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TheRealMaestro · Post by **TheRealMaestro** » Mon Dec 01, 2014 2:49 pm

--NightBattery-- · Post by **--NightBattery--** » Mon Dec 01, 2014 3:56 pm

What if being alive is just a mistake of perspective from a wrong framework and we are nothing but sweet machines due a wonderful set of reactions that violate-not the laws of termodynamics and so our memory and irritability works similarly but a lot more complexly than that of our own creations?
but don't listen to me, just a random thought.

Í¡Â°â•ÍœÊ–â•®Í¡Â°

smalk · Post by **smalk** » Mon Dec 01, 2014 4:24 pm

Ah, the good, old question: what it means to be alive?

TheRealMaestro wrote:Still, it is impossible to explain consciousness in Man without an immaterial soul or
spirit that is somehow associated with a body.

Oh, but that's your arbitrary non-necessary assumption. A "consciousness" can be defined as a particular state of information, able to know its own existence, and thus as information it can be encoded in the neural pathways of an human's brain or in the digital matrix of an AI. If you like you can think information as the "mind" in Leibnitz's philosophy.

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Mon Dec 01, 2014 7:23 pm

Consciousness is not a state and not even a describeable flow-property a system has but the self-investigation on the current system behaviour. We are able to consider because part of our system is always assigned not to trust the results of any other nervous function. It's an additional outer loop of information processing which doesn't throw away results uncalled-for but instead stores these results for later reference.

smalk · Post by **smalk** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 7:05 am

Well, I find this a possible explanation of the working of a consciousness. I could conjecture other possible workings, equally plausible.

The point is that you can perfectly ascribe consciousness to a system without requiring an "external force" or a "spirit". Beware that you can, but in light of Occam's razor it is not preferable.

dale coba · Post by **dale coba** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 8:21 am

I'm afraid to say, souls don't exist. They are unproved, immeasurable conjecture. Given the amount of effort humans have applied to finding, describing, and measuring the soul, the utter failure so far could give any rational person cause to wonder if the soul is merely a superstition.

The answer is: Never.

- Dale

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 4:41 pm

smalk wrote:Well, I find this a possible explanation of the working of a consciousness. I could conjecture other possible workings, equally plausible.

Yes. Consciousness is a broad term with a lot of meaning, that doesn't help either. I address self-awareness and this implies the system is able to check it's own decisions. I even think these are synonymous.

The point is that you can perfectly ascribe consciousness to a system without requiring an "external force" or a "spirit". Beware that you can, but in light of Occam's razor it is not preferable.

In the light of requiring a "spirit" or an external force, Occam's razor is on the side of any mechanistic approach. The latter is accessible to experiments so any lucky mechanistic guess how it works can be falsified. That what remains has to be at least part of the truth.

EDIT: I like to emphazise this thread is not about how the human mind gains consciousness, but what consciousness in an even broader sense could mean. At least Maestro's opening post feels that way to me.

TheRealMaestro · Post by **TheRealMaestro** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:36 pm

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--NightBattery-- · Post by **--NightBattery--** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:39 pm

Well then... maybe any robot that possesses enough credibility to be called sentience, irritable, biologically intelligent, aware of death and capable to be co-exist in human context could be said to possess an anima in the same way animals do…

But just like in the case of other delicious animals it would be not special in our perspective because we are still going to need the robot to do what it is supposed to do and re-program it when it stop doing it because itÂ´s all about survival of us.

but put all those abstractions in a robot and you are good to go to me though ï¼¾â—¡ï¼¾

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 1:02 am

Maestro, I think you got me totally wrong. I don't deny a soul (if you call it consciousness, self-awareness etc.) exists. In contrary, I'm pretty much sure it exists, because I'm able to think with it about myself.

What I deny is placing *any* presumptions how such a thing could exist, could be "created" or have been created that aren't falsifiable by practical means. It makes no sense to reason about some unknown property being applied on something as basic as "matter" and makes it "alive". With such little knowledge of the problem you'd have to apply all properties you know to matter and check whether any of those do the trick. That method is likely to fail, and if it doesn't you gain no wisdom, only an answer. 42 or something like that.

Before doing such an exhaustive search in the haystack, one would certainly reason if the original question could be simpflied so it uses knowledge which is most certainly true. And that's when we sum up everything we know about how our brain works and make a model of it and see if the result has some of the properties our brain obviously has, like a "soul". When we do this, we gain the advantage our model system isn't a black box like the human brain but a whitebox, and we can easily tweak its properties and see what happens. And while we do that, we accumulate wisdom by finding out *why* it works that way, because it's our model and we can always go a step back and retry.

Ironically, the naive first method is that one what is done by current A.I.s when we have a computer to solve a problem on its own we know nothing about. Feed random data into the system and tell him what it means, then hope it interpolates correctly later. But even with the current, limited A.I.s, as soon we know something about the nature of the problem to solve, we would immediately apply pre-processing to the input data so the A.I. system isn't distracted by too many parameters working on each other. That's the same method we would apply to the problem if we'd to solve it ourselves - make it simpler to avoid being distracted.

smalk · Post by **smalk** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:07 am

My objection to your argument is that you necessarily correlate a "soul" and a "self-awareness". To explain the concept to you, I'll ask a metaphorical question: when does a soul enters a human body and "makes he/she self-aware"? Makes he/she "a living being and not merely an advanced marionette"?

Since your beliefs on souls, I reckon that you will assert that a newborn child possess a soul. But is he self-aware? Since it exhibit only reaction-based behavior (for example cries when in hunger, but does not plan how to gather food) can you distinguish it from an advanced marionette?

But then, can you define a precise moment and say: from now on, this human being is truly self-aware?

The same thing applies to A.I. ; I don't conjecture a magical event that bestows a "soul" or "self-awareness" to a system, only a gradual emergent pattern encouraged by learning on previous errors.

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:53 am

I correlate it because if we talk about "soul" in a metaphysical, religious sense, the original mention of atoms is misleading. Not to forget A.I.s. Do A.I.s need to recognize the existance of a god to have a soul? If no, do we? If yes, why?

And you are right, self-awareness is a process, as is consciousness, and in the end, soul, too. We wouldn' have sayings about a soul being lost when someone loses self-awereness completely, if this wasn't a common understanding of "soul".

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 2:10 pm

Robotman wrote:That said, there are also very strong cultural differences. [...] one completely lacking in the formalized religious connotations that the word has taken on in Western cultures.

The culture clash is even between English and German.

While I understand now "soul" is nearly strictly spiritual in English, in German the cognate "Seele" is used as an everyday replacement for "Geist" (mind) when feeling is involved instead of thinking. And yes, that's s the cognate of "ghost", too. It's only that if you say "Geist" in everyday German, everyone would suspect you are talking about "The Mind" or "idea, concept", not about ghosts. Last example, the word "ensoul", which I think is strictly spiritual in English, has a cognate "beseelen", whose particible "beseelt" is sometimes used to express a heart's wish explicitely when it comes to things where only the mind should be involved, e.g. politics. (But everytime politicians use this word, it feels like a trick to make themselves look less heartless, weasel-like.)

TheRealMaestro · Post by **TheRealMaestro** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 3:06 pm

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smalk · Post by **smalk** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:51 pm

I understand the kind of anwers you desire; simply I can't provide them, since I disagree with your assumptions. I truly hope that neverthless you find my at least some value in my answers, if not a new perspective on your opionions.

Do you need a body in order to have an A.I.? Couldn't I develop an A.I. that is cloud-based, and one that resides in a single phisical body, such they behave in the same exact way, expressing the same degree of intelligence and self-awareness? You couldn't assert that they both have a soul (since the cloud-based has no tangible body that can "attract the matching soul"), and neither that only one of them has a soul (since they behave in same way).

--NightBattery-- · Post by **--NightBattery--** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 5:30 pm

I'm sorry the input given wasn't satisfactory, hopefully you will find it useful for something though!

Like creating a story where soul is a certainty and people put souls inside machines for mundane stuff and a huge economy grows toward a concept that is mystical and a little unlikely in this world.
You could board uncomfortable topics in there like
What if an A.i is duplicated?
Is there transcendence to a higher plane? Are souls recycled like in Buddhism? Are they destructible? Can you have sentience without one? Are souls moral bound?
Is the soul trapped forever in the machine given the fact that you can repair a broken machine brain and there is always possibility of a machine being repaired and so being in a machine is bad news for a soul?
BAM! you got all what you need for an average 20 chapters anime there.

Also if you can't detect something in any possible way perhaps is not there...
but then how you come to think something is somewhere in first place if you can't detect it at all?
extrapolation?

darkbutflashy · Post by **darkbutflashy** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 6:22 pm

Maestro, I'd already said what I think about this kind of reasoning you do in this lengthy post.

I have nothing to add.

TheRealMaestro · Post by **TheRealMaestro** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 7:33 pm

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dale coba · Post by **dale coba** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:12 pm

--Battery-- wrote:Also if you can't detect something in any possible way perhaps is not there... but then how you come to think something is somewhere in first place if you can't detect it at all?
extrapolation?

Why think so in the first place, you ask? The concept of the soul is naturally a honey trap.

I've always felt that are concepts that human nature very much wants to be true.
Wanting does not mean they are all true.

Some of those most desirable concepts are false; therefore, even if we don't know exactly which ones are on that list, we must accept that there are honey traps waiting for us to throw ourselves into willingly - unless we actively distrust that which we want the most, and which is most defined to escape the scientific net.

There is a burden of proof upon the extraordinary. There is a burden of proof upon the religious soul that tremendous efforts, (people X passion X time), have been unable to begin to meet.

Some people use philosophy as psychology and sociology, as a lab to smash up ideas and words to see what was hidden inside. Others use philosophy as science, to protect and prove that ideas and words are as they claim them to be.

The two types of philosophers should not expect to find common ground. When they really consider the other's practices, they kinda loathe each other's toolboxes.

- Dale Coba

Mirage · Post by **Mirage** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 11:02 pm

I like potatoes...

smalk · Post by **smalk** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:22 am

Dale Coba, I agree with your view that wanting, really wanting for some concept to be true does not make it true by itself.

But I don't find concept like "soul", "fate" or even "god" to be false. I prefer to define them as not necessary.

If you want to assert that, for example, soul doesn't exists, you have to give me an empirical evidence on this fact. And I think we can agree that by definition it is impossible to find evidence of any kind on this matters.

For this you can't say that souls exists or doesn't exists. You can only say that they are not necessarily true (in opposition to, let's say, newton's laws), and that an A.I. doesn't require them to be.

The two types of philosophers should not expect to find common ground. When they really consider the other's practices, they kinda loathe each other's toolboxes.

Neverthless, it's fun to try. That's the philosophical way xD

dale coba · Post by **dale coba** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 7:08 am

Rambling Me, philosopher of the People's language - Down with philosophers !
when they make unproductive distinctions.

For all practical purposes, I am an atheist, and always have been. I know, I can't reaally be an atheist, because I know I can't disprove the unknowable, etc... you've heard that one before? Linguistically, that thinking would make atheism a religion, faith but no evidence that the soul doesn't exist.

If you want to assert that, for example, soul doesn't exists, you have to give me an empirical evidence on this fact.

No. Asserting the non-existence of something is not required.
All the burden is on the claimants that a soul exists.
We don't start at a logical tie.
In case of a tie, non-existence wins.

I get to state that the soul doesn't exist because the claim is an immeasurable and therefore ill-formed concept. I should get to use practical speech, everyday people speech, to say the soul doesn't exist - unless I also don't get to claim that Santa and Superman don't exist (as real beings, not ideas). Outside of the faculty lounge, it's not generally helpful to preserve distinctions like non-provability of the non-existence of Santa.

In practical speech, at the human level, I disbelieve in the soul. Do you believe in the non-existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?* Logically speaking, we shouldn't have to bother.

- Dale Coba

* except strictly speaking, in the rare company of philosophers when it is useful to point out the distinction.

smalk · Post by **smalk** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 8:09 am

If you want to assert that, for example, soul doesn't exists, you have to give me an empirical evidence on this fact.

Sorry, I should have specified that is valid in the Empirism (and accordingly in the scientific method).

Obviously you can disagree on this assumption, depending on the philophical theory you choose.

33cl33 · Post by **33cl33** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 9:31 am

dale coba · Post by **dale coba** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 11:31 am

smalk wrote:Sorry, I should have specified that is valid in the Empirism (and accordingly in the scientific method).

Obviously you can disagree on this assumption, depending on the philosophical theory you choose.

Righto, and Iget peevish when unqualified people use your professional grade philosophy in everyday speech. They take an intellectually illegitimate solace in the notion that the existence of an absent God can not be disproved. You know, like "Evolution is only a theory." Obviously, theory means something very different when you consider gravity, versus playing a game of Clue and postulating your theory about the murder of Mr. Body.

Philosophers know, language is slippery.

- Dale Coba