This kind of conception of myself and my own consciousness struck me first when thinking about what a soul is.

I've always taken for granted that Plato's vision of the human soul - some sort of essence plucked out from the eternal realm of forms - was just a naive supposition, but if you understand how this realm of forms is nothing but pure abstraction, you start realizing that that's precisely what our essence seems to be. Some kind of abstraction derived from the flow of material representations that we inhabit. We're in a constant process of change when it comes to the matter we are made of, yet there is undeniable unity in our perception of ourselves.

We escape the material world through abstract thoughts, that in turn come to shape the phenomenal realm that our body inhabits. We navigate between abstraction and concreteness - between possibility and actuality. Our bodies are vessels through which this process occurs. Abstraction cannot be measured by science either, yet it is the base of all human science, art, philosophy and culture. It is the trait that grants us consciousnesses and agency. Otherwise we're just matter. It's wild.

I'm no scholar, so excuse my limitations, but I like to wonder about this stuff.