Is my "soul" me in any meaningful way, and why should I be concerned?

archer75 · Dec 27, 2017

@looking_for_answers_ , none of this is off-limits, as far as I'm concerned. But I feel like the main problems here (as has been suggested) are that

1) there is zero reason to identify one's soul with one's waking consciousness, one's "sense" of who "I" is. This can be played around with without any sci-fi imaginings - meditative states, medications, and even cultural differences can seriously change how that "I" feels.

2) the notion of consciousness-upoading or duplication not only has nothing to do with the soul, but also has nothing to do with our identity as we experience it on an everyday level. You lose consciousness all the time and regain it. There is SOMETHING more to you that - even without regard to faith - is a kind of at least temporarily renewable "spring" of consciousness but that is itself not consciousness as we know it. Duplicating your consciousness - whatever that would mean - is like duplicating a shadow on a wall. You can do it, but it doesn't duplicate the object that casts the shadow.

3) there is no reason to think we will ever have anything that - even on a practical level and quite without regard to faith - even comes close to duplicating consciousness. In the 50s there were claims that in the 1980s we'd have flying cars and a magical swimming pool that cleaned you and your clothes as they walked through it.

archer75 · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
May I ask what specifically you think is impossible here, and why? It is considered very possible by everyone I have read within the fields of AI/neurology/philosophy/etc. I can't think of any particular reason it's inherently impossible, though I am definitely open to hearing arguments.

This certainly does feel like a "tower of babel" area, even though I don't think anyone working on this stuff has that motive. In fact I would say that most are non-religious, or in cases like Anthony Lewandowksi, literally worship AI as a god. Yes, literally, google his name... quite a disturbing rabbit hole, that one...

I'm not "attracted" to any of this, just to clear things up. But I 100% believe that the world is going to be deeply shaken by AI within the next few decades, like it or not, and I things Christianity (most spiritual beliefs, really) are going to be deeply shaken by it all. I would like to understand these things better before they happen, to help my faith, and it concerns me greatly that the church will probably not be prepared to handle these things

I don't mean to answer for @~Anastasia~ , but here is what I think. There is no coherent or complete model of consciousness or even a clear understanding of what it is. So how could a machine be made to duplicate something that the machine's maker doesn't understand?

I think we've already been shaken by AI in the sense that most people didn' anticipate Twitter or hastags or Facebook, but they are emergent phenomena that appear when people are helped to interact at a distance by means of a certain kind of technology. AI is always going to give humans greater reacher or wordly power, as our tech has always done. It will never "decide what it would like to happen" and take organized steps to make that happen. If someone thinks it will - well, I have never ever read an argument for that that was anything but wishful thinking.

All this stuff claims to be in the realm of science. Not faith, right? Okay, then SHOW ME.

It's all the spiritism of the last 150 years in a new garb. Or an apocalypse cult. "Any minute now, X will happen." These questions - no offense - are not new, and they aren't based in "scientific" reality. This is a kind of incoherent science-flavored fantasy. Why incoherent? Consider the notion that one's soul "is" one's brain-state at death. Okay. Where is one's brain? What are its limits? Gray matter? White? Is part of it running down one's back? What about the nerves that branch out from there? The ones that directly get stimulated by what we later call light, sound? Well, then why not the things, now OUTSIDE your body, that act immediately on those nerves? Uhoh. Now we see that even to.play the fantasy game, you have to

a) artificially limit what the brain even IS, which spoiles the game, or

b) say that your brain state at death is the state of the entire physical universe. In which case you're not going to build a machine that fits inside the universe to duplicate it.

archer75 · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
May I ask what specifically you think is impossible here, and why? It is considered very possible by everyone I have read within the fields of AI/neurology/philosophy/etc. I can't think of any particular reason it's inherently impossible, though I am definitely open to hearing arguments.

This certainly does feel like a "tower of babel" area, even though I don't think anyone working on this stuff has that motive. In fact I would say that most are non-religious, or in cases like Anthony Lewandowksi, literally worship AI as a god. Yes, literally, google his name... quite a disturbing rabbit hole, that one...

I'm not "attracted" to any of this, just to clear things up. But I 100% believe that the world is going to be deeply shaken by AI within the next few decades, like it or not, and I things Christianity (most spiritual beliefs, really) are going to be deeply shaken by it all. I would like to understand these things better before they happen, to help my faith, and it concerns me greatly that the church will probably not be prepared to handle these things

I think the notion of "motive" here is worth a moment. As I see it, this sort of thing boils down to the following dialogue that a culture is having with itself.

"Sure is scary that death exists."
"Yeah."
"Wouldn't it be cool if it didn't?"
"Maybe, but it does."
"But, like, what if you were dead but then you were alive again?"
"Like a religious thing?"
"Yeah, but that's for dummies so not like that."
"So, no hope for things unseen?"
"Right."
"Tell me more."
"Okay, just imagine that we know what consciousness is and that it not only seems to the consciousness that it has a location but it does have a location and we can control the location so we can put it into machine or something. So like you could copy your brain-state at death and then put it on a flash drive and it would be awesome or scary."
"Can you show me any of the fantastical technologies or scientific understandings that would be required for any of this?"
"No, just IMAGINE them."
"So we're back to a hope for things unseen?"
"Well, yeah, but it's science and stuff."

The whole thing is incoherent. It wants to do science, which works with the observable, but then do that science on the basis of things that can't be observed or even coherently imagined.

It's like a less intellectually honest set of statements about what God is or is not or might do. We say that God's essence (at least Orthodox Christians use this term) is utterly beyond knowing. But here, we have to say that something both is and is not beyond knowing in the same way at the same time.

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

nonaeroterraqueous said:
That is the definition of a soul, as far as I'm concerned. It is the thing which makes experience of any kind through any thing possible. Whatever else it may be is incidental. Without it, a brain is just a computer. Therefore, to say that they are conscious but do not have souls is inherently self-contradictory.

It's funny how close you come to reading what I say without actually doing it. I'm not talking about some brains above a certain level being conscious and others not. I'm talking about seven billion human brains in this world being roughly equal in power to establishing their own manner of consciousness, yet none of them are yours, but one. They are all equally capable of providing the infrastructure for your human experience, but they apparently lack the one thing that makes it possible. That one thing is absolutely unique, in a way that no physical thing can be. You're totally lost on that concept. It's one thing to be capable of consciousness, but it's another thing to be capable of your consciousness. Until you understand the second kind, you'll never understand the first.

I blame the lack of reading comprehension on post-midnight thinking skills but I get what you're saying now. If something does not match my brain architecture down to the atomic or subatomic level, then it's not my consciousness. Fair.

nonaeroterraqueous said:
You're hesitant to say it, because you have a religious faith in technology, and because you have no idea what power lies behind the nature of your own human experience. Without real understanding, all science fiction sounds plausible.

I certainly don't have religious faith in tech. I'm not willing to say we can create conscious machines. I am just not willing to go on record saying anything in particular is impossible, as all it takes as a few breakthroughs to make the impossible possible. I also would at least need to believe in the philosophical impossiblity of something first.

nonaeroterraqueous said:
Your own consciousness will always have a purpose to you. If you accept the idea that the charade is just as good as the real thing, that the farce and genuine article are of equal value, then I have a 24-carat zircon to sell you.

Not the same. Zircon is not identical to gold. A better analogy woul be something gold that was 3d printed or atomically manipulated to become that way. I would have no problem buying that.

nonaeroterraqueous said:
You can marry a robotic wife, who acts and looks like the real thing, but she can't go to Hell and you won't go to Heaven.

Starting to get into the concept of philosophical zombies here. But the question still stands. If the universe would be no different without consciousness, then what would the point of it be?

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

hengesthorsa said:
I don't mean to answer for @~Anastasia~ , but here is what I think. There is no coherent or complete model of consciousness or even a clear understanding of what it is. So how could a machine be made to duplicate something that the machine's maker doesn't understand?

We understand that consciousness is supported by our brain architecture. So if I mimick that down to a low enough level, I get something that has all the abilities of a human brain. It's perfectly fair to assume that such a thing would be conscious. After all, I am basing the belief that everyone around is conscious as I am on this same logic.

hengesthorsa said:
I think we've already been shaken by AI in the sense that most people didn' anticipate Twitter or hastags or Facebook, but they are emergent phenomena that appear when people are helped to interact at a distance by means of a certain kind of technology. AI is always going to give humans greater reacher or wordly power, as our tech has always done. It will never "decide what it would like to happen" and take organized steps to make that happen. If someone thinks it will - well, I have never ever read an argument for that that was anything but wishful thinking.

"Never"? Dangerous word, that. If the human brain is capable of doing such things, on what basis do you claim that we will never be able to replicate the brain's process? Do you have good sources to back this up?

hengesthorsa said:
All this stuff claims to be in the realm of science. Not faith, right? Okay, then SHOW ME.

Okay, sure. We've got quantum computers coming soon, and teams at all major tech companies both here and in good ol' China working fastidiously to crack human intelligence and replicate it. NVIDIA just released a generative adversarial network that can generate pics of celebrities out of nothing, and they are 1000 x 1000 pixels wide. Note: GANs were invented a mere three years ago. Google's AlphaGo Zero played Go against itself for a mere three days, without studying a single human game, and became unbeatable. This is barely a year after AlphaGo, which did work by studying human games, beat the world's Go grandmasters. This tech is improving at a break-neck speed. So if you want to be shown, let's meet back up in 2030 and see if what you say is still "impossible". Then let's meet up in 2040. 2050.

hengesthorsa said:
It's all the spiritism of the last 150 years in a new garb. Or an apocalypse cult. "Any minute now, X will happen." These questions - no offense - are not new, and they aren't based in "scientific" reality. This is a kind of incoherent science-flavored fantasy. Why incoherent? Consider the notion that one's soul "is" one's brain-state at death. Okay. Where is one's brain? What are its limits? Gray matter? White? Is part of it running down one's back? What about the nerves that branch out from there? The ones that directly get stimulated by what we later call light, sound? Well, then why not the things, now OUTSIDE your body, that act immediately on those nerves? Uhoh. Now we see that even to.play the fantasy game, you have to

hengesthorsa said:

a) artificially limit what the brain even IS, which spoiles the game

Click to expand...

Have veterans who have lost limbs therefore also lost part of their brain?

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

hengesthorsa said:
I think the notion of "motive" here is worth a moment. As I see it, this sort of thing boils down to the following dialogue that a culture is having with itself.

"Sure is scary that death exists."
"Yeah."
"Wouldn't it be cool if it didn't?"
"Maybe, but it does."
"But, like, what if you were dead but then you were alive again?"
"Like a religious thing?"
"Yeah, but that's for dummies so not like that."
"So, no hope for things unseen?"
"Right."
"Tell me more."
"Okay, just imagine that we know what consciousness is and that it not only seems to the consciousness that it has a location but it does have a location and we can control the location so we can put it into machine or something. So like you could copy your brain-state at death and then put it on a flash drive and it would be awesome or scary."
"Can you show me any of the fantastical technologies or scientific understandings that would be required for any of this?"
"No, just IMAGINE them."
"So we're back to a hope for things unseen?"
"Well, yeah, but it's science and stuff."

The whole thing is incoherent. It wants to do science, which works with the observable, but then do that science on the basis of things that can't be observed or even coherently imagined.

It's like a less intellectually honest set of statements about what God is or is not or might do. We say that God's essence (at least Orthodox Christians use this term) is utterly beyond knowing. But here, we have to say that something both is and is not beyond knowing in the same way at the same time.

Is there a philosophical reason that it is impossible that we will ever be able to map out the connections of the brain? Like, not, "that's a really hard thing to do so we'll probably never do it" (like some *used* to say about mapping the human genome *cough cough*), but actual reasons it is even theoretically impossible?

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

Radagast said:
Your questions are all old questions. But you're assuming a materialist view of mind. This is not the Christian view.

Perhaps I communicated poorly. But I can ask similar things for people of a dualistic perspective. If the mind and soul are separate, then if I can replicate the mind, would this not imply that I could at some point create a copy of myself without a soul, no? Unless God were to imbibe all such copies with souls as well.

JacksBratt · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
Hello everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about the philosophy of identity, mostly in sci-fi ish thought expiriments. But the more I think about it, the thornier it makes spiritual issues as well.

Let's imagine this. Suppose I'm a criminal in the star trek universe and when I'm getting beamed to the courthouse there's an error that results in an exact duplicate of me. Should both be put in jail for my crimes?

Now suppose there were some errors with one of the copies. He now has the same personality, but no memory of the crime committed. Should only the one with memory be punished?

Suppose other things get changed as well. In the teleporting process, the copy not only loses memory of the crime, but other things as well. He no longer remembers growing up on the colonies on Titan, but remembers being adopted and raised by vulcan diplomats working for the federation. Instead of having my brash personality, he is much more stoic and thoughtful.

At what point is the copy considered different enough from the original to no longer be considered culpable?

Thing is, this isn't so unrealistic. Given a few years, many all of the cells in your body are swapped out. People's personalities can change drastically, under the right circumstances, and we can absolutely lose memories.

So why should the promise of heaven or the threat of hell even be meaningful? Suppose the soul is some carbon copy of my brain state that gets "frozen" at death. If I get shot in the head such that the part of my brain with memories that make up me are destroyed and I live in a hospital for a few days before dying, then will my soul be tortured for my sins, while not even being able to remember that it did them?

What if I accept Christ, but then am in a severe accident that makes me forget doing so. Over the next few years, both my body and mind change significantly enough that I can no longer even be considered the same person. The "new me" does not even believe in God. Did my old soul go to heaven and get replaced by a new, damned soul at some point? Was my unlucky soul saved at one point and then, due to forces outside of it's control (the accident) had salvation yanked out from underneath it? Will the body, which ridicules the idea of belief in God (much less the Christian one) be attached to a saved soul?

I could go on with lines of questioning imagining the spirituality of, fifty+ years down the line, what if one were to upload their consciousness to a non-biological body, and their biological body were to then die. Would they now have a soul that were in heaven or hell, while also being physically alive and hypothetically immortal? But that may have to be a different thread for later.

Ultimately it's got me wondering why I should even think that anything in the supernatural realm, like the soul, could even be me in any meaningful way. I still "feel" like it is, but the more I think about it the less coherent it gets. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks and God bless!

May I suggest that your soul is the only thing in this universe that is actually, totally and 100% you?

You are your soul... period.
You, your soul, reside in this tent of a carbon based body.
You, your soul, is eternal. Either eternal death or eternal life.

God created you as a soul.... you became a living being.... just like Adam.

So, where you conscious self is... that is you, we call it a soul.

AlexDTX · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
Ultimately it's got me wondering why I should even think that anything in the supernatural realm, like the soul, could even be me in any meaningful way. I still "feel" like it is, but the more I think about it the less coherent it gets. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Gen_2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground [physical body], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [created spirit]; and man became a living soul [human soul].

Your sci-fi speculations are atheistic nonsense. Our souls are not just the theological definition of mind, will and emotions, nor is it the atheistic belief that its merely the chemical and neuro charges that enable memory and thought in the brain. Our souls are the result of the material body joining to the spiritual life given us by God.

1Co_15:44 It is sown a natural body [physical body]; it is raised a spiritual body [glorified body]. There is [now] a natural body [physical body], and there is [now] a spiritual body [our souls].

Our souls are spiritual bodies that our spirits reside within. Pagans call it an astral body, but it merely our soul. When I was a young Christian I was separated body soul and spirit. My body lay in bed while my soul had sat up in bed and m spirit was across the room. I could see my soul like a transparent milky white body, whereas I could not see my spirit, although I was aware of being across the room.

Is our soul valuable? Consider what Jesus said.

Mat_10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Mat_16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Clearly God values our human soul.

archer75 · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
Perhaps I communicated poorly. But I can ask similar things for people of a dualistic perspective. If the mind and soul are separate, then if I can replicate the mind, would this not imply that I could at some point create a copy of myself without a soul, no? Unless God were to imbibe all such copies with souls as well.

I will reply more later, but I really think there are problems here. For any quasi-scientific approach to this, we must first define the mind.

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

AlexDTX said:
Gen_2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground [physical body], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [created spirit]; and man became a living soul [human soul].

Your sci-fi speculations are atheistic nonsense. Our souls are not just the theological definition of mind, will and emotions, nor is it the atheistic belief that its merely the chemical and neuro charges that enable memory and thought in the brain. Our souls are the result of the material body joining to the spiritual life given us by God.

Is my pet cat incapable of forming memories and having thoughts? Or does he also have a soul given him by God?

GirdYourLoins · Dec 27, 2017

Scientists have created perfect conditions to recreate what they believe was how life started in the primeval ooze that they teach us is how life started. Despite a massive amounts of trying to create life in these perfect conditions they have been unable to do so. It is impossible to create life where there is none as far as the evidence we have can be interpreted. It also gives me the impression that scientists do not fully understand life and only understand the physical aspects of it.

So taking this as a starting point, the whole fictional hypothesis for this post is flawed and until such time as we are able to transport someone I will treat it as not being possible to do so and is mere fiction. I do not think we would ever be able to transport someone and even if a transporter was invented it would only be able to reproduce matter and not other aspects of what makes us us.

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

GirdYourLoins said:
Scientists have created perfect conditions to recreate what they believe was how life started in the primeval ooze that they teach us is how life started. Despite a massive amounts of trying to create life in these perfect conditions they have been unable to do so. It is impossible to create life where there is none as far as the evidence we have can be interpreted. It also gives me the impression that scientists do not fully understand life and only understand the physical aspects of it.

So taking this as a starting point, the whole fictional hypothesis for this post is flawed and until such time as we are able to transport someone I will treat it as not being possible to do so and is mere fiction. I do not think we would ever be able to transport someone and even if a transporter was invented it would only be able to reproduce matter and not other aspects of what makes us us.

This is a thought experiment, people are getting too caught up on technical feasibility...
Do you shut down thinking about ethical thought experiments because you don't think anyone will ever have to reroute a trolley to save a baby?
Trolley problem - Wikipedia

yeshuaslavejeff · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
This is a thought experiment, people are getting too caught up on technical feasibility...
Do you shut down thinking about ethical thought experiments because you don't think anyone will ever have to reroute a trolley to save a baby?

Yes.
If anything comes up, trolley or toxic drugs or the end of wwIII ,
leave it for then.
No worries to think about before then.

yeshuaslavejeff · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
Is my pet cat incapable of forming memories and having thoughts? Or does he also have a soul given him by God?

When can you bring your cat in for an examination ?

yeshuaslavejeff · Dec 27, 2017

AlexDTX said:
Your sci-fi speculations are atheistic nonsense.

Thank you - I missed this.
You're right, but what can anyone do ?

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

yeshuaslavejeff said:
Yes.
If anything comes up, trolley or toxic drugs or the end of wwIII ,
leave it for then.
No worries to think about before then.

Then why bother going on a philosophy forum if you're not actually interested in discussing philosophy?

Also, do you really think it's wise for the human race to just blunder our way through history without considering beforehand the ethics of what we do?

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

yeshuaslavejeff said:
When can you bring your cat in for an examination ?

He knows not to go near the door anymore, because he gets sprayed. So clearly he has memory.

He sits near his food dish and whines, connecting that doing so will result in him getting food. So clearly he thinks.

Since AlexDTX asserted that memory and thought are not based in chemistry, then my cat must have also been given a soul by God.

yeshuaslavejeff · Dec 27, 2017

looking_for_answers_ said:
He knows not to go near the door anymore, because he gets sprayed. So clearly he has memory.
He sits near his food dish and whines, connecting that doing so will result in him getting food. So clearly he thinks.
Since AlexDTX asserted that memory and thought are not based in chemistry, then my cat must have also been given a soul by God.

"Nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ‬ nép̄eš) is a Biblical Hebrew word which occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the aspects of sentience, and human beings and other animals are both described as having nephesh. Plants, as an example of live organisms, are not referred in the Bible as having nephesh."

looking_for_answers_ · Dec 27, 2017

yeshuaslavejeff said:
"Nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ‬ nép̄eš) is a Biblical Hebrew word which occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the aspects of sentience, and human beings and other animals are both described as having nephesh. Plants, as an example of live organisms, are not referred in the Bible as having nephesh."

So if my cat is capable of having nephesh, why would I believe that a machine is not capable of this? We already have machine memory (and it's far better and faster than human memory, too). And if thought is ultimately not "magic" that God put in all animals, then why shouldn't I believe that eventually machines will have that too? I strongly disagree with AlexDTX's assertion that that machine sentience is a "atheistic" notion and I have yet to see a strong argument as to why it would be

Is my "soul" me in any meaningful way, and why should I be concerned?

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