Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
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People tend to think of objects and living things as having a soul or not having a soul when really it’s a continuous scale of souledness. For example, people reject the idea of eating certain animals like cats but not chickens, we remark about how, after a major cognitive decline due to old age, that person “isn’t all there”. There is a continuous assignment we make as to the degree of souledness in everything we see and interact with.
Soul Shards Bring to Life Fragments of Someone’s Interiority
Music is a soul shard, little fragments of experience from the composer recreated in your head. They bring to life something ineffable inside us like little pieces of someone’s soul.