphical representation of DNA structure (source: Wikimedia).

Radioactive Fluorescent Sequence of DNA (source: Wikimedia).

The soul is the incorporeal and immortal essence of a living being as in many religions, philosophical and mythological traditions.

Aristotle describes in his work, On the Soul (Latin: De Anima), that different kind of living things possess different kind of distinguishable souls by their different operations such as behavior, emotion, feeling, intellect, motion, nourishment and reproduction. Aristotle holds the soul is the essence or form of any living thing which has no distinct substance from the body which possesses it. It is the possession of a specific kind of soul that makes an organism and thus a body without soul, or a soul in wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible.

Aristotle argues that some part of the soul, the intellect, may exist without the body and some may not, like the sensory. A soul cannot feel the touch, smell or taste food without a body.

In Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible, soul means life or vital breath to all mortal, physical life. And also includes self, life, person, spirit, appetite, mind, consciousness, desire, emotion, love, lust and passion; which can be found in Genesis 1:20:

— וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יִשְׁרְצ֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם שֶׁ֖רֶץ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה
LXX καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὰ κήτη τὰ μεγάλα καὶ πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ζῴων ἑρπετῶν.
Vulgate Creavitque Deus cute grandia, et omen animam viventes atque motabilem.
KJV “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth.”

Most Christians understand that the soul is an ontological reality so different from and yet connected with the body. Its characteristics are described in moral, spiritual and philosophical terms. When people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or Hell.

The soul or Rûh is immortal and eternal in Islam. What a person does is recorded and will be judged at the final court of Allah (God).

In Buddhism, all things are in a perpetual inconsistency; all is changing, and nothing can exist by itself with a permanent state. Buddhism refers soul to an incorporeal component in living things that can continue after death. Buddhism does not deny the existence of the soul but the existence of a permanent entity that remains persistent behind the changing corporeal and incorporeal components of a living being. A soul can be sentient or non-sentient. Non-sentient beings are such as plants and stones while sentient beings are such as humans and animals.

Various school of Buddhism have different ideas about what happens to the soul after death. Collectively, they all believe that the soul carries our mundane desires that the previous entity experienced into the next continuum — rebirth. Most modern Buddhists take an agnostic stance toward the concept of rebirth. Research has been conducted at the University of Virginia as proof that some people are reborn.

If soul can be judged, or the information of its desires and experiences from previous life can be passed on to next life, then the next big question will be:

Is soul quantifiable?

If we deduce this unfathomable nature of soul into a kind of conceptual model, it may become quantifiable, then the soul is a chunk of data consists of logical and numerical entities that can be analyzed, processed, stored and transmitted. It can even extend and grow itself based on its own cognitive ability together with its own memories and information from external domains, like the man himself.

When a man desires a woman, or vice versa, his desire can be categorized into a set of parameters such as the woman’s behavior, character, intellect and physical. And let say these desired parameters are quantifiable on a scale, then we have quantifiable desire which is part of the soul.

His desire of a woman can then be chained to his emotion. His emotion and mood will be influenced by two kinds of trigger, namely emotive and social. His emotion can be quantifiable on a scale together with the trigger as parameter.

Quantifying soul is phenomenal.

Imagine that we are able to download man’s consciousness, memories and soul onto a supercomputer with artificial intelligence capable of affective computing and machine learning. Imagine that we do it with quantum computer and quantum artificial intelligence.

Resurrection?

Doable!

What do you think? If you think that you and I have the same level of craziness to build something phenomenal, let’s talk!

Originally published at adrianhoe.com on January 27, 2016. It also appears on LinkedIn.