Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul?

[Anim8]

I was about to write a response but these guys have arguments that far outweigh any I would have made.

Palamite hit the nail on the head.

Palamite:

This is exactly the same situation with artificial intelligence (AI). In fact it’s somewhat of a mistake to believe AI is some far in the future, weird sci-fi thing. It already exists, though in a relatively crude form, if we’re comparing it to the ideal of a machine which can consistantly and convincingly interact with human beings in a way that appears to be itself “human.” Honestly, it is really only a matter of “when” and not “if” something like an “android” will appear, which can receive and respond to highly complex information. What is a fantasy though, is that such a thing, no matter how complicated, could be called “conscious”. It would be no more biotic or conscious than my PC - just a heck of a lot more elaborate in it’s wiring and programming.

The only thing I would like to address is this

Hitetlen:

Were they? You forget that we started with ONE person, ONE brain, ONE mind. Then the brain is split into two semi-identical parts, which produce TWO minds, and therefore TWO persons. As an example: do you know what happens if a film containing a holographic image is ripped into two halves? The result is amazing, I will let you research it, but if you can’t find the answer, I will tell you.

One body, one brain. But two people, and two minds. If you ever get the chance talk to someone who has cared for siamese twins. I have heard interviews with some of them. It is pretty apparent after spending time with them that they are in fact two distinctly different people.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Palamite:

I agree with Dr.Bonette, that “artificial intelligence”, however well designed is simply that - “artificial.”

Artificial Intelligence is a card trick. There isn’t any “intelligence” in the machine (not intelligence as we understand it), merely a very large set of instructions and logical operants.

I worked with a system that controlled the Semi-Automated Opposing Force (SAFOR) in military simulations – the operator would generally direct the SAFOR, but individual soldiers, tanks, aircraft and so on would make their own tactical decisions. To the troops in training, the things was uncanny.

But if you looked at the program, it simply said things like:

Scan area.
If tank seen
and if range greater than 2000 seek cover.
if range less than 2000, shoot tank.

That went on for thousands of pages, covering every possible situation, and giving the SAFOR tanks and soldiers a “play” for each situtation.

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

It might be well to examine the epistemological limitations of the materialist perspective which you defend.

There is a lot to say in response to your post. My number one problem is that you play fast and loose with the word “faith”. This word has many meanings, and I don’t like to mix them up. You should have defined it in a rigorous fashion if you wish to use it in an argument. Please do it, if you wish to employ it again.

Your argument rests on the premise that natural science cannot establish its own foundation in a deductive manner, so you accuse it using “faith” to establish its own foundation. Of course there is no “faith” involved in this process. The foundations of natural science cannot be established in a deductive fashion, because natural sciences are not deductive systems.

The laws of logic are also not established deductively, since they are the laws which make deduction possible. The laws of logic (as used in epistemology) do not need extrernal justification, because they are self evident. There is no “faith” needed here either.

The scientists use those methods you quoted with good reason: they work. The proof of the pudding cannot be established in a deductive fashion, it must be verified empirically. If it is edible, it was a good pudding. If it is not edible, throw it out. No “faith” is used nor needed here.
Dr. Bonnette:

One more point. Since all natural science depends on sense observation of natural phenomena, how do you know that you can trust your senses? How do you experimentally demonstrate that your sense knowledge is reliable enough to base your scientific observations upon it? You are caught in a vicious circle. To prove your senses you must presuppose your senses!

Yes, I heard all that before, and it is nonsense. What you suggest here is called “universal skepticism”, which is not a teneble position. I don’t need “faith” to know that I exist, and I don’t need “faith” to know that there is someone on the other end of this conversation.

What you say is that our senses are the impediment to knowledge, that we are unable to see, because we have eyes, and we are unable to hear, because we have ears. What nonsense! Our senses do not distort reality, but we may interpret their signals incorrectly. The favorite example of the apologists against science is quoting a “mirage”, which looks like water in the distance, while it is just hot air.

Indeed we might make mistakes, we might not interpret the signals of our senses correctly - sometimes. But if we were walking in a desert and actually found a lake, and went for a swim, you could not argue that it may just be an illusion, that our feeling, drinking and swimming in the water - is just a “mirage”.

We trust our senses, because their signals have been empirically verified millions of times every day. Your referral to “universal skepticism” is nonsense. No one can deny the results of their senses in a consistent manner, just like no one can uphold the idea of solipsism consistently.
Dr. Bonnette:

There are things we know, not by faith alone, and not by natural science either – but by the rational disciplines of unaided human reason: philosophy. And philosophy confirms what common sense tells us about the world in which we live, namely, that there are things above the atomic level, real unified living substances like cows and cats which need a principle of unity at the substantial level, substantial forms or souls.

Not “philosophy” in general, only religious “philosophy”. Read the book of George H. Smith: “Atheism - a Case agaist God” for a well written, crystal clear demolishion of religious “philosophy”.

An old joke for you:

Q: What is philosophy?
A: It is like a man in a totally dark room chasing a black cat.
Q: What is religious philosophy?
A: It is like a man in a totally dark room chasing a non-existent black cat.
Q: What is Christian philosophy?
A: It is like a man in a totally dark room chasing a non-existent black cat while shouting: “I got it, I got it”.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Spyder1jcd:

With cloning advancing at an almost alarming rate and the developement of sentient machines well in progress, the idea of something incredibly human-like but not truly human is not just science fiction any longer. Catholics understand that nothing can be defined as human unless it has a soul imbued in the being by God. The soul is what makes us created in God’s own image. But does Church teaching discredit the idea of God giving a soul to something not directly created by His hand? Catholics that hold belief in evolution (such as myself) theorize that at some point in the evolutionary process God granted us the soul. But this is not the same as cloned human beings or robots because the evolutionary process would’ve been started by God, whereas the construction of a clone or robot would not have been. In the words of fictional character Dr. Alfred Lanning:

“There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will. Creativity. And even the nature of what we might call the soul. Why is it that when some robots are left in darkness, they will seek out the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space, they will group together, rather than stand alone? How do we explain this behavior? Random segments of code? Or is it something more? When does a perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does a difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote… of a soul?” - (I, Robot)

Of course, the idea that a soul could manifest itself goes against Catholic teaching, but what if God decides that something created by the hands of man is human enough? And if not, couldn’t further development of sentient machines be just as bad as human cloning?

Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul? Of course. God is God and he can give anything a soul. Will he? That’s another question.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

hoping to determine whether or not something is human simply by means of a conversation is a lot like trying to figure out if something is, say, an elephant just by touching one part of it…

Maybe you misunderstand when I use the word “human”. I did not say that this being is born of father and mother, has a specific DNA. It may be an alien with a different biological structure, or may be a computer with proper programming. The word “human” here designates a self-aware, sentient being.
john doran:

of course, you reject the idea of necessary truth and abstract objects, so this won’t be convincing to you now any more than it was when we discussed the subject before.

I always wondered what do you guys mean by “absolute truth”. The idea of “abstract objects” is indeed nonsensical, as I pointed out in a previous conversation. You never responded to it, unfortunately.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Hitetlen:

Originally Posted by john doran

the simple answer is that even if i conclude that my interlocutor is (likely) a human person by means of a conversation, i would also say that i could be shown to be wrong when the rest of the data is included.

What other data?

Pulling back the curtain and showing the computer, of course.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

 

[Hitetlen]

Palamite:

This is exactly the same situation with artificial intelligence (AI). In fact it’s somewhat of a mistake to believe AI is some far in the future, weird sci-fi thing. It already exists, though in a relatively crude form, if we’re comparing it to the ideal of a machine which can consistantly and convincingly interact with human beings in a way that appears to be itself “human.” Honestly, it is really only a matter of “when” and not “if” something like an “android” will appear, which can receive and respond to highly complex information. What is a fantasy though, is that such a thing, no matter how complicated, could be called “conscious”. It would be no more biotic or conscious than my PC - just a heck of a lot more elaborate in it’s wiring and programming.

And the question is still the same: how do you know that? Consciousness cannot be dissected and measured on a scale, it is the state of the neural network in the brain. If something behaves as if it were conscious, then it is conscious. “Human is as human does.”

Our brain is “just” a very elaborate computer, with billions of processors (parallel processing in a cellular automaton) and a very sophisicated operating system. If you (or anyone else) wish to introduce a “soul”, you must define it a consistent manner, and provide a method to detect and analyze it, and explain how it interacts with the “hardware”. Until that happens, it is just an unneccessary hypothesis, nothing else, which is impossible to verify.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

One body, one brain. But two people, and two minds. If you ever get the chance talk to someone who has cared for siamese twins. I have heard interviews with some of them. It is pretty apparent after spending time with them that they are in fact two distinctly different people.

Ah, miscommunication again. I was talking about the one brain which is cut through the connecting tissue, not the Siamese twins. Both are mentioned in this thread.

 

[Hitetlen]

vern humphrey:

Artificial Intelligence is a card trick. There isn’t any “intelligence” in the machine (not intelligence as we understand it), merely a very large set of instructions and logical operants.

The example you brought up is not AI. How do you understand “intelligence”? Learning, making connection between loosely connected data, remembering, even if the queston only slightly resembles of the previous one, understnding what the sentence means, these are the part of intelligence. Not just a bunch of preprogammed decision-making instructions.

 

[Hitetlen]

vern humphrey:

Pulling back the curtain and showing the computer, of course.

It is not that simple. The computer may even look like a human, being an android. It may even be composed of the same material as we are, except it was “grown” in a lab.

This is the point: as the simulation gets better and better, if the “final” product cannot be told apart from the original one, it is the original one.

 

[Anim8]

Hitetlen:

This is the point: as the simulation gets better and better, if the “final” product cannot be told apart from the original one, it is the original one.

If I look like you, then am I you? Just because we may appear to be the same does not make us the same. Identical twins look the same, sometimes even act and dress the same, does that make them the same? I mean if I can’t tell the difference then are they one and the same person? Is twin A twin B? No, they are two distinctly different people.

]
Ah, miscommunication again. I was talking about the one brain which is cut through the connecting tissue, not the Siamese twins. Both are mentioned in this thread.

I had never heard of this situation. But if they are two people afterwards then they were two people before. You can’t make more people by splitting my brain in half, no matter how different my brain seems to be functioning.

On the other hand I always thought I could use an extra one of me around…

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

If I look like you, then am I you? Just because we may appear to be the same does not make us the same. Identical twins look the same, sometimes even act and dress the same, does that make them the same? I mean if I can’t tell the difference then are they one and the same person? Is twin A twin B? No, they are two distinctly different people.

Even identical twins have their differences, but that is not what I am talking about. When the simulation of a sentient being is getting better and better, at the end its behavior is not distinguishable from the original being’s behavior. They don’t have to look alike, they don’t have to be made of the same materials, but when their behavior is identical, then they are both sentient beings. We are not humans because we look like one; we are humans because we behave like one.

Anim8:

I had never heard of this situation. But if they are two people afterwards then they were two people before. You can’t make more people by splitting my brain in half, no matter how different my brain seems to be functioning.

Not at all. Before the operation there is one person with one functioning brain - therefore one mind. You may assume that he has a “soul”. After the operation, there are two functioning half brains - two different minds. They are not truly identical, but very similar. What can you say about their “soul”?

Their physical disposition looks like one person, whose behavior changes depending on which half of the brain is in control at any given time. One half of the separated brain can be removed, and kept alive artifically. In theory, it can even be transplanted into a body. Then you have two distinct persons, with two brains and minds. Will they have two “souls”? And if so, where did this extra “soul” come from?

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

I always wondered what do you guys mean by “absolute truth”. The idea of “abstract objects” is indeed nonsensical, as I pointed out in a previous conversation. You never responded to it, unfortunately.

i’m sure i don’t know what you’re talking about: our previous conversation went on for pages, and i responded to everything that you said.

or at least most of it: if i did not respond to the same point, finally made for the hundredth time, then it was because i was tired of giving the same answer.

the concept of an abstract object is certainly not nonsensical, whether you mean “self-contradictory” or even “meaningless”. you may think there are better reasons for believing them not to exist, but even if you were right, that would still not make them “nonsensical”.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

Maybe you misunderstand when I use the word “human”. I did not say that this being is born of father and mother, has a specific DNA. It may be an alien with a different biological structure, or may be a computer with proper programming. The word “human” here designates a self-aware, sentient being.

and, no, i didn’t misunderstand. i just don’t believe that having a conversation is necessarily the only relevant test for determining whether or not something is “sentient” and “self-aware”. or even that those are the only necessary conditions for being rational.

 

[freesoulhope]

Hitetlen:

This is for Hitetlen, My un-observible freind.

You have decided that the world around you and the human beings ability to be aware, is purley a material manifestation.This, however how convicing it may be to you, is based not on observible evidence, but based on a philosophy which presumes that, “existence”, is what you observe, and all that you observe is all that you should believe.

Miracles occur that break the laws of nature, in the face of materialism. But atheist do not seek to understand the meaning of the miracle. Instead they Observe the miracle based on the assumption that miracles dont happen.

God walked the earth and brought people from the dead, in front of those with minds such is yours( have you ever heard of doubting Thomas?). This happened mearly too thousand years ago, giving birth too the Christian religion, based on “Observible facts”.

But you have already decided that this is impossible, because you have decided that science is God, and that you should not base your understanding on anything else other then what science reveals.

This is illogical thinking for three reason,

1. Science is a dicipline created by humans, and can only reveal Physical truths, in the strictessed sense.
2. You would have to be God, to know that the world including are minds, are the end result of self existing materials Which have there own “ungiven” laws of funtion. In other words you think that the physical world manifests(unaware of its self) its own law of how to funtion and when to funtion.

If your a materialist, this is what you are saying. But this is not logical or reasonable when you observe the world with no “presumptions” and follow it back to its roots based on the laws that it exzibits.

1. If you read the bible, you would know that “man” only knows the true nature of God, because he reveals it to us. That means that the Christian religion is based on a string of Observations of truths revealed by God, through out history where there were humans to Observe it. We are also asked to study the faith and make reason of it. We are not asked to believe blindly. If your heart is open to the posiblity, you can make reason that

Jesus also made promises to people that observed his existence, meaning if jesus was not God, if he did not die and rise from the dead, then the Christian faith would have died with him on the Cross. Only a fool would have faith in a dead man, and judaism would be the number one religion.

Not to mention that, Judaism profess that Jesus was a devil, and the musims believe that Christ, did not die on the Cross. There is an Observible impact on the religous society and the circler society. You would have to close your eyes to not at least consider it the reality of God. Science is the perfect excuse not to.

God is observible, but only when he wishes to be observed, and if you wish to Obsereve him you have to play by his rules.

He has caused “Observible” miracles that go agaisnt the laws of nature. They are called miracles because they dont act acording to how nature nomally should act. If your somebody that excepts that you know not of the truth, and seek it with a true and open heart, ( not just through science, that only leads to a kind of truth) then God will be revealed to you. If you decide that you know the truth, and that the world is purley what “you” make of it, then you will be blinded, and God will not reveal him self to you.

Atheism is not science, it is a ideology based on the desire that God should not exist. Science is a tool to study natural world. Atheists idolise science for its deductive Qualitys to give them selfs the illusion that there is know God, Focusing only upon what is observible, and saying “in faith” all that exists, is what is physically observible. They avoid facing thier unreasonable assumptions by either attacking the character of God or by putting faith in the ideology that they should only be concernd with what is “Physically real”, and anything else is a fantasy made up by the fear of death, or is not proverble so should not be considered real.

Since this seems to be your stand, then i cannot help you, because you have allready decided your fate, and that is no life after death and no God, this is what you want.

But i will prey for you that God reveal himself to you, and if he does in mercy of your ignorance, it will be up to you if you want to believ if you have a soul or not. God bless.

 

[Anim8]

Hitetlen:

Even identical twins have their differences, but that is not what I am talking about. When the simulation of a sentient being is getting better and better, at the end its behavior is not distinguishable from the original being’s behavior. They don’t have to look alike, they don’t have to be made of the same materials, but when their behavior is identical, then they are both sentient beings. We are not humans because we look like one; we are humans because we behave like one.

According to your own definition if I can simulate your behavior well enough then I become you. If I simulate the behavior of a rock, then I become a rock. If this is not what you believe then please clarify yourself because that it certainly what it sounds like to me.

Hitetlen:

Before the operation there is one person with one functioning brain - therefore one mind. You may assume that he has a “soul”. After the operation, there are two functioning half brains - two different minds. They are not truly identical, but very similar. What can you say about their “soul”?

Their physical disposition looks like one person, whose behavior changes depending on which half of the brain is in control at any given time. One half of the separated brain can be removed, and kept alive artifically. In theory, it can even be transplanted into a body. Then you have two distinct persons, with two brains and minds. Will they have two “souls”? And if so, where did this extra “soul” come from?

As I said I am not familiar with this medical condition your talking about, but I think our difference of opinion comes from a difference in out definitions.

If I am not mistaken you believe that what makes us human is either our actions or our brain (or both). If that is true then what about the mentally retarded? Are they less human then?

I believe that there is something more that makes us who and what we are. I believe that no matter how retarded or mutilated we may become, our humanity remains intact. If we are defined by our actions and / or our brains then what happens if I were to be mutilated in a car accident? And I became not only physically but mentally handicapped? Have I lost my humanity? Am I now a sub-human or less in any way?

I believe that there were two people with two souls the entire time. They just shared a brain.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

the concept of an abstract object is certainly not nonsensical, whether you mean “self-contradictory” or even “meaningless”. you may think there are better reasons for believing them not to exist, but even if you were right, that would still not make them “nonsensical”.

No, I meant something else. It is on par with the idea of astral projections, the idea that pyramid shapes have curative powers, or that the stars at the time of birth have an influence on the newborn kid’s fundamental traits. It has no explanatory powers, it cannot be verified.

Not only this idea does not explain anything, but it leads to some really strange corollaries. To wit: it says that we humans are unable to come with any thoughts, much less original ones, that every thought we have (since they are abstractions) are somehow “channeled” into our brain by some inexplicable, mysterious “forces” from a repository of abstract objects, existing out of the universe, out of time.

It says that when a writer comes up with a new idea for a new story, he just “plagarized” it from some unknowable source. It says that Gauss, Bolyai and Lobatchewski did not come up with the idea of non-Euclidean geometry, some unknowable “thing” using unknowable means projected this idea and its corollaries into their brain, approximately at the same time.

It says that we are empty containers, unable to think for ourselves.

What could be more nonsensical than this? I cannot imagine anything. But maybe this imaginary force did not use its extraperceptory methods to project something even less believable into my mind.
john doran:

and, no, i didn’t misunderstand. i just don’t believe that having a conversation is necessarily the only relevant test for determining whether or not something is “sentient” and “self-aware”. or even that those are the only necessary conditions for being rational.

And who said that this is the “only relevant” method? It is certainly the “cheapest” method. It does not require any special setup, just a few hours of conversation.

There was a very good science fiction short story, where some humans suffer a space-ship-wreck, and the conditions on the planet they happened to land on destroyed all of their possessions, clothes, instruments, machines, everything. They are captured by aliens, who keep them in a zoo, since they have no idea that they deal with sentient beings. They cannot communicate with their captors. Eventually, one of them builds a small trap to capture a local rodent, and builds a cage for it. That is the time the aliens realize that the humans are sentient, because only sentient beings keep others behind bars.

To return to our setup, conversation is part of behavior. We have some ideas how sentient beings behave, patterned by our own behavior. It is quite possible that other sentient beings do not conform to our pattern, and maybe we shall not be able to recognize that they are sentient. But here we contemplate the opposite: if something behaves like a human, we must assume that they are sentient. There is no other option.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen :

You have replied to the following points I made regarding the presuppositions of natural science: (1) Natural science presupposes the self-evident first principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality, and (2) Natural science presupposes the validity of sensation. Neither of these presuppositions is itself verified by natural science. Unless you wish to base them on some sort of pure belief, you must step outside natural science to establish them.

You reply in reference to point one above: “The laws of logic (as used in epistemology) do not need external justification, because they are self evident.”

On the contrary, these are not mere laws of logic. If they apply to the real world, they must be laws of being as well as logic. They are indeed self-evident, but such “self-evidence” is not and never has been justified within the natural sciences themselves. It is the proper work of the metaphysician to defend these first principles. Show me the textbook of physics, chemistry, or biology that begins with an evaluation and justification of the principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality. They presuppose them. I recall a symbolic logic graduate course at Notre Dame in which the eminent Polish logician’s 53rd proposition in Boolean algebra turned out to be the principle of excluded middle! Traditional students of philosophy shook their heads in disbelief that one of the very first principles of being would wind up fifty three steps down the ladder of “logical” deduction! Anyone who knows both metaphysics and logic realizes that logic presupposes metaphysics. For example, the logical principle that the same predicate cannot both be affirmed and denied of the same subject is simply the logical restatement of the metaphysical first principle that being cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.

You reply to my second point about science presupposing the validity of sensation with the following: “The scientists use those methods you quoted with good reason: they work. The proof of the pudding cannot be established in a deductive fashion, it must be verified empirically.”

You make my point for me. What do you mean, “…they work.”? Because they are “verified empirically?” To say scientific methods “must be verified empirically” is simply to say that they rely on sensation, which is what I said! But how do you verify sensation? Again, you argue: “Our senses do not distort reality, but we may interpret their signals incorrectly. The favorite example of the apologists against science is quoting a “mirage”, which looks like water in the distance, while it is just hot air. … But if we were walking in a desert and actually found a lake, and went for a swim, you could not argue that it may just be an illusion, that our feeling, drinking and swimming in the water - is just a “mirage”.

Your example about the mirage shows that you are attempting to verify sensation by simply appealing to other senses. A mirage can be verified by seeing if you can swim in it. But how do you know your senses do not also deceive you about the swimming? I do NOT deny that we can trust our senses. I merely point out that empirical verification presupposes the validity of sensation, which validity is NOT established by the scientific method so sacred to your philosophy.

Do you propose, for example, to use the principles of optical physics or neurology or anatomy to defend the validity of vision? To do so presupposes the empirical observations made in those sciences, which leaves the cat chasing its tail – since you are using your senses to verify your sensation. Whatever you may be doing here, one thing is clear. You cannot claim, “We trust our senses, because their signals have been empirically verified millions of times every day,” without stepping outside the field of natural science and into philosophy proper. “Millions of drunkards” do not make for one sober man, nor do “millions” of possible errors constitute proof of anything. But you say they are “empirically verified?” That only means “verified by the senses!” Again, you have the cat chasing its tail. Sensation cannot verify itself. It can only be justified by philosophical reflection which does not itself presuppose the validity of sensation.

I will post the rest of this reply in a subsequent posting, since I am told my text is too long!

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen,

This is the continuation of my previous posting.

Finally, you suggest that I espouse some sort of “universal skepticism”. Webster defines skepticism as the doctrine that true knowledge in a given area is uncertain. “Universal skepticism” would mean that no true knowledge is possible. Your suggestion that I embrace “universal skepticism” does not seem well founded given that I earlier posted that I have written two books which “reason from premises to conclusions using metaphysical first principles which attain apodictic certitudes in demonstrating such truths as the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of the human soul.”

Contrary to any skepticism on my part, I insist that we do know the real extramental world. My point was merely to show that your materialistic claims about natural science and the world presuppose absolute truths that are properly demonstrated only in philosophical sciences which you reject, such as metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical psychology. The worldview of materialism and positivism is demonstrably inadequate.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

According to your own definition if I can simulate your behavior well enough then I become you. If I simulate the behavior of a rock, then I become a rock. If this is not what you believe then please clarify yourself because that it certainly what it sounds like to me.

This is what I said: if you emulate my behavior perfectly then someone who only sees the results of our actions cannot tell us apart. If you emulate also my appearance then they cannot differentiate between you an me.

Imagine a duplicator, which can arrange atoms to copy the Mona Lisa. Every atom in the original has a corresponding atom in the duplicate. Even though only one of the pictures was actually worked on by Leonardo da Vinci, there is no way to tell which one it was. So in this case it is nonsense to try to talk about the "original and the “duplicate”.