Discussions on a ranges of philosophical issues including the nature of truth and reality, personal identity, mind-body theories, epistemology, justification of beliefs, argumentation and logic, philosophy of religion, free will and determinism, etc.
hope i didn't sound too snappy. i just skimmed over all the posts and posted my own thoughts...to no one in particular.
i think robots could become fulfilling companions to people someday. if they are programmed to simulate emotions well enough, then i am certain many people would forget that they weren't really alive.
i've given this much thought and am starting to wonder if all living things don't have souls. plants, for instance, respond to love/attention by growing larger/faster. how can that be explained? i think God gave all his living creations some type of soul. it may be that humans received their souls in his likeness, and the only eternal souls. still, maybe all dogs do go to heaven, but because they are sinless and not completely self-aware, they did not have to be saved? but, even though i love animals very much, i tend to think their souls are not eternal.
still, robots would never be alive because they wouldn't have souls.
colors wrote: hope i didn't sound too snappy. i just skimmed over all the posts and posted my own thoughts...to no one in particular.
Not at all, I was just saying thanks for your thoughts. So maybe I was the one who sounded too snappy.
I've wondered about all living things having souls too... But I'm still leaning against it. We all agree that animals are alive, and that they are not sentient. I'm inclined to think that sentience is soul-related, whereas maybe just being alive is not. Could bacteria really have a soul? Clearly it's alive though. For that reason I think that we could some day build things as alive as anything without a soul, which may or may not include everything but humans (who clearly DO have souls).
On the other hand, I'm still open to the idea that maybe all living things do have a soul, possibly because of an unseen property of ALL life that allows it to transcend the physical world. But that brings us right back to the start - what IS life?
i know this is a tautological response, but...i think life is set in motion by the soul. so every living thing must have a soul. in genesis, it mentions how God "breathed life into" the animals, as well as Adam. there is the possibility that there are different types of souls. humans have the privilege of having a soul in God's likeness.
How do we know animals aren't sentient? Dolphins and chimpanzees could very well be sentient, but rather stupid. They are certainly self-aware - does that imply sentience? Well it is what an AI would be built towards.
The human fetus in the first week certainly isn't sentient. I think all of us can agree on that - a bunch of cells without a brain cannot be sentient. So it becomes clear that there is a point in the human lifecycle where sentience emerges. Does it occur suddenly at once? I think it is probably a gradual process that mirrors the gradual development of the fetus.
So where is this point - how do we know human children are sentient? Well we don't. For the same reasons we can't tell if chimpanzees are sentient, we also cannot tell if 4 year old human children are sentient. It works both ways - there is no scientific way to tell.
But odds are that sentience emerges naturally from the formation of the brain. If it can emerge naturally then it can be copied and we can build artificial intelligences that are sentient. We know that brain damage can seriously change personality, emotions, sentience and self-awarenes of the victim. This is clear evidence that it is the physical brain that produces these things, not some supernatural force.
So if we can copy the brain then we can copy the emotions, sentience and intelligence inherrent in it. It is quite logical. Just because we are scientifically primitive when it comes to neuro-biology and computer AI isn't evidence that it cannot be done. All evidence suggests it can be done.
Unless the brain forms a link to the spirit and the spirit causes sentience. Thus, if you damage the brain you damage the link between the body and the spirit, giving the spirit inadequate channels to express sentience. We don't know enough about the brain to make a statement like yours.
BobSmith wrote:So where is this point - how do we know human children are sentient? Well we don't. For the same reasons we can't tell if chimpanzees are sentient, we also cannot tell if 4 year old human children are sentient. It works both ways - there is no scientific way to tell.
That is correct - we have no way to tell. So in the absence of scientific fact we're only left with our belief about the matter, and my beliefs are that the spirit/soul is the cause of sentience.
another case which might support the possibility that animals have souls--clones. if the soul is responsible for initiating life, the fact that cloned animals degenerate at an abnormally fast rate, might be a result of clones not having souls. make sense, i think...if God assigns a soul to each of his creations, when humans copy and replicate these creations, God wouldn't necessarily assign another soul.
bobsmith,
i think animals are sentient to an extent or in a different way than humans. especially the great apes and dolphins. besides humans, dolphins are the only other animals on this planet that have been known to commit suicide. that means they have an understanding of being alive.
also, apes/dolphins are not "stupid". they are another type of being, and as a result, cannot really be compared in intelligence using our standards. fyi, there are people working in your neighborhoods (grocery store clerks, crossing guards, fast food servers/cooks, cashiers, and playboy models!) with IQ's equal to many great apes...believe it or not!
colors wrote:fyi, there are people working in your neighborhoods (grocery store clerks, crossing guards, fast food servers/cooks, cashiers, and playboy models!) with IQ's equal to many great apes...believe it or not!
I don't believe it... What are your sources on that?
I don't give much credence to IQ tests...especially after getting that negative number ....if you don't know what the question is asking, or you've never been subjected to questions such as "which ugly drawing follow the others," etc, you're not getting them correct.
Also, to whoever said the rapid degeneration of cloned animals points to clones not having souls, realize scientists are doing something that is somewhat tricky-you have to slice a small hole in an embryo, remove the DNA, and put in new DNA.......and other things that I don't know about...but I know it's not that simple....it's a very exact thing...so I think clones degenerate because that's not the natural way of things...and the monkeying around might cause problems...or it might be God's way of saying DON'T DO IT.
"My actions prove that God takes care of idiots."
He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- On Stanley Baldwin
-Winston Churchill
An atheist can't find God for the same reason a criminal can't find a police officer.
You need to start asking out girls so that you can get used to the rejections.
-Anonymous
to whoever said the rapid degeneration of cloned animals points to clones not having souls, realize scientists are doing something that is somewhat tricky...or it might be God's way of saying DON'T DO IT.
i never said that degeneration of cloned animals points to clones not having souls. i said this was a possibility. just as plausible as your thoughts that God just wants us to NOT DO IT (which i also agree with, by the way).
hope i didn't sound too snappy. i just skimmed over all the posts and posted my own thoughts...to no one in particular.
....if you don't know what the question is asking, or you've never been subjected to questions such as "which ugly drawing follow the others," etc, you're not getting them correct.