Information R Us

At some point in prehistory a proto-philosopher concluded that there must be more to human life than the physical body. There was a spark or spirit that made the difference between a living human and a human corpse. This conclusion might have been part of evolving belief in divine powers. As religions developed, the spark or spirit became identified with the soul. Some religions contended that the soul existed before the individual body, perhaps as part of a collective soul; various religions contended that the soul continues to exist after the death of the body.

The advance of scientific knowledge since the 18th century has caused some modern thinkers to dispense with the concept of the soul. Life, in this view, is an emergent property of particular configurations of molecules under particular circumstances. Human bodies look and act alive because that's what the configurations that make up human bodies do. In this physicalist interpretation, there is no need for a soul. Such an explanation doesn’t disprove the existence of souls, but it makes them superfluous for any but religious purposes.

Yet there remains a twist to the tale. Human bodies, like everything else on earth, consist of elements created in cosmic processes in far-flung parts of the universe. Every atom in our bodies originated in some star long, long ago. For the period of our lives, we’re simply the residence or warehouse for these atoms. Moreover, the atoms don't stick around very long. Nearly all of our cells have lifespans much shorter than our human lifespans. The cells die and are replaced, and with them the atoms they’re made of. The process repeats many times before we die.

Thus, to speak of a human body as being merely physical is misleading even for physicalists. The physical parts are constantly changing. What persists is the design, the blueprint for this specific human body. The blueprint is coded in our genes, but the blueprint itself is immaterial, a species of information.

The individual blueprint of each of us is unique, yet it derives from the blueprints of our ancestors. We’re part of an information stream that existed before us and will persist after we’re gone. 

Astronomer Carl Sagan said, “We are made of star dust.” Indeed we are. But the way we’re made of star dust is determined by the information we embody. Call it a spirit, call it a soul. But without it we wouldn’t be who—or what—we are.