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Yes. There are verses that use the word "nephesh" in Hebrew translated either as "soul" or "life" in the Old Testament that show that animals have bodies, souls and spirits, which for spirit uses the same Hebrew word "ruach".Is my pet cat incapable of forming memories and having thoughts? Or does he also have a soul given him by God?
Yes. There are verses that use the word "nephesh" in Hebrew translated either as "soul" or "life" in the Old Testament that show that animals have bodies, souls and spirits, which for spirit uses the same Hebrew word "ruach".
I am not any kind of master of philosophy, but, again, here is what it seems to me is required here to do what it seems you're proposing (and I say this with no personal animus at all - but I feel like this kind of suggestion is usually self-destroying and/or incoherent, so I'm just trying to start "at the beginning" and see what's required for this to "come true."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?
As far as I know, there are fuzzy relationships between what we experience and what goes on as measured by existing super-tech in the brain. As I said in my previous post, you need first to show WHAT EXACTLY you are mimicking, show that you can understand the very fabric of the entire brain IN EVERY WAY, and then mimic whatever that is, which hasn't even been defined.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.
1) - I don't know that the human brain, alone, is capable of doing much at all. This is just based on my experience of life - I've never met brain, only people. "Conscious" brains have only ever been studied as they are in people. And then the very terms of this thought experiment suggest divorcing the brain, which,again, hasn't been clearly delimited, from the person. Again, it is not a failure of my imagination. It's a failure of the terms of the argument. So, just add to my other list "show what the brain is capable of 'doing' ON ITS OWN, with NO INPUT from "outside" the brain. Anything you need to include here, such as blood supply, must be then considered part of the brain for purposes of duplication, etc."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?
I admit that the very notion of a quantum computer is over my head. I have heard this terms for decades and of course have no practical idea of how it would work or what it would do. I have no idea how even this computer works. But again - I don't quite see how a technology that, as you say, does not exist at present is going to help with any of what I've listed. There is a HUMAN failure in all such claims I have ever read - a failure to define the problem in non-magical terms. It's not " we can't do this because our computers aren't good enough - but maybe one might be!" It's "we can't do this because we don't know what 'this' is."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.
I am not any kind of master of philosophy, but, again, here is what it seems to me is required here to do what it seems you're proposing (and I say this with no personal animus at all - but I feel like this kind of suggestion is usually self-destroying and/or incoherent, so I'm just trying to start "at the beginning" and see what's required for this to "come true."
1) Determine /decide what consciousness "is" in a scientifically rigorous and clearly defined way. We know that we are conscious because we "are," we "feel" that way. That and the rest is notoriously "soft" - animals seem like us in this way because...other people seem like us in this way because...rocks seem NOT to be like this because... - so, step one must be "determine what consciousness is, and what it isn't." - to my knowledge, no one has done this.
2) Show that consciousness is nothing but an appearance of "brain-states." Show *exactly* how every single observable feature of consciousness can be mapped to a particular "brain-state." Further, show why there are constantly countless changes in brain-state that make exactly zero effect on anything experienced or measurable in the consciousness "associated" with that brain. -again, to my knowledge, no one doing neuroscience has even determined what the features of consciousness are, let alone how they can be perfectly mapped to brain-states.
3) In addition to number 2- show where the brain ends. The brain is ALWAYS being and having waste carted out by blood, no? Is that blood "part" of the brain, functionally? As I said before - is the rest of the nervous system part of the brain? If not, exactly where does the brain end? If so, where exactly does the nervous system end? And so on. Show and clearly define for the purposes of "brain-mapping" where the brain ends. My guess: you're going to artificially limit it (and therefore destroy your claim of perfectly mapping the brain) OR you're going to end up saying that the brain is identical to the entire physical universe - in which case, you're really not going to have room to build a simulation. In one case, the researcher / experimenter destroys their own claim, in the other, they find it is impossible to do anything with it, as it requires the ability to create a duplicate universe - and I believe that that is just plain impossible.
So, you asked if I could show philosophically that "it is impossible that we will ever be able to map out the connections of the brain". No, I'm not any kind of philosopher. But it seems to me that the main problem is not that I said something is really difficult - but that the problem has not been defined. If you handwave that, you handwave the whole notion of science - and with it goes even the veneer of scientific possibility.
I didn't say I didn't believe that other agents were conscious. If anything, I'm inclined to think all things have some degree of consciousness "as I know it." I suggested, more than said, that a definition of X should precede an attempt to duplicate X.If you think you need to define consciousness before believing that another agent is conscious, then at this very moment, you should logically reject that idea that anything except for yourself is conscious. Everyone else is what's called a philosophical zombie. Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia
The Internet tells me my brain has 100 billion cells, give or take. I assume that there are some changes in each cell at every moment. A molecule moves, or something. Further, the Internet advises me that there many be as many as several hundred trillion "connections." While I don't experience the same thing at every instant, I certainly don't experience even tens of thousands of "changes." So there's stuff happening that isn't "reflected" in my experience - which, apparently, is what counts for this discussion.What are these "changes in brain-state that make exactly zero effect"? Do you feel exactly the same thing all the time? Are you constantly seeing, feeling, and hearing exactly the same thing?
"-again, to my knowledge, no one doing neuroscience has even determined what the features of consciousness are, let alone how they can be perfectly mapped to brain-states."
And again, this hasn't stopped you from believing the people and animals around you to be conscious.
Why is that ridiculous? It's part of their nervous system - right? Aren't people notoriously aware of the parts of their bodies in space? Why doesn't losing a part of one's body then reduce (a part of) one's "consciousness"?If a soldier loses their legs to an IED, it would be ridiculous to consider that they had lost part of their brain and were less conscious. This doesn't "artificially" limit what I might think is necessary to replicate. Were we to continue taking things away, at what point would you consider a human no longer a human? Whatever the point is, an engineer would have to create a robot up to that point.
The Turing test has nothing to do with the question of duplication of consciousness.It has been defined. The concensus is that a robot that can fully pass the turing test would be the definition. That's what AI researchers work towards, and do, within limited domains (so far). Sitting across the dinner table from a robot, having a conversation with it, and not being able to tell if it's a human or not is the agreed upon definition of the problem.
No. You are still defining soul (Heb: nephesh, Greek: psuche) as memory. Our souls are spiritual beings of our selves, not just memories. Also, God would never bring to life the abominations of our hands, and, I might add, Satan's inspirations.So, given that machines already have memory, and we arguable have already given them the same amount of thought as tiny insects, would God also give them nephesh?
In the OP and in subsequent posts, you suggested and then raised the notion that "human consciousness" might be "copied."
I said it should certainly be defined before any such copying is attempted - since otherwise we can't even say what we might be copying.
I didn't say I didn't believe that other agents were conscious. If anything, I'm inclined to think all things have some degree of consciousness "as I know it." I suggested, more than said, that a definition of X should precede an attempt to duplicate X.
The Internet tells me my brain has 100 billion cells, give or take. I assume that there are some changes in each cell at every moment. A molecule moves, or something. Further, the Internet advises me that there many be as many as several hundred trillion "connections." While I don't experience the same thing at every instant, I certainly don't experience even tens of thousands of "changes." So there's stuff happening that isn't "reflected" in my experience - which, apparently, is what counts for this discussion.
The fact that I treat others as if they are going to respond, etc, is utterly irrelevant to whether a problem can be defined clearly enough that an attempt can be made to solve it.
Why is that ridiculous? It's part of their nervous system - right? Aren't people notoriously aware of the parts of their bodies in space? Why doesn't losing a part of one's body then reduce (a part of) one's "consciousness"?
And if my questions were ridiculous, then tell me - what is it that must be duplicated? Okay,nerves in legs are out,in your opinion. What MUST be included?
The Turing test has nothing to do with the question of duplication of consciousness.
The natural mind receives not the things of the Spirit. Wide and broad is the path to destruction. Consensus is not litmus test.The consensus of Pauline scholars is that Paul does not teach that the soul is a ghost within the body machine. In Hebrew, nephesh means "soul" in the general sense of "person" and "emotion."
Again, consensus means little. Our bodies are not machines, they are alive. Just because we can organize the parts of the body in a systematic way like a machine does not mean our bodies are machines. This is why the resurrection of the body is so important. Our bodies are us, not just space suits. It is this very attitude that brings confusion into thinking that machines can have lives someday.Modern philosophy of mind and neurology are moving towards a new consensus. Our identity is not a ghost within a machine.
This may be. I have had Out of Body Experiences, so I do not dismiss such things casually, but there is no scriptural support for the statement.I'm struck by several OBEs that report a rehab center in Paradise to help new arrivees shed their physical limitations and expectations in the process of orienting themselves to the life and clarity of their spiritual bodies.
I am also haunted by this hint that our identities might radically evolve as we adjust to these spiritual bodies.
I need to bow out of this discussion."What MUST be included?" Whatever it takes for you not to wonder if the agent you're interacting with is conscious or not. That's what must be included. Someone who has lost their legs is less conscious, but they are indeed conscious. And they are no less human than anyone else.
And the Turing test has everything to do with consciousness. Suppose I go to dinner with two friends, but one of them is a robot who is perfect at appearing to be human (and may even believe themselves to be human). I would not at any point suspect that one of them is not conscious. So the question becomes meaningless. Now a much better question would be - why should I doubt that they are conscious, even though it acts and thinks identical to the humans sitting next to it?
The idea that we have to understand something fully to create it is simply false. I can, right now, download Tensorflow and create a neural network that can identify images with cats just as well as humans can (or at least, nearly so. Regardless, it does the job). Yet even if I look at the resulting model, even if I see all the weights and biases behind the generated perceptrons, I will have no insight into the actual patterns that it recognizes. That's the beauty of back-propagation, it corrects itself until it understands the patterns. Yet at no point do I, the creator, need to have any understanding at all of how to reconize a cat in a picture.
Apologies - did not mean to insinuate that you did. Was trying to point out that because we would not consider them "less human" in anyway, then we would not consider legs to be an essential part of "human"-ness. You were asking what specifically I thought was required for a meaningful artificial human - I was trying to answer by saying whatever is left after you've removed things that aren't essential to "human"-ness.I need to bow out of this discussion.
For the record, I didn't suggest that someone who loses a limb is "less human".
You keep changing the target. One minute it's duplicating consciousness, then it's consciousness at all, then it's whatever it takes for me to wonder or not wonder something. Sorry, I can't keep going. Thanks for talking.
Read my last sentence again then. You have taken an idea that is completely hypothetical and tried to use it for a scenario that people think is impossible and then cant take the fact that people think it is impossible, then ask people to ignore that it is impossible and ask them to assume the impossible is possible to answer your hypothetical question. And what on earth do you mean by reroute a trolley to save a baby. I assume that is some sort of Americanism. Taking it at its literal meaning, that would be something that is perfectly possible and feasible unlike your question.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
So, given that machines already have memory, and we arguable have already given them the same amount of thought as tiny insects, would God also give them nephesh?
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!
Machines are not sentient.
And, quite frankly, the questions in the O.P. have all been addressed much better in books. They've even been addressed better in Arnold Schwarzenegger films like Total Recall and The 6th Day.
Read my last sentence again then. You have taken an idea that is completely hypothetical and tried to use it for a scenario that people think is impossible and then cant take the fact that people think it is impossible,
And what on earth do you mean by reroute a trolley to save a baby. I assume that is some sort of Americanism. Taking it at its literal meaning, that would be something that is perfectly possible and feasible unlike your question.
Star Trek is based on a purely physical universe and does not take into consideration that we are flesh, soul and spirit. The science of Star Trek is something my geeky brother has read and studied in the past and while most of it is based in what we "know" now, a lot of it is entirely fictional. It assumes there is only a physical body that is transported and does not take into consideration a separate soul and spirit..
I saw someone mentioned cloning, that is taking an egg, the basic creation of God for the start of life and changing the genetic coding to copy that of another person. this is changing the life, not creating life. I believe a clone would have its own soul and spirit form the basis of life created by God and would not be a spiritual copy of the person being cloned, only physical. Its like identical twins, they are different people. You would also have to take into account that their experiences and environment would create different people, so they would not be exact copies.
The point of the answer is we cant create life, only God can. Your imagined scenario as just that, something that is imagined and not based in Biblical truth. You are asking people to accept your false idea and participate in it. I believe it is better to correct the false basis for your question than encourage you to continue in your false thinking.
I know I said I was gone.I honestly wasn't aware that anyone thought this was impossible. I work in tech, and have been researching this stuff (in my free time) for a long time now, and have never encountered any of the experts in this space espousing the belief that replicating the human mind in a machine is inherently impossible, just implausible within the next few years. I was honestly kind of floored at the response here, but maybe that's just because I'm in a bit of a tech-bubble in my social circles, even at my church
The "trolley problem" is one of the most famous thought experiments. Variations of it are used a lot in the philosophy of ethics. Since this is a philosophy forum, I assumed people would be familiar with it, since it's taught in entry-level philosophy courses and is pretty well-known in mainstream culture. Nothing to do with "Americanism".
I don't know who brought up cloning, but it doesn't really have anything to do with my original question. Clones and twins do indeed have different experiences, so they're not truly identical. If I scan and simulate every atom of my brain and body, or even scan down to the sub-atomic level, then I would indeed have something that is identical to me. Or at least the non-supernatural part of me.
I know I said I was gone.
But I wanted to respond to this because I think it gets to the heart of the thread.
I do not work in tech and have no knowledge of AI and the like.
But it seems to me that a person should be an expert in the mind AND in tech before making a pronouncement that the mind can be duplicated by tech. No?
I think aliens could be discussed in this way. Because we know what other planets are, and we recognize at least our kinds of life. So we can imagine possible scenarios.I didn't start this thread to pronounce that any such thing was possible, much less that it's a guaranteed thing, I started this thread because I saw that it was a philosophy forum for Christians, so I was hoping to get a philosophical discussion going around the implications of such a thing regardless of technical feasability. That's... philosophy. Posing hypotheticals and thinking about the implications thereof is pretty central to the philosophical method. I'm not sure I understand why people would bother participating in a philosophy forum if they're not interested in doing this???
It's like... I can ask, "what would the spiritual implactions of finding life on other planets be?" without having to believe that aliens exist. I just don't understand why people would spend their time on a philosophy forum if they aren't interested in thinking about hypotheticals
Being new here, I may very well have just posted this in the wrong spot, would there be a better place for it
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