the christian soul...

[lightgigantic]

I don't think consciousness is binary. Its fuzziness seems pretty apparent to me. Look at a toddler, as it grows up, you can see it getting more conscious.

you are confusing perceived self with the self as context.
The perceived self undergoes changes according to bodily development, but the self as context remains the same until the point of death - it is the self as context indicated in "I think therefore I am"

 

[Sarkus]

I don't think consciousness is binary. Its fuzziness seems pretty apparent to me. Look at a toddler, as it grows up, you can see it getting more conscious.

This is types of consciousness (from general to self awareness etc) - but it is all under the umbrella of Consciousness.

 

[grover]

Give it time. Point being that your god-of-the-gaps approach is patently unsupportable.

If I take a step in the dark, I have no basis to claim that my next step will not be off of something called a "cliff" (I have no experiences with cliffs or stepping to any degree after all). But if I've taken tens of thousands of steps in the dark with no ill effects, then you insisting to me that the next one will be off some mythical/mystical "cliff" thingy is just absurd. If you can show me some radar signitures, or infrared airial recon, or anything that I can check out and confirm that there is indeed a huge dropoff just beyond my next step, then fine. We could proceed from there.

There is as much empirical validation backing up the belief that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon as there is empirical validation backing up intelligent design.