The brain is hardware, the mind is software.

I'm using "software" in the most general sense, as a collection of data and instructions that can be made to perform some function. A word processor is software; a music file is software, an operating system, the hardwired instructions in a BIOS chip, and (the words in) a book on your shelf are all software. The OS, the type of hardware, the language that data and instructions are written in don't matter in the least in regards its categorization as software.

Lacking any scientific data to describe the mind with, we've used "soul" to mean the mind, and not ONLY the mind but a healthy mind including the nerves of the body, which bring information from the organs and muscles and bones, and the lower levels of the brain (the brainstem and other structures below the cortex). An unhealthy mind is a corrupted soul. A psyochpathic mind lacks the ability to form a connection and bond with others (frontal lobe damage or defect) which creates a life of emotional solitary confinement and for obvious reasons usually leads to internal rage and often to mistreatment of others.

There's a delicate, easily missed or misunderstood difference between awareness and consciousness -- both are of mind, but awareness is in general upper-brain; consciousness (full consciousness at any rate) involves a fluid interconnection between lower brain activity and the cortex. Neurotic repression can lock lower memories and feelings (as from childhood or infancy) away from conscious knowledge, but of course any serious or threatening event MUST come to full consciousness; evolution insures that such memories don't just fade away like, say, what you had for breakfast 26 years ago. One can be completely unconscious of old traumatic events or one can be AWARE of them -- know they happened and even describe them in detail -- without having access to the FEELINGS involved. If trauma threatens behavior enough to be maladaptive, neurosis (blocked feeling) is the result.

-- Oops. Just noticed how far I've run on here. Enough on that.

As for your comment that "It may be that consciousness is the entire purpose of the universe" -- I believe, tentatively, that it's probably true. Indeed, Kastrup's theory of Idealism is that matter is formed from (universal) consciousness, not the other way around. He sees our soul -- the EXPERIENCE of the action and memories our brains and bodies produce -- as existing in the form of a disassociated bit of the universal consciousness (i.e., of the universe as a whole) locked in our brains, focused on what happens in the brain instead of experiencing, far more vaguely, the entire universe outside ourselves.

The brain is hardware, the mind is software.

I'm using "software" in the most general sense, as a collection of data and instructions that can be made to perform some function. A word processor is software; a music file is software, an operating system, the hardwired instructions in a BIOS chip, and (the words in) a book on your shelf are all software. The OS, the type of**** hardware, the language that data and instructions are written in don't matter in the least in regards its categorization as software.

Lacking any scientific data to describe the mind with, we've used "soul" to mean the mind, and not ONLY the mind but a healthy mind including the nerves of the body, which bring information from the organs and muscles and bones, and the lower levels of the brain (the brainstem and other structures below the cortex). An unhealthy mind is a corrupted soul. A psyochpathic mind lacks the ability to form a connection and bond with others (frontal lobe damage or defect) which creates a life of emotional solitary confinement and for obvious reasons usually leads to internal rage and often to mistreatment of others.

There's a delicate, easily missed or misunderstood difference between awareness and consciousness -- both are of mind, but awareness is in general upper-brain; consciousness (full consciousness at any rate) involves a fluid interconnection between lower brain activity and the cortex. Neurotic repression can lock lower memories and feelings (as from childhood or infancy) away from conscious knowledge, but of course any serious or threatening event MUST come to full consciousness; evolution insures that such memories don't just fade away like, say, what you had for breakfast 26 years ago. One can be completely unconscious of old traumatic events or one can be AWARE of them -- know they happened and even describe them in detail -- without having access to the FEELINGS involved. If trauma threatens behavior enough to be maladaptive, neurosis (blocked feeling) is the result.

-- Oops. Just noticed how far I've run on here. Enough on that.

As for your comment that "It may be that consciousness is the entire purpose of the universe" -- I believe, tentatively, that it's probably true. Indeed, Kastrup's theory of Idealism is that matter is formed from (universal) consciousness, not the other way around. He sees our soul -- the EXPERIENCE of the action and memories our brains and bodies produce -- as existing in the form of a disassociated bit of the universal consciousness (i.e., of the universe as a whole) locked in our brains, focused on what happens in the brain instead of experiencing, far more vaguely, the entire universe outside ourselves.