i have no reason to believe we do

[Edited on June 22, 2008 at 1:32 AM. Reason : (have souls)]

6/22/2008 1:31:44 AM

^ Ah, belief. And on what do you base this belief?

6/22/2008 4:01:00 AM

Probably something similar to the belief upon which you base your contention that the soul exists.

The soul is not a self-evident thing if you approach it with a critical mind. This isn't to say it doesn't exist, but it hasn't even been really defined outside of a religious framework. Is it the aggregate of all our emotions and actions? Well if that is the case, were a robot to achieve consciousness (which we also haven't adequately defined) would he then have a soul? If you define it within a religious framework and argue that only divinely created beings such as humans (but no other living being) have a soul, then robots couldn't obviously, but that rests on the increasingly untenable belief that God exists.

Even if you accept that God does exist, we don't even have a definition of the soul within a religious framework beyond the concept that it is the only part of you which survives eternally. If you define it as such, an immortal part of the human spirit, then the movement from carbon to silicone based life forms could be the gaining of our souls, not their loss.

Again, I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this concept. In my gut I'm a mild luddite, so I don't like it, but it poses interesting questions from a philosophical standpoint beyond the technical possibilities or limitations.

6/22/2008 8:46:56 AM

^^^ aah, classic mistake. you used the word "believe", which is derived from "belief", which implies "faith", which means you're no better than any christian fundamentalist!!


The argument of if a soul exists or not is just like the argument if god exists or not. Religious people like to make the claim that god and the soul exists, then they leave it up to the detractors to prove the negative. Sorry, but that's not the way rational argument works.

If we start with a blank slate, then we must assume that God, the soul, pink unicorns, and the floating teapot don't exist. If you believe any one of these things do exist, then it is up to you to provide evidence of such.

6/22/2008 10:21:53 AM

Quote :

"Ah, belief. And on what do you base this belief?"

read what i said again. i said i had no reason to believe in souls. not that i had a reason to believe in anything else.

6/22/2008 1:05:25 PM

^^ Depends on how you define "soul"

If you define it as the amalgamation of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and consciousness, it's not hard to provide evidence for souls, while there is no evidence that a machine could ever have emotions, feelings, or even independent thoughts.

Transferring our minds to machine may very well cost us our souls, if you go by this definition.

6/22/2008 3:11:07 PM

Quote :

"thoughts, feelings, emotions, and consciousness"

question is: might those all be the exact same things?

6/22/2008 3:16:47 PM

Quote :

"Transferring our minds to machine may very well cost us our souls, if you go by this definition."

agreed. To a point.

What is the mind if not an outgrowth of the brain and those experiences, second hand, collective, and individual, that it processes into a world-view. If we were to fit sensors similar to humans onto machines and program a system capable of interpreting inputs to affect its own survival, why couldn't it develop a consciousnesses and thus a "soul"?

6/22/2008 3:42:28 PM

I have an admission.

I suck at WOW.

6/22/2008 8:29:43 PM

the only thing I know about WOW is LEEERROOOYYYY JEENNKINS!

6/22/2008 8:36:41 PM

Quote :

"The soul is not a self-evident thing if you approach it with a critical mind."

JCASHFAN

So, the only critical thinkers are soulless, secular progressives? Dear God, you'll never sell me on that.

And please note well that I never mentioned God/god. But look at those of you who were just chomping at the bit to type "NO SKY DADDY!!!1"

Fine, fine. Remove God and all God's implications from the argument--call it a "life force," if you will. Isn't there something beyond the mental, beyond the corporeal that makes us what we are--human? To me, the answer is self-evident.

And in your robot scenario, you seem to be referencing Bicentennial Man. The movie addresses some of the issues raised here as well as any entertainment film I've seen--if any of you haven't seen the movie at issue, I recommend it. It's much better than you probably think.

BTW, nearly a "luddite," you say, JCASHFAN? If you haven't read it, you'd probably like this book.

Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Pulling the Plug on the Electronic Revolution

Quote :

"Depends on how you define 'soul' If you define it as the amalgamation of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and consciousness, it's not hard to provide evidence for souls, while there is no evidence that a machine could ever have emotions, feelings, or even independent thoughts. Transferring our minds to machine may very well cost us our souls, if you go by this definition."

AndyMac

Well put.

[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 4:50 AM. Reason : .]

6/23/2008 4:22:40 AM

Quote :

"ou seem to be referencing Bicentennial Man. The movie addresses some of the issues raised here as well as any entertainment film I've seen--if any of you haven't seen the movie at issue, I recommend it."

but get the dubbed german version and watch it with english subtitles.





[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 12:30 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2008 12:28:30 PM

Quote :

"So, the only critical thinkers are soulless, secular progressives? Dear God, you'll never sell me on that."

No, but critical thinking about any subject demands that you not place any presupposition of condition or existence on the object you are critically examining. To call the soul "self-evident" without any substantiation is, in fact, not a critical approach.

The concept of a soul has largely been viewed in a religious or at least super-natural context, I don't think I was remotely out of line in addressing it as such.

Quote :

"Isn't there something beyond the mental, beyond the corporeal that makes us what we are--human?"

That brings up an excellent question, what makes humans different from any other animal? As science breaks down further and further the barriers between man and beast, especially those animals most closely like (if not related to) us such as Bonobos and other primates we are constantly examining what it is that makes us, humans, different from the others. Why have we alone created a society this vast and complex, stretching across such great distances in space and time, exceeding even the bonds of our home planet?

Is it because we were pre-destined by a creator for such greatness? Or is it because some evolutionary spasm gave us the intellectual capacity not only for tools (other primates have that) or even simple communication (mammals such as dolphins and whales apparently have more complex languages than previously believed), but an ability to fashion a language and a history so complex, rich, and clear, that the lessons learned by one generation were not reduced to evolutionary instincts but could be passed on to other generations through first the spoken and later the written word? Perhaps this collective intelligence separated our conscious from our subconscious and thus from those intrinsic emotions, fears, that thousands of years of pre-language evolution instilled in us. Perhaps those instincts, and our human desire to explain the unexplainable, that generate the concept of a soul which exists no-where outside the human mind.

So, this isn't to say that a soul, the Soul, or just soul, can't exist in some form, but it is perhaps not separate from our bodies, but intrinsically tied to it. This latter possibility would, ironically, be far more in danger of extinction in a silicone world than would a supernatural one that followed our individual spirit around.

6/23/2008 1:38:17 PM

Quote :

" Isn't there something beyond the mental, beyond the corporeal that makes us what we are--human? To me, the answer is self-evident. "

It's self-evidently "no" if that's what you mean.

6/23/2008 2:05:14 PM

Quote :

"Remove God and all God's implications from the argument--call it a "life force," if you will."

let's not.

no "life force", no "mystical energy", no "chi". Let's stick with what we can see and measure. No need to start assigning paranormal labels to something just because we can't fully explain it yet.

6/23/2008 2:11:12 PM

^ God damn--"paranormal"?! I made no such assignment, you barking antitheist!

Call it what you will, for fuck's sake. But some of you acting as if the sum of a human can be explained by ticking off a laundry list of chemicals and energy are fools, pedantic, arrogant, ignorant fools.

6/23/2008 8:20:42 PM

assigning some unmeasurable exterior force for items one does not understand is antiscientific, short-sighted, and accomplishes nothing.

6/23/2008 8:24:39 PM

^^ lol you're the one arrogantly asserting that humans MUST be one way. The fact is you DON'T know what it takes to make a human, and you can't say that it MUST be more than things.

It very well might be, but there's not a shred of evidence indicating things are that way, and there's no logical reason to believe things must be that way. It's arrogant and foolish of you to presume otherwise, but this is fairly characteristic of you anyway.


[Edited on June 23, 2008 at 8:25 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2008 8:24:46 PM

^^ and ^ Typical snobbery and bullshit. This vast universe just popped out of nowhere, hurling toward nothing? And each thing within it--from biosphere to human to quark--has no design whatsoever?

Keep telling yourself that fantasy, you arrogant, ignorant fools.

6/23/2008 8:32:39 PM

question-begging argument

6/23/2008 8:36:54 PM

^ You have a firm grasp of the obvious. And the debate about the existence of God presents a logical fallacy on either side.

So what's new?

6/23/2008 8:40:42 PM

Quote :

"but there's not a shred of evidence indicating things are that way, and there's no logical reason to believe things must be that way. It's arrogant and foolish of you to presume otherwise, but this is fairly characteristic of you anyway."

6/23/2008 8:42:31 PM

Quote :

"This vast universe just popped out of nowhere, hurling toward nothing? And each thing within it--from biosphere to human to quark--has no design whatsoever?"

Those who insist that a creator must exist in order for things to have been created often overlook the biggest flaw in their premise; that being that the very thing which creates is, itself, not in need of a creator. If a god could be the exception to the rule, why couldn't a purely physical phenomenon?


Also, those who propose that the chain of events leading us to this point in time are so improbable as to be practically impossible without a creator seem to miss the fact that this may not be the first go-round for the universe and that it might have taken a near infinite number of tries for this to occur. It also assumes that there could be no other solution for the creation of life other than the forces which shaped our universe. It is entirely possible that we did not spring into existence because the conditions were right, but rather that we evolved from the conditions that were whatever they were.


Either way hooksaw, you would be better off coming up with a compelling argument for your side of the question than sputtering off about our foolishness like some B-movie cartoon villain. The fact is, that the power of human observation (a divine gift if there ever could be one) has pushed back the shadows of our ignorance and that a "God of the gaps" has fewer and fewer cavities to fill.

I take no joy in saying this, I'm a romantic at heart and the idea of a magnanimous divine creator allowing us to exercise free will and only judging us by our compassion for others seems quite the wonderful dream. I came of age in a traditional Episcopal church where the succinct but rich prose of the 1928 prayer book and the symbolic beauty of communion warmed my heart each Sunday. But I cannot square it with the cold logic of observation and when asked if I will believe what I see, hear, and read instead of that which I am told "faith only can explain", I will trust my senses. They have gotten the human race thus far. I cannot ignore the man behind the curtain.

6/23/2008 8:56:52 PM

Ah, the argument that will never end. Well, don't let me stop you.

However, back to the progressive evolutionary direction of man. I think that we will eventually grow into an amazing race of creatures with god-like powers in a medical sense at least. If we can sustain life on our planet and succeed at traveling to and seeding other planets, we have a real chance at cosmic survival. If we fail to get off earth, and continue to destroy it's seemingly endless bounty, we're probably all dead.

But you know, what else is new?

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 8:39 PM. Reason : -]

6/24/2008 8:32:14 PM

Somewhat related:

6/26/2008 8:56:12 AM

sometimes even just thinking about the entire universe just hurts my head.

6/26/2008 9:14:45 AM