[kerblang]

It's not Steven Pinker's claim alone. Gazzaniga agrees, I think, and I know of one other prominent neuroscientist but don't remember his name. Pinker is "just" a psychologist.

(Edit: Michael Graziano is who I was trying to remember - he uses the words "schematic" and "model")

Your view is called "pan-psychism". It's interesting, but there isn't anything that makes it necessary. Everything we're finding out is that most or all thinking happens outside of consciousness, and the results bubble up into it as perception. Consciousness does seem to be universal within the brain, though.

I find pan-psychism interesting just because of its popularity - people want something spiritual, knowingly or not. I would advise not to insist that consciousness==soul, however, as neuroscience seems to be rapidly converging on a more mundane view of consciousness. It's best to think of one's "true" self according to the maxim that there is much more to you than meets the mind's eye.

[codr7]

Or, people are spiritual, and realize it to different degrees. It's very easy to get confused about what we know and don't know on these subjects.