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Author Topic: [Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?  (Read 2618 times)

jeff37923

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #15 on: April 28, 2008, 12:53:43 AM »
Quote from: Koltar
How about these examples from fairly well-known fiction, do they have souls? Or even the beginnings of a soul or spirit??

Data - from the "Star Trek: Next Generatiuon" series and movies.

-No

The Major Motoko Kusanagi - from the movie GHOST IN THE SHELL.

-Yes

Andromeda or "Rommie" - from the TV series "Andromeda".

-No

Bishop - from the movie ALIENS.

-No

"KITT" - from either version of "KNIGHTRIDER".

-Hell, no.

Kryten - from Sci-Fi TV show "RED DWARF".

-Maybe

Number Five - from the movie SHORT CIRCUIT. (I hate that movie, by-the-way)

-No
"Meh."

arminius

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #16 on: April 28, 2008, 01:28:58 AM »
I'm agnostic on all the above, but if I believed in souls I'd say Major Kusanagi definitely has one. I'm fairly certain that Catholic doctrine would say "no" to Data, Bishop, and Kitt. (I don't know the others.) Then again I'm not a Catholic. Some religions might ultimately say otherwise, especially about Bishop and Data.

In terms of the fictions that they're presented in, I strongly suspect that Star Trek "believes" (and wants/expects the viewer to believe) that Data either has a soul or "grows" one in the course of the series. Even in the original movie, V'ger probably gets a soul sometime between assimilating Lt. Ilia and having a cosmic boink with Decker.

Lancer

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #17 on: April 28, 2008, 02:14:48 AM »
Koltar, you might want to check out the online BESM Armitage RPG too.

I guess the consensus here is that androids and robots don't have souls, but cyborgs may from a religious standpoint.
From a broader self-awareness standpoint, any of those can have souls.

jhkim

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #18 on: April 28, 2008, 02:32:02 AM »
Quote from: Elliot Wilen
I'm fairly certain that Catholic doctrine would say "no" to Data, Bishop, and Kitt. (I don't know the others.) Then again I'm not a Catholic. Some religions might ultimately say otherwise, especially about Bishop and Data.

Is there really an official church position on this?  If so, links?  

I would have guessed that these days the church would be much more likely to say, "Wait and see."  I remember seeing a bit about the booklet by Jesuit astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno on "Intelligent Life in the Universe?" .

beejazz

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #19 on: April 28, 2008, 02:39:10 AM »
Quote from: jhkim
Is there really an official church position on this?  If so, links?
I'm writing my absolute last second final paper on something like this.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=1&hid=13&sid=f29c240e-6cfd-4942-92f4-b37679791148%40sessionmgr2

Golems. Woot.

EDIT: I'm writing my paper on the linked article. I didn't write that.

Malleus Arianorum

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #20 on: April 28, 2008, 03:09:51 AM »
So, more Catholic P.O.V..

Data - from the "Star Trek: Next Generatiuon" series and movies.
Has a soul. In Star Trek lore, positronic brains are the prosthetic version of a human brain but transfering a 'soul' into one can not be accomplished with Star Trek science only by an 'act of God.' So, as I read the author's intent, Data is like the story of Pygmaleon, a craftsman creates a beautiful statue and the gods give it the breath of life.

The Major Motoko Kusanagi - from the movie GHOST IN THE SHELL.
Has a soul. She's in a story about existential crisis but lots of real life people have those too.

Andromeda or "Rommie" - from the TV series "Andromeda".
Not familiar with the source.

Bishop - from the movie ALIENS.
He's biological so he's got a vegitative soul. He can move about and respond to things so he's got an animal soul. He does not however have a human soul since he's not human. And IIRC, he's not rational, just well programed.

"KITT" - from either version of "KNIGHTRIDER".
Old series, he's just a computer program right? No soul, but he's got an extra helping of attitude.

Kryten - from Sci-Fi TV show "RED DWARF".
Catholics and Kryten agree: Kryten does not have a human soul (a fact that he is happy to lord over his non-robotic shipmates since they will never enter hardware heaven.)

Number Five - from the movie SHORT CIRCUIT.
Another tribute to pygmalion. The lightning strike from heaven is WAY heavy handed.
That's pretty much how post modernism works. Keep dismissing details until there is nothing left, and then declare that it meant nothing all along. --John Morrow
 
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Malleus Arianorum

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #21 on: April 28, 2008, 04:03:05 AM »
Quote from: jhkim
Is there really an official church position on this?  If so, links?
Catechism of the Catholic Church
33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material", can have its origin only in God.

Quote
I would have guessed that these days the church would be much more likely to say, "Wait and see." I remember seeing a bit about the booklet by Jesuit astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno on "Intelligent Life in the Universe?"
Your intuition is good. :)  The Church never fixes anything until after it's already broke. It hasn't pre-emptively defined which types of aliens and androids are ensouled or not. However, using already established dogma we are free to form our own fallible opinions. The dogma in play here (as far as I can tell) is that (1) all living humans have souls, and (2) souls can only have their origin in God. That automaticaly rules out any Science fiction starts with: "Once upon a time, something becides God created a soul...." or "Once upon a time, there was a living human that didn't have a soul, so treating him as an object instead of as a person was totaly cool with God."
That's pretty much how post modernism works. Keep dismissing details until there is nothing left, and then declare that it meant nothing all along. --John Morrow
 
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arminius

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #22 on: April 28, 2008, 04:09:34 AM »
Quote from: jhkim
Is there really an official church position on this?  If so, links?  

I would have guessed that these days the church would be much more likely to say, "Wait and see."
When I posted, I was thinking of what I got out of pondering and interpreting this Slate article on the ethics of stem cell research. After skimming it again, I think that Bishop has a better chance, depending on how exactly he was created and functions, but the electronic intelligences are still probably on the outs.

Of course religions are also pretty adaptable, and Catholicism is no exception. For example in spite of the very legalistic/scientistic approach ascribed to the Catholic scholars by the above article, I've also come across an article at the Catholic Culture website which argues that technologically created clones would have souls--even though creating the clones would be a crime--because souls aren't created by material means (basically, I'm paraphrasing) and God would be forcing faith if he withheld a soul from a clone. (That is, faith would no longer be a matter of free will because we'd be witnessing a direct divine intervention.)

Problem with this argument, though, is that until there's a test for having a soul, one could argue that clones are "soulless replicas". Therefore the granting or withholding of souls has nothing to do with forcing faith.

I think it's worth remembering that there was a serious question as to whether Native Americans had souls, which wasn't resolved until 1537 (i.e., about 40 years went by while their status as human beings was in doubt).

EDIT: I think it's also worth remembering that René Descartes, a Catholic, formulated what might be seen as the blueprint for denying the validity of the Turing Test as a means of deciding if a clone or robot has a soul. He argued that animals have no mind and that their "apparent" expressions of pain during vivisection was no more than a mechanical response. The current Catechism states that we shouldn't be cruel to animals, but I haven't found a reference to "animal souls" (pace MA's text above). In short, there's some groundwork for suggesting that the behavior of an apparent "being" may not be enough to affirm that it has a soul.

Malleus Arianorum

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #23 on: April 28, 2008, 04:53:58 AM »
Quote from: Elliot Wilen
I think it's worth remembering that there was a serious question as to whether Native Americans had souls, which wasn't resolved until 1537 (i.e., about 40 years went by while their status as human beings was in doubt).
Not a serious question, a serious problem of enforcement. Here's an excerpt from an earlier encycllical a hundred years prior to Sublimis Deus (and 50 years prior to the discovery of  Americas) that had the same message: "Stop enslaving the natives!"

Sicut Dudum
Pope Eugene IV Against the Enslaving of Black Natives from the Canary Islands
January 13, 1435

...We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free, and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of money. If this is not done when the fifteen days have passed, they incur the sentence of excommunication by the act itself, from which they cannot be absolved, except at the point of death, even by the Holy See...
That's pretty much how post modernism works. Keep dismissing details until there is nothing left, and then declare that it meant nothing all along. --John Morrow
 
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arminius

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #24 on: April 28, 2008, 05:18:58 AM »
Hm, how do you respond to the background of the Sublimis Deus at Wikipedia, pointing  to Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex, which in turn are summarized as laying the foundation for enslavement of pagans?

That said, I shouldn't have hinted that serious theologians entertained the idea that Native Americans lacked souls--some people claimed this, apparently, but who they were is unclear to me.

Malleus Arianorum

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #25 on: April 28, 2008, 05:26:44 AM »
Quote from: Elliot Wilen
I haven't found a reference to "animal souls" (pace MA's text above).


Ps. 104
[24] O LORD, how manifold are thy works!
In wisdom hast thou made them all;
the earth is full of thy creatures.
...
[27] These all look to thee,
to give them their food in due season.
[28] When thou givest to them, they gather it up;
when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things.
[29] When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed;
when thou takest away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
[30] When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created;
and thou renewest the face of the ground.

And here it is in the Summa Theologica:
And hence if Christ had had a soul without a mind, He would not have had true human flesh, but irrational flesh, since our soul differs from an animal soul by the mind alone. Hence Augustine says (Qq. lxxxiii, qu. 80) that from this error it would have followed that the Son of God "took an animal with the form of a human body," which, again, is against the Divine truth, which cannot suffer any fictitious untruth.

Haven't found an official definition of it, but as I understand it, an animal soul has life and cunning but not reason or imortality. So if my pet cat Fluffy will be with me in heaven she hasn't been resurected (spirit reunited with her body) she's only a duplicate.
That's pretty much how post modernism works. Keep dismissing details until there is nothing left, and then declare that it meant nothing all along. --John Morrow
 
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David R

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #26 on: April 28, 2008, 05:38:01 AM »
Tyrell: I'm surprised you didn't come here sooner.  
Roy: It's not an easy thing to meet your maker.
Tyrell: And what can he do for you?
Roy: Can the maker repair what he makes.
Tyrell: Would you like to be modified?
Roy: Stay here. -- I had in mind something a little more radical.
Tyrell: What-- What seems to be the problem?
Roy: Death.
Tyrell: Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction, you--
Roy: I want more life, fucker.

Regards,
David R

Malleus Arianorum

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #27 on: April 28, 2008, 06:48:45 AM »
Quote from: Elliot Wilen
Hm, how do you respond to the background of the Sublimis Deus at Wikipedia, pointing  to Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex, which in turn are summarized as laying the foundation for enslavement of pagans?
I couldn't find the text of Dum Diversas, but Romanus Pontifex starts out by championing the salvation of all mankind. The stated intent is to encourage Catholic kings to fight and win a just war. Note how the Christian kings are supposed to "restrain and defeat" the "savage excesses" of the Saracens? The Church is not giving the Catholics a "license to kill" rather, they're declaring open season on Saracen opressors.

This is some dull text, but try reading the bolded parts...
Romanus Pontifex
This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work.

Perhaps this document was responsible for tricking the nice kings into being greedy and mean, but I suspect that any king who fought the Native Americans to defend Europe from the Saracens was intentionaly misreading the document for his own enrichment.

That said, I do agree that this sloppy declaration of Just War probably had bad ramifications, "giving the sharks a taste of blood" for example, but I don't know the subject matter well enough to offer more than my impressions. Still, am I better than wikipedia or what? :haw:

Quote
That said, I shouldn't have hinted that serious theologians entertained the idea that Native Americans lacked souls--some people claimed this, apparently, but who they were is unclear to me.
Yeah, I'm not sure where that comes from either. The worst abuses the Catholic Church ever comitted were in the American Inquisition, but those were forced conversions -- hardly the sort of thing you'd expect of a Church that believes there's nothing to convert. :raise:

From what I can tell, the Church has never said a class of persons is soulless and any accusation to the contrary is just a retrodictive projection of modern fears.
That's pretty much how post modernism works. Keep dismissing details until there is nothing left, and then declare that it meant nothing all along. --John Morrow
 
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Koltar

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #28 on: April 28, 2008, 07:27:16 AM »
In many works of fiction and also non-fiction scholarly articles a sense of humor combined with examples of creativity is considered signs or hints of sapience and sometimes a soul. In other words, its a sign that "Somebody's at home in there".


Things like computer programs that are just conversational personality emulators would not count by this definition. You know - the kind of programs that just spit back rhetoric, logic, or literal legalistic arguments by fixating on one or two phrases that the other person has typed.

If we go with that loose definition then hypothetically some domestic housecats might be said to have primitive or minor souls ('ghosts'), Dolphins definitely would have souls, and as for Androids and robots - it depends on if creativity and humor are displayed in a spur of the moment manner.


- Ed C.

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arminius

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[Philosophy] Sort of, what is life? Android? Artificial? Souls?
« Reply #29 on: April 28, 2008, 11:48:34 AM »
Ed, right. But since you can't tell directly what's going on in the other "being's" head, this amounts to a Turing Test for the soul. If Descartes could deny that animals were anything more than automata, then there's probably an intellectual argument to be had when and if an advanced AI program or other form of synthetic inorganic "intelligence" is ever created.

Note that in SF, this issue isn't generally taken for granted; instead the controversy is grist for innumerable stories...even though it generally gets resolved in favor of the machine. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seems to be an exception, since the question of whether Marvin is sentient isn't a main issue of the plot. But this is an exception that proves the rule, because his sentience is used throughout the story as a repeating joke about SF cliches.