MrPants I read a lot about this. Recent Scientific American issues have had interesting articles on why we need sleep, the nature of depression, and the characteristics of an addicted brain.

The last was in the most recent issue, and explains a lot more about the process of chemical "transactions" that lead to pleasure, stimulation, and how the processing of these chemicals is effected after being influenced by drugs or other addictive substances or actions.

These new understandings will likely lead to much better treatments for addiciton in the future. And similar studies will continue to lead to better treatments for depression, bipolar, etc, and possibly some day even a cure.

So yes, in once sense, things like how memories are stored and how emotions are formed is being better understood by science and can be "broken down" into chemical reactions in the brain. Bear in mind of course that we are really extremely far from any real understanding of these mechanics, we are only scratching the surface.

But that of course doesn't answer your question, and in my opinion there is no reason to worry. Because aside from all the understanding of the "mechanics" of thought and emotion, there is another layer involved that no one has even the slightest clue about. And that of course is the issue of conscieness and sentience. Even if some day we can understand exactly how memories are stored, how visual and other sense information is processed, etc, that does not begin to explain why we understand such information. Why we are "we" and not someone else, or why we are "anyone" at all. Why do we "feel" these emotions. If we discover "how" we think we still don't know "why" we think. Why are we curious? Why do we worry that there might be nothing more to "life" than a series of chemical interactions.

So hopefully you can believe (and why do we "believe?") as I do that you have asked two different questions. Yes, we may begin to understand more about mood, thought, and memory. But your real question is about "soul" and "mind" and this physical knowledge doesn't even begin to address this question. There have been many scientific and philosophical books on the subject and most describe the difficulty in even addressing the question rather than any scientific suggestions as to the answers. I believe, without expressing any specific feelings about religion or the nature of life, that the subject of consciousness may always remain a mystery. It may be metaphorically impossible for our brains to understand our brains. As long as that mystery exists, there will always be "free will", life, conciousness, and faith. Faith will always be necessary because the answer to the sentience question may never be resolved by anything other than faith, in god, in the universe, in the supernatural, or in whatever we choose, with our free will, to invest our faith.

(Somehow I think someone is supposed to sing "god bless america" right about now, I don't know why )

-- The world is what we make of it --
-- Dave
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