[Turambar]

what's up, doc?

[Flipside]

I suppose the problem is that 'soul' still sounds too religious, as though it were something that is applied to an object, rather than inherent in it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe)

Here's a brief rundown of the theory of Gaia.

I know Gaia.  Explain.

That basically, whilst a rock by itself may not have sentience, a vast bulk of rock can have sentience of a kind, that an entire planet has the possibility to be a living organism in and of itself, and that a sufficiently developed race can create a world that they exist symbiotically with, every atom on that planet being influenced by the needs of every other atom on it.

[iamzack]

I like the idea of a planet having a soul.

[Flipside]

Arrrgh you changed your post:

You asked

what if experiences have souls?

I wouldn't think so, experiences are the result of the interaction of souls, not souls in and of themselves.

[blackhole]

In D&D you can have dimensions that are sentient.

It's really freaking weird.

[iamzack]

Maybe, but one of the types of hauntings is like, a memory imprinted on a place. Like something happens and is so emotionally charged that the memory stays there. That's why I thought of it.

[Flipside]

That could be, in a way, an imprint on the area around where the soul had an experience, if the experience is traumatic enough, the sub-sentience of the room around it gets imprinted with the souls reaction to that experience, which is, ironically enough, strangely Gaia-like

[Daniel P]

This topic got freaky   

[iamzack]

Freaky is good 

[Turambar]

people are trying to argue that inanimate objects have basic intelligence, and that there is a part to them that isn't physically part of them.

what do you expect?

[Daniel P]

people are trying to argue that inanimate objects have basic intelligence, and that there is a part to them that isn't physically part of them.

what do you expect?

And this is one the most interesting topic I ever saw. 

[iamzack]

CONGRATULATIONS, Turambar!!!

You win the "forever missing the point" award!

[Flipside]

people are trying to argue that inanimate objects have basic intelligence, and that there is a part to them that isn't physically part of them.

what do you expect?

Well, when you move to the sub-atomic level, since it's impossible to know where their electrons are at the same time as knowing what direction they are moving in, that sort of suggests that they are never truly all 'there' at any point in time?

[iamzack]

What if atoms somehow have information about where they've been imprinted on them? So an atom is changed by being part of a rock verses part of a cow?

[Turambar]

What if atoms somehow have information about where they've been imprinted on them? So an atom is changed by being part of a rock verses part of a cow?

that's going to require a lot of sciencing to prove

[iamzack]

CONGRATULATIONS, Turambar!!!

You win the "forever missing the point" award!

[Flipside]

Well, at atom is an atom, it's a building block really, I don't think an atom remembers being a 'cow' as such, but if a soul is seperate to the atoms that make up the physical object, then there's no reason that somewhere there are parts of a cow that remember being a rock, after all, there are certainly parts of a human that remember being an ape, a lizard or a rabbit, we even have the evidence right here in our bodies, just look at our DNA, or our Brains, or even our teeth, our entire history is marked out somewhere inside our own bodies.

[iamzack]

Well, the atom might not 'remember' really, but it might be just a little different from an atom who wasn't a rock... but atoms are small. So what if it's mostly affected by recent thins happening to it? Like, instead of storing it's whole life, it has a limited span of whatever... So two atoms of one element would be different from each other in just that little way or whatever.

[Flipside]

It's possible, I suppose, but immeasurable, being part of something else might imprint itself on the Electrons in some way or something, but since they are impossible to observe, we'd never really be able to confirm it.

[iamzack]

Who cares? We can't confirm whether rocks have souls either.