Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul?

[Dr.Bonnette]

As I have indicated earlier, an observer might indeed not be able to tell which entity was a real person and which merely an artificial "robot, but only an “original” would itself possess intellect and sense faculties which would enable its soul to actually subjectively experience its own thoughts, sensations, and actions.

The issue always is not about appearances, but reality. Don’t forget, we each reflectively experience our own subjective existence.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[freesoulhope]

Doctor Bonnete,God bless you. I apreciate your apoligetics.

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

As I have indicated earlier, an observer might indeed not be able to tell which entity was a real person and which merely an artificial "robot, but only an “original” would itself possess intellect and sense faculties which would enable its soul to actually subjectively experience its own thoughts, sensations, and actions.

And how do you know that, if there is no objective method to tell them apart? The “duplicate” does not have a “soul”, but it is irrational to assume that it does not have intellect and sensations, since its actions indicate that it has. All it misses is the “soul”, and that proves that the assumption of a “soul” does not add anything, does not explain anything - therefore it is a useless hypothesis.

(I will answer your other posts later. To compose a reply needs more time.)

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

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.

depends on what you mean by “verified”, i guess. it can be verified in the same way that fermat’s theorem can be “verified”, or goldbach’s conjecture, or the continuum hypothesis. and that’s not by empirical experimentation.

Hitetlen:

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.

A) it explains how we know necessary truths. so it explains something.

B) there are a lot of mysterious forces in the universe: to wit, all of them. why is something’s being mysterious a problem? do you find, say, gravity or electromagnetism anything less than mysterious? howabout all of quantum electrodynamics? or quantum chromodynamics? what about M-theory? or even, for that matter, the idea that gravity is geometry?
Hitleten:

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.

i sincerely hope you’re not serious. mathematicians discover the laws relating abstract objects to one another in the same way (though not by the same method) that scientists discover the laws according to which the universe works: they ***discover ***them. if what you say about guys like gauss and euler and dirichlet is right (i.e. that discovering mathematical truths entails their being thoughtless receptacles), then people like einstein, dirac, feynman, gell-mann, and witten are ***also ***“not thinking for themselves”.

you might as well reason that athletes who discover how to manipulate their physical bodies in a physical universe in ways that most people cannot, are actually “not doing anything”.

absurd.
Hitleten:

What could be more nonsensical than this?

honestly? what you said above.

Hitetlen:

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.

ok. so then it’s not. and what i said originally holds: though one test may cause me to believe that my interlocutor is human, there are other tests the application of which might lead me to reject the conclusion drawn from the conversational test.

Hitetlen:

But here we contemplate the opposite: if something behaves like a human, we must assume that they are sentient. There is no other option.

right. maybe if your a behaviouralist.

i’m a “tactualist”. i believe that if something feels like sandpaper, then it is sandpaper.

or maybe a visualist: i believe that if something appears blue, then it is the sky.

or a…

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen

In reply to my claim that only an original has a soul, while a robot would not, you write:

“And how do you know that, if there is no objective method to tell them apart? The “duplicate” does not have a “soul”, but it is irrational to assume that it does not have intellect and sensations, since its actions indicate that it has. All it misses is the “soul”, and that proves that the assumption of a “soul” does not add anything, does not explain anything - therefore it is a useless hypothesis.”

To the natural human being, a soul is not merely a useless assumption, but rather his very being. The fact that an external observer cannot tell which one is a natural human being proves nothing, except that the robot’s maker is very clever. What the robot is missing is its very reality as a single, unified, actually existing, fully sensing and thinking person. We know from our own experience as human beings that such things do exist, in the first instance in ourselves. Either the “robot” deceives us and is not really ensouled, or it does not. If it actually possesses substantial existence as a thinking being, then it is a human being needing to be baptized and have its admission sponsored to the United Nations.

My previous answer did not address the question of how to know which is a real person, but only what is the nature of the difference between a real person and a robot. The science of philosophical psychology explores how we can tell that natural things have life, sensation, and intellection – and far exceeds the scope of what can be done on this thread. The point is that materialism does not really explain how things above the atomic level can exhibit existential unity, such as I know I have as I reflect on myself typing these words and understanding their meaning.

Cogito, ergo sum. The difference between me and a computer saying these words is that I am self-aware that I express them, whereas a computer knows nothing and does not even exist as a single being – just a pile of cleverly joined electronic parts.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[freesoulhope]

Dr. Bonnette:

The science of philosophical psychology explores how we can tell that natural things have life, sensation, and intellection – and far exceeds the scope of what can be done on this thread. The point is that materialism does not really explain how things above the atomic level can exhibit existential unity, such as I know I have as I reflect on myself typing these words and understanding their meaning.
Dr. Bonnette

Please, can you give me some links with free information.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

Originally Posted by Hitetlen
“But here we contemplate the opposite: if something behaves like a human, we must assume that they are sentient. There is no other option.”

If some THING behaves like a human? That is the question! Is it a THING, or merely an artificial composite of many things that happens to be functioning as a THING. A computer is the latter, whereas a man is a true thing, a substance, a single existence unified by a single substantial form.

The simple question we must address is: Are we really one thing, or merely a pile of atoms temporarily acting as if it were one thing (a mere functional, accidental unity). For the atomist or materialist, no things really exist above the atomic level – as I began by saying many posts ago.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

Unless you wish to base them on some sort of pure belief, you must step outside natural science to establish them.

In order to reply to your post, I need the definition of your usage of the words: “pure belief”. It sounds like “faith” to me, and I already asked you to define it.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To FreeSoulHope:

I am more familiar with books than web sites. You might try, for example, Thomistic Psychology by Brennan, Philosophical Psychology by Reith, and On Being Human by Vaske. Most are probably out of print. Or, try a web search under "philosophical psychology"and “Catholic” or “Thomistic”. Good luck. I only taught the course for 40 years.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen,

If it will help you, you may use Webster’s definition of faith, as a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t natural science.

Note that not all things can be proven, or else you get an infinite regression with no ultimate foundation. Some starting points thus must exist which are neither proven or assumed. Self-evident first principles serve this role. But these are the subject matter of metaphysics, not physics.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

Clarification

The Webster definition of faith given above corresponds more closely to the notion given by membersof the Vienna Circle in insisting that all meaningful statements must meet the criteria of the verification principle, which states that a statement is meaningful if and only if its terms can be either directly or indirectly sense verified.

Its practical impact has been that matters of belief or faith are opposed to statements of natural science in such fashion that faith is seen as merely a subjective matter, of no proper place in the public forum. Thus, we are often told that religion is a purely private matter and that we have no right to try to impose our religious beliefs on others, as in the case of abortion. Also, this tends to make politicians pay far closer heed to scientists than to philosophers or clergy.

The technical theological meaning of faith is another matter. In general faith means believing the word of another. “In a technical and supernatural sense, faith is adhesion of the intellect, under the influence of grace, to a truth revealed by God, not on account of its intrinsic evidence but on accouont of the authority of Him who has revealed it.” Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology More concretely, faith is conceived as an act of the will whereby the intellect embraces divine truth, especially the truth of the Catholic Church as the one true religion of God, based upon the convincing evidence of the science of apologetics.

All this makes defining faith with a universal definition a matter of some difficulty.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Anim8]

Hitetlen:

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.

And I quote:

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.

Even if that was a slip of the…erm finger. It still doesn’t follow. As Dr Bonnettte said the issue is not weather or not we can tell the difference, its weather it actually IS.

Hitetlen:

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”.

No, even if it is atom from atom the same, it is still not the original. It may appear the same but it doesn’t diminish the reality that it is in fact a duplicate.

Also, you didn’t address this

Anim8:

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?

What do you think makes us human?

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

Its practical impact has been that matters of belief or faith are opposed to statements of natural science in such fashion that faith is seen as merely a subjective matter, of no proper place in the public forum. Thus, we are often told that religion is a purely private matter and that we have no right to try to impose our religious beliefs on others, as in the case of abortion. Also, this tends to make politicians pay far closer heed to scientists than to philosophers or clergy.

What can I say? Thank God! (Sorry, I just could not resist. )
Dr. Bonnette:

All this makes defining faith with a universal definition a matter of some difficulty.

I certainly agree with this proposition. The word “faith” in this discourse should be taken in the meaning of “to believe in something that has either no evidence, or insufficient evidence supporting it”. This brings up two problems: what is seen as insufficient evidence by some people is seen as sufficient evidence by others, thus making it a subjective concept. Furthermore, the level of “insufficiency” (if there is such a word) varies from one concept to another. A few examples:

1. I have no definite proof that my wife is faithful to me (since we are not together 100% of the time), however, I have sufficient, although indirect evidence to support this belief. In a strict sense I would call this a reasonable belief, to differentiate it from “faith” in the religious sense.
2. I have absolutely no proof that there are other intelligent beings on other planets, still I have a strong belief, that we as humans are not alone in the universe. This is a much less supported belief, but it is not pure faith. The reason is that life is a natural phenomenon, and it seems very likely that our planet in not unique. I would call it a somewhat reasonable expectation.
3. Believers profess belief in the existence of God. They offer evidence, which I do not find compelling - to say the least. In my vocabulary this is “pure faith”. There is no objective, verifyable evidence.
4. I have no logical evidence to “prove” that putting my hand into a flame will be painful, but I have direct, incontrovertible, physical evidence for it. There is no need for a “logical” evidence when physical evidence is present.
5. I have a belief, that eventually humanity will drop the idea of gods, and there will be religion. This is probably nothing more than wishful thinking on my part. There is vague evidence for it, however, which is not compelling. The evidence is the observed decrease in religious thinking, and the emergence of atheism.

The level of uncertainty varies from case to case. This is why I agree that defining “belief” or “faith” can be a difficult matter.

Now to go back to your proposition:
Dr. Bonnette:

Note that not all things can be proven, or else you get an infinite regression with no ultimate foundation. Some starting points thus must exist which are neither proven or assumed. Self-evident first principles serve this role. But these are the subject matter of metaphysics, not physics.

No argument from me. This is why I am confused why do you insist that natural science or the acceptance of senses is insufficently established. They are perfectly established by self evident verifications. They do not need any more foundation than that. What you said above is in contradiction to this quote:
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

There is no “pure belief” here. Our senses are the primary source of information about the world. To doubt them is nonsense (pun intended).

The abstract sciences (mathematics an logic) are deductive constructs, they rest on self-evident axioms. The natural sciences are inductive constructs, they need the self-evident foundation of the senses. Neither of them can be “proven” either deductively or inductively. There is no need for that because they must be accepted not on “faith”, rather because they are self-evident.

Based upon all that materialism is sufficiently established.

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

To the natural human being, a soul is not merely a useless assumption, but rather his very being.

Unfortunately this is pure mysticism. If the “soul” cannot be detected, examined and verified in principle (not just in practice), then it is a useless hypothesis. You may beleive in it, but there is no reason why anyone else should.
Dr. Bonnette:

The fact that an external observer cannot tell which one is a natural human being proves nothing, except that the robot’s maker is very clever.
What the robot is missing is its very reality as a single, unified, actually existing, fully sensing and thinking person.

… which can be verified by observation.
Dr. Bonnette:

My previous answer did not address the question of how to know which is a real person, but only what is the nature of the difference between a real person and a robot. The science of philosophical psychology explores how we can tell that natural things have life, sensation, and intellection – and far exceeds the scope of what can be done on this thread. The point is that materialism does not really explain how things above the atomic level can exhibit existential unity, such as I know I have as I reflect on myself typing these words and understanding their meaning.

But materialism does explain it very well, without resorting to mysticism. The explanation is the pattern. Here is why:

Put down four random points on a piece of paper, and join them with lines, in a convex manner. Most probably they will just form an irregular shape. However, not always. Sometimes, there is a pattern emerging, and you may get a trapezoid, a parallelogram, an oblong, a rhomboid, a deltoid or a square. The same four random points show regularity, and new attributes emerge. (I am sure you are very familiar with emerging attributes). No special reasoning or mysticism required, just the pattern, which yields the new attributes.

Obviously this is a very simple (and simplistic) example.

Here is another example about information. When you speak on the phone, there is a little “hissing noise” in the background. For you this is merely a disturbance, the information is what your partner tells you. For the engineer, who examines the line to ensure clear communication, what you and your partner say is the “noise”. For him the information is the “hissing sound”.
Dr. Bonnette:

Cogito, ergo sum. The difference between me and a computer saying these words is that I am self-aware that I express them, whereas a computer knows nothing and does not even exist as a single being – just a pile of cleverly joined electronic parts.

Just like you (and I) are very “cleverly” joined biological parts - creating a single being.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

depends on what you mean by “verified”, i guess. it can be verified in the same way that fermat’s theorem can be “verified”, or goldbach’s conjecture, or the continuum hypothesis. and that’s not by empirical experimentation.

Wonderful. The mathematical problems you mentioned can be proven as the corollary of the axioms. What are the axioms you can use to verify the existence of “abstract objects”?
john doran:

A) it explains how we know necessary truths. so it explains something.

So one mystical concept can explain another one. Not really useful, I would say.
john doran:

B) there are a lot of mysterious forces in the universe: to wit, all of them. why is something’s being mysterious a problem? do you find, say, gravity or electromagnetism anything less than mysterious? howabout all of quantum electrodynamics? or quantum chromodynamics? what about M-theory? or even, for that matter, the idea that gravity is geometry?

None of them is “mysterious”, though some of them is complicated.
john doran:

i sincerely hope you’re not serious. mathematicians discover the laws relating abstract objects to one another in the same way (though not by the same method) that scientists discover the laws according to which the universe works: they ***discover ***them. if what you say about guys like gauss and euler and dirichlet is right (i.e. that discovering mathematical truths entails their being thoughtless receptacles), then people like einstein, dirac, feynman, gell-mann, and witten are ***also ***“not thinking for themselves”.

I am very serious. It was you, not I who said that those “abstract objects” are somehow projected into their minds.
john doran:

honestly? what you said above.

I am glad you see that way, since I did nothing but brought your idea to its conclusion. You cannot reasonably argue that only scientific concepts are “abstract objects”, but other human abstract thoughts are not. (And you did not. When I mentioned the creation of East of Eden by Steinbeck, you contended that he also “borrowed” the novel from an existing “abstract object”).
john doran:

ok. so then it’s not. and what i said originally holds: though one test may cause me to believe that my interlocutor is human, there are other tests the application of which might lead me to reject the conclusion drawn from the conversational test.

Which are those tests which “prove” that the robot, or android is not a sentient being?

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

If some THING behaves like a human? That is the question! Is it a THING, or merely an artificial composite of many things that happens to be functioning as a THING. A computer is the latter, whereas a man is a true thing, a substance, a single existence unified by a single substantial form.

The simple question we must address is: Are we really one thing, or merely a pile of atoms temporarily acting as if it were one thing (a mere functional, accidental unity). For the atomist or materialist, no things really exist above the atomic level – as I began by saying many posts ago.

And you were wrong. The same six carbon atoms can be arranged to form graphite or a diamond. Their properties can be deducted by the geomertical shape they form, no “soul” or “unifying principle” is needed.

For the materialist the actual atoms are important, though they are interchangable in the sense that any carbon atom will do, but their arrangement is of paramount importance. The emerging pattern is responsible for the emerging attributes. There is no need for a “soul”.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

Even if that was a slip of the…erm finger. It still doesn’t follow. As Dr Bonnettte said the issue is not weather or not we can tell the difference, its weather it actually IS.

If the difference cannot be detected - even in principle, then there is NO difference.

Anim8:

Also, you didn’t address this:

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?

Sorry, I missed it. There were too many posts. No, the physically or mentally handicapped are still humans, as long as there is a functioning brain. They may not be as capable as the healthy ones, but they are still fully human.

Anim8:

What do you think makes us human?

Our pattern.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen:

It appears to me that your answer to my claims about natural science not defending its own first principles is simply an attempt to side-step the issue.

First, you really make no explanation about how we know the first principles of being at all, namely, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality. The closest you come to discussing them is when you say, “The abstract sciences (mathematics and logic) are deductive constructs, they rest on self-evident axioms.” But mathematics and logic are only part of the universe of scientific discourse, and besides, the basis of “self-evident axioms” even there are nor purely formal, but existential. Non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality are presumed in chemistry and physics and other empirical sciences as well. May I restate a part of my argument you fail to address:

“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.”

If a chemist observes an explosion when he mixes two reagents, would he ever say, “Something happened, but there is no reason why.”? Of course not. But does he know this from chemistry or from some other source. He knows every explosion needs a reason from some knowledge other than chemistry. Either it is merely common belief, which might not be verified universally – OR he must know it from some other science. Certitude about these first principles of being is defended only in metaphysics. If metaphysics is a pseudo-science, as I suspect you contend, then where is this “belief” defended scientifically? That is why natural science presupposes philosophy from which it has traditionally, and rightly, gotten the certitude of its first principles.

Regarding the validity of sensation, you write: “The natural sciences are inductive constructs; they need the self-evident foundation of the senses. Neither of them can be “proven” either deductively or inductively. There is no need for that because they must be accepted not on “faith”, rather because they are self-evident.”

Again, you miss the point. Sensation is not self-evident, but immediately evident in its content. That does not answer the question as to whether that content can be trusted to conform to the real extramental world. Epistemological idealists, such as Berkeley and Hume, would deny that we can know an external physical world with certitude. That is why traditional philosophers regard positivism’s assumptions about our sense knowledge as being naïve. I do not deny that sensation is trustworthy. But I do insist that its verification requires a reflective epistemological analysis that is never even considered by chemists, physicists, psychologists, or biologists as such. Without proper philosophical foundations for your materialist assumptions, natural science is reduced to an act of pure faith, unsupported by reflective analysis.

Incidentally, it is the application of metaphysical first principles of being to the real extramental world that leads the metaphysician to see the necessity of a First Cause, God.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen,

In two further postings, it is evident that you are resting on two premises: (1) that anything, like a soul, is merely a useless hypothesis unless it can be empirically verified, and (2) that patterns of arrangements of atomic particles can account for emerging qualities of more complex entities, such as a cow.

The first claim rests on the positivistic error of assuming that every meaningful statement must be empirically verifiable. As the members of the Vienna Circle themselves quickly realized, the verification principle itself did not pass its own test. After all, is the term, “meaningful,” itself sense verifiable? More importantly, while empirical verification may provide valid knowledge, does this logically mean that all valid knowledge must be empirically verifiable? And, as noted above, is the principle of empirical verification itself empirically verifiable? Hardly! The soul is demonstrated by philosophical reasoning concerning the need for substantial unity in things above the atomic level, and the properties of the forms of these things, like cows, which are manifest through their activities.

The claim that emerging properties can be explained in terms of the novel patterns of physical components which make a larger thing, like a cow, misses the point of the existential unity of the substance, which in turn needs a unifying principle, the soul. Again, not empirically verifiable, but logically deduced. Moreover, when man is considered, his knowledge of immaterial objects and free will manifest properties which transcend the ability of mere matter to explain.

We have clear differences here, but while your claims sound more reasonable to many because they are enshrined in the language of natural science, nonetheless, they defy common sense at its root when they reject the existential unity of the world above atoms, including things like cows and you and me. Again, if atomist is correct, I am debating with someone who isn’t really there.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Spyder1jcd]

Dr. Bonnette:

Moreover, it is a mistake to think of a soul as some sort of spirit conjoined to a body. That is the mistake of Rene Descartes. For him, man is not really one thing, but two – res extensiva or body, and res cogitativa or mind. Having a soul “run” an AI machine would be that sort of Cartesian entity. On the contrary, Aristotle and St. Thomas embrace the hylemorphic doctrine: matter and form, body and soul, constitute correlative metaphysical principles whose unity constitutes a single living organism. One being, two principles. For Descartes, two beings – mind and body. That is why Descartes, ironically, became the Father of modern materialism, since he made the body so distinct from the soul that no one could determine exactly how they were joined, and as science more and more understood the functions of the body, the soul seemed to be less and less essential to anything. That is why atomists see no need for a soul. But the organism is a single entity, body and soul unified into a single existential substantial unity, a being. Form activates and specifies and unifies matter to constitute a single living organism.

Incidentally, since soul is the substantial principle of life, all living things have souls. Man alone has a spiritual soul. Animals have sentient souls and plants have vegitative souls. If you doubt the usage, ask yourself what you find in a zoo. Animals. Zoo is taken from a Greek word meaning life, and animal is taken from the Latin, “anima,” meaning soul. So the zoo is the place where living things are found, the things with souls. Don’t ask me about plants.

Dr. Bonnette

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the Catholic understanding of the soul that it is what separates man from animals and plants? Isn’t the soul what makes us in God’s image? Can you really say that an animal has a “sentient” soul or that a plant has a “vegitative” soul if the Catholic definition of a soul is the spiritual life force of humanity? How can a soul be anything other than spiritual?

And even if it could be anything else, are you suggesting that a mere sentient soul could evolve into a spiritual soul? Because if you don’t, how can you say that humanity is not made from separate components? Whether you believe Genesis or the evolution theory, man was not always man. At one point in the existence of the creature that became man, be it the “dust body” that God breathed life into or the homo sapien, it did not have a soul. That makes the soul a separate component, does it not? Perhaps we, as having been born with a soul, are complete substantial entities, but what about the first humans? In other words, isn’t all intelligence artificial?

And if you do believe in the idea of an evolving soul, doesn’t that mean that the “evolution” of AI development could make the transition from “sentient” soul to “spiritual” soul? Since a true AI would be, by definition, sentient, shouldn’t it have a “sentient” soul?

But perhaps this whole debate is missing the point of the question. Which is no surprise, since no one could possibly know the answer. All things are possible in God. If He wanted, He could bring a robot to “life,” as we know it. This debate seems to aim more towards whether a sentient machine could actually be classified as living or if it could be created as living, created with a soul. “Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul?” was not the right question for me to ask. What the correct question is, however, will need to be dwelt upon further.

But the debate being discussed makes for some interesting banter, as well.