Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul?

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Sir Knight:

Let’s look at this from a different approach …

We now have the ability to create artificial limbs, artificial heart, etc.

No one would argue that someone with an artificial leg wasn’t human and didn’t have a soul. What about two artificial legs? What about two artificial legs and two artificial arms? What about in addition to the artificial limbs, the person also has an artificial heart? Again, I don’t think that we would say that the person wasn’t human and lacked a soul.

Eventually, it will be possible to replace just about every part of a person’s body with an artificial part. Suppose we get to the point where the ENTIRE body is replaced with artificial parts. Does that entity still have a soul? Why or why not? And if “not”, then at what point does the person lose the soul?

Being human is constituted & defined ontologically; not by function, still less by materially verifiable function. Which is why a helpless, deaf, dumb, blind paraplegic is irreducibly human, and of irreplaceable value, and a robot is not. Humans are created by and for God, and are meant for the Beatific Vision by the very fact of their being human. And to be human is a total thing - one cannot become human by addition or subtraction of anything: either one is human from the first instant of one’s being, or one is not human at all, but only human-like in some ways.​

Addition of material parts, even artificial parts, don’t affect one’s humanity, because the soul is a spirit. And what is material, has no access to the spirit - unless the spirit and the soul form a metaphysical unity. Man is that unity, neither soul nor matter, but a union of the two. Being human is no more affected by addition or subtraction of matter than the Divine Nature of the God-man is affected by taking a human body. A cyborg is, if this is correct, not a machine-human hybrid, but a human being with lots of mechanical modifications to what he is made of; which is not the same as what he is. Being human, is not reducible to the sum of its constituent parts - it is related to them, but not made of them; it is manifested through them. AFAICS

No number of parts, no matter what they are made of, can affect what we are: human beings. Because what we are is a metaphysical reality, and what we are made of, is a material reality. The two have nothing in common; neither can be reduced to the other. Matter is bodily - metaphysical entities are not.

So that point can’t be reached - it doesn’t exist. What began as a human soul, will be one for ever; and it will forever be the soul of a human person, and be intended to be the soul of a human person. So the humanity of the entity mentioned is untouchable by the entire replacement of the body with artificial parts.

That was a very good question - thanks ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Hitetlen:

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

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.

Our pattern.

I doubt Dr. Peter Singer would quite agree - ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1994/94.10.02.html​

(The link is to a review of a book by Richard Sorabji in which Sorabji includes a detailed discussion of some of Singer’s suggestions) ##

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

First, you really make no explanation about how we know the first principles of being at all, namely, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality.

You are mixing several different subjects. The concept of non-contradiction is part of the laws of thinking: “A” and “not A” cannot be true at the same time, because otherwise there would be no such thing as a “true” or “false” statement. “A” is “A” (everything is itself) is evident, because without it we cannot know what we are talking about. Nothing mysterious about these. The “suffiency of reason” is evident, but not based upon some esoteric metaphysical reasoning, rather based upon billions of observations, hypothesis formings, their usage for predictions and their empirical verifications. Finally: “causality”. It is presumed to be true also because it was empirically verified billions of times. There is no need to explain them, they just are, and everyone accepts them as self-evident (chemists, etc.).
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

That is true, but there is no relevance. They are the basics of thinking, and anyone who would try to deny them, would be immediately refuted by his own words.
Dr. Bonnette:

It is the proper work of the metaphysician to defend these first principles.

Yes, and I did just that, without applying supernatural causes.
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

No, philosophy is not a pseudo-science at all. It deals with the basics of “what exists” (metaphysics), “how do we know it” (epistemology) and “so what now?” (ethics). These are good and valid questions, even though some philosophers like to come up with confusing new phrases (like “transworld depravity”) and convoluted sentence structures to hide the fact that they have nothing to say.
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

But it can. Not deductively, but experimentally. And that is why your following assertion is incorrect:
Dr. Bonnette:

Without proper philosophical foundations for your materialist assumptions, natural science is reduced to an act of pure faith, unsupported by reflective analysis.

There is no “faith” involved when billions of experiments support something. Is it possible, that we shall find something that would defy “causality”, for example? Yes, it is possible, and if and when that happens, we shall have to re-evaluate our principles. That is the beauty of natural sciences, they form a self-correcting process. When physicists asked an incorrect question: “is light a particle or energy”, reality quickly kicked their butt, and showed that their assumed duality (of matter vs. energy) was an incorrect dichotomy.
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

Only for believers. There is no need for a first cause.

I will continue with a reply to your next post.

 

[Rebecca_New]

To make a clone you must first have a zygote which is a sperm + ovum. The DNA is then altered with the cloning DNA. God created the sperm, the ovum, and the zygote-man just altered God’s creation. An AI has nothing of God, and can not have a soul no matter what you do to it.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

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.

but if you can’t tell that they’re “human” by having a sufficiently long conversation with them, then how can they be human?

Hitetlen:

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

so if i can’t detect a difference between the intelligence of a rock and the intelligence of an unconcious individual, then they must be identically (un)intelligent or (non-)sentient?

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

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”?

they’re “axioms” that involve things like necessary truths. and such.

Hitetlen:

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

i think we’ll call this one argumentum ad mysterium. read some more logic and you’ll see that your (or anyone’s) inability to comprehend something does not entail its falsity.

either that, or its simply a tacit petitio principii, and you include the concept “false” in your definition of “mystical”.

Hitetlen:

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

i don’t think “mysterious” means what you think it means.

“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it. … That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
(Feynman, Richard P. Nobel Lecture, 1966, 1918-1988, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter)

or maybe i’m wrong, and all of physics is false.

your choice.

Hitetlen:

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

you must be reading someone else’s posts, because i didn’t say that, either.

Hitetlen:

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”).

you lost me. i said nothing about “scientific” abstract objects. i was making a point that mathematicians don’t create math - they discover it, just like empirical scientists discover facts about the world. and if the discovery of mind-independent truth is ok in empirical science, what’s so problematic with it in other disciplines?

Hitetlen:

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

i dunno - try the ones you apply to determine that mentally-retarded individuals are human. or unconscious ones. or babies. or infants. or ones that don’t speak your language.

but here’s a question for you: it is now in principle impossible to determine the number of hairs on einstein’s head at 5:00pm on july 5, 1939. does that mean that there actually wasn’t a definite number of hairs on his head at that time?

it’s similarly impossible to demonstrate that einstein wasn’t identical to the individual that was the oldest person within 10ft of where he was positioned on that same date. does that mean that einstein must necessarily be identical with “the oldest person within 10ft of einstein’s position” at that time?

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

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,

That is not quite what I said: abstract ideas or concepts cannot be verified directly. They can be verifed indirectly, however, by applying them to reality and checking if their application results in verifyable hypotheses. Moreover, when contemplating if they should be part of a hypothesis, we should apply Occam’s razor, and see if we can get the same results with making fewer assumptions.

The soul is either a natural phenomenon or abstract concept. If it is a natural phenomenon, it can be detected, observed and verified. If it is just an abstract concept, then we can try to apply and see if it has any use, and if it does, then we have to find out if the same results can be reached without this assumption.
Dr. Bonnette:

and (2) that patterns of arrangements of atomic particles can account for emerging qualities of more complex entities, such as a cow.

Yes, that is a correct summary of what I said.
Dr. Bonnette:

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?

Since the word “meaningful” is an abstract concept, it cannot be directly verified, but it can be indirectly verified. So no contradiction there.
Dr. Bonnette:

More importantly, while empirical verification may provide valid knowledge, does this logically mean that all valid knowledge must be empirically verifiable?

The Pythagoras theorem is an abstract construct. Its prediction can be verified on concrete triangles (within the accuracy of measurements), but its veracity can be proven, directly, by reducing it to the self-evident axioms.
Dr. Bonnette:

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 application of Occam’s razor renders this assumption irrelevant. The same results can be explained perfectly by applying the concept of a pattern.
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

You engaged in mythology and circular reasoning again. There is a “soul”, because it provides “existential unity” (whatever it may be), which can be achieved only by a “soul”. What is this “existential unity”? If it requires a “soul”, then you use circular reasoning. If it does not require a “soul”, why assume it?

Do those four points which form a square have an “existential unity”? After all, if you just move one of them just a little bit away, the polygon ceases to be a square. Do they need a “soul” to hold them in place?
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

Certainly not. Freedom of action and abstract concepts are amply explained by the enormous complexity of the brain and therefore the mind.
Dr. Bonnette:

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.

Yes, I am here, as a pattern of the atoms, molecules, organs - all part of a homeostatic being. I will stay the same when some of my atoms are replaced during the cycle of feeding and excreting. In about 7 years all of our atoms are replaced. As time goes on, our patterns are also changing. When we learn new things, our pattern (the neural network of the brain) changes. This change may be significant or minor. Learning a new poem changes the pattern only slightly. If someone takes mind altering drugs, his pattern may change until the original person is not recognizable at all.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

but if you can’t tell that they’re “human” by having a sufficiently long conversation with them, then how can they be human?

By observing their behavior. You are on the wrong track here. If someone’s sentience is proven by a conversation, there is no need to investigate any further. If this is impossible, we may try to verify his sentience by other means.
john doran:

so if i can’t detect a difference between the intelligence of a rock and the intelligence of an unconcious individual, then they must be identically (un)intelligent or (non-)sentient?

That depends on the time frame. The “suffienctly long” requirement is left vague on purpose, to allow for different subjects to be scutinized. If the observation goes on for weeks and months, and the unconscious indiviual does not change, and the EEG does not detect brain activity, then we can safely say that the body is there, but the mind is not, therefore we do not deal with a sentient being any more. (see poor Terri Schiavo.)

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

you must be reading someone else’s posts, because i didn’t say that, either.

You did not use any “verb” to describe just how does this “abstract object” interact with our mind. I just chose a verb (“projected”) which would describe such an interaction. You are welcome to be more precise, and tell me what method is used so that the mind can interact with this “repository of abstract objects”.
john doran:

you lost me. i said nothing about “scientific” abstract objects. i was making a point that mathematicians don’t create math - they discover it, just like empirical scientists discover facts about the world. and if the discovery of mind-independent truth is ok in empirical science, what’s so problematic with it in other disciplines?

Well, let’s see. In a very good sense, mathematicians discover relationships which exist as the corollary of the axioms. The axioms, however were created by other mathematicians. Since there are infinitely many sets of axioms (not all of them are useful), we can also say that the mathematician, who first formalized these axioms - actually created mathematics.

Physicical scientists (physicists, chemists, etc.) really discover realationships existing in the real world and set up formulas to describe them. They do not create the relationships in any sense. Those relationships exist as physical properties of the physical world. There is no need to assume an abstract object. The physical attributes are enough.

The relationships exist independent of the observer. That does not mean that they exist as “objects”, if we wish to retain the meaning of the word “object”. I call them “abstract concepts”, you call them “abstract objects”.

The existence of objective relationships is undeniable. To call them “objects” is misleading. Pythagoras did discover the relationship pertaining to the triangles with a right angle, he did not create it. (it is the corollary of the axioms). So it seems that the difference between our views is mostly semantic “nitpicking”.

I think it goes deeper than that. While it makes sense to say that a mathematician discovers a new relationship, the same cannot be said about Beethoven and his 9th symphony.

To assert that there is an abstract “object” “out there” (where??) which corresponds to the 9th symphony is total nonsense. Is there also a 10th symphony which would have been “discovered” by Beethoven if he lived longer? Or a 324th symphony if he lived until the age of Methuselah? Where does this sequence of symphonies end?

Propositions in science (hopefully) reflect reality and the objectively existing relationships in reality. Art works are not “discovered” in any sense, they are created by the artists. There was no 9th sympony anywhere before Beethoven started to contemplate it.

The symphony itself is “nothing”, but a bunch of cleverly arranged vibrations of the air. The air exists independent of the observer, the vibrations exist independently of the listener, but the music does not. It gets created by the artist and the listener - in a joint “exercise”. The same music is beautiful to some listeners and a cacophony to others.

In conclusion: I have two problems with your concept of “abstract objects”. The word “object” insinuates that they exist somewhere, independent of the mind - so the question is: where are they and how do they interact with our mind? The second problem is that some abstract concepts (art works) are directly created and not discovered by the artists.

Therefore at least “half” of the “abstract objects” (the works of art) is meaningless. What say you?

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

By observing their behavior. You are on the wrong track here. If someone’s sentience is proven by a conversation, there is no need to investigate any further. If this is impossible, we may try to verify his sentience by other means.

ahh - so there are other ways for verifying humanity.

so why should anyone believe, of all the evidentiary “behaviours” that there are, that capacity to converse is a sufficient condition for a determination of humanity?
Hiteleten:

That depends on the time frame. The “suffienctly long” requirement is left vague on purpose, to allow for different subjects to be scutinized. If the observation goes on for weeks and months, and the unconscious indiviual does not change, and the EEG does not detect brain activity, then we can safely say that the body is there, but the mind is not, therefore we do not deal with a sentient being any more. (see poor Terri Schiavo.)

so we also need things like EEG scans. interesting.

and i’d be willing to bet that after five minutes on a computer or phone or other communications device, without receiving any response at all, you’d judge that the putative being on the other end of the line was not, in fact, human.

sounds like special pleading to me - we extend the time required for judgments of humanity for things that we already independently believe are human…

but why should we do that?

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

but here’s a question for you: it is now in principle impossible to determine the number of hairs on einstein’s head at 5:00pm on july 5, 1939. does that mean that there actually wasn’t a definite number of hairs on his head at that time?

Of course not. The fact that we cannot know precisely how many hairs were on Einstien’s head at any given moment, does not mean anything more that we don’t know “exactly”. We can make an estimate, however, and safely say that he had between 0 and 300,000 hairs on his head at any given time. By the way it was NOT impossible in principle to count his hair at any given moment, so your example is not relevant.

The idea of a soul is impossible to verify not just any given moment, rather in general. Not the same thing at all.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

ahh - so there are other ways for verifying humanity.

I never said otherwise, I just said that it is the “cheapest” way to establish it - and you acknowledged it. Why the surprise now?
john doran:

so we also need things like EEG scans. interesting.

Not necessarily, but it is a useful technique. To see if someone has diabetes, we need all sorts of complicated measurements. To decide if someone is alive, all we need is to see if he breathes - for a sufficient length of time.
john doran:

and i’d be willing to bet that after five minutes on a computer or phone or other communications device, without receiving any response at all, you’d judge that the putative being on the other end of the line was not, in fact, human.

I am not that impatient, and for an experiment of such importance, I would invest more time than that.
john doran:

sounds like special pleading to me - we extend the time required for judgments of humanity for things that we already independently believe are human…

but why should we do that?

To err on the side of caution But seriously, it is not possible to make absolutely sure that the being on the other end of the line is truly sentient. However, we can pretty much ascertain that he is not sentient. By extending the conversation we can minimize the error that we declare someone non-sentient when in fact he is.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

You did not use any “verb” to describe just how does this “abstract object” interact with our mind. I just chose a verb (“projected”) which would describe such an interaction. You are welcome to be more precise, and tell me what method is used so that the mind can interact with this “repository of abstract objects”.

you chose a pejorative term - a term that you chose because, i assume, you think it sounds ridiculous.

but whatever. if the mind is, in fact, an immaterial principle of intellection, then you tell me why the method of acquaintance for mathematical knowledge can’t be analogous to the method of acquisition for empirical knowledge? godel, for instance, thought precisely that.
Hitleten:

Well, let’s see. In a very good sense, mathematicians discover relationships which exist as the corollary of the axioms. The axioms, however were created by other mathematicians. Since there are infinitely many sets of axioms (not all of them are useful), we can also say that the mathematician, who first formalized these axioms - actually created mathematics.

no. not in the least. mathematicians also discovered the axioms. they discover the whole ball of wax, and it is a ball of wax that is not subject to empirical (dis)confirmation because the relationships between all of these abstract objects are necessary.

if they’re not, perhaps you could explain to me why mathematics does not proceed via the inductive method, and how, in spite of this, inductive evidence could actually ever confute mathematical truth? what evidence could do so? how would one go about determining that fermat’s theorem is now false. note carefully - i did not ask how one could demonstrate that the alleged proof was actually incorrect to begin with (as john bell did with neumann’s proof of the impossibility of hidden variables theories of QM), but that, though it was true, it is no longer true now.

Hitetlen:

To assert that there is an abstract “object” “out there” (where??) which corresponds to the 9th symphony is total nonsense.

it’s hard to take you seriously when you write stuff like this, i’m afraid. do you think that this is really the way to engage in a debate? by simply stipulating that stuff that you neither understand nor like is “nonsense”? is this what you read when you read books by serious thinkers?

anyway. asking me “where” abstract objects reside - as if they might be lounging in a bar somewhere, having a beer - is as meaningful as asking what’s to the left of the universe.

 

[john_doran]

Hitleten:

Is there also a 10th symphony which would have been “discovered” by Beethoven if he lived longer? Or a 324th symphony if he lived until the age of Methuselah? Where does this sequence of symphonies end?

you are no longer talking about abstract objects here, but rather the truth values of counterfactual conditionals. whatever “Beethoven’s 10th symphony” might be, it would only have that name in some world where beethoven wrote it down following the composition of his 9th.

if you’re asking me how many possible combinations of notes, and numbers and arrangements of instruments there are, then the answer is infinite. i would have thought that was obvious. surely you believe the same thing, you just don’t believe that they all exist “somewhere” and “project” themselves into the minds of composers (which makes two of us).
Hitleten:

The symphony itself is “nothing”, but a bunch of cleverly arranged vibrations of the air. The air exists independent of the observer, the vibrations exist independently of the listener, but the music does not.

isn’t it more accurate to say that there is the 9th, and there are performances of the 9th? i mean, if you collected 10 orchestras, all playing the 9th simultaneously, would there be 10 9th symphonies? or if you played it on 100 stereos, would there be 100? and if it is not being played, does that mean that the 9th does not exist? what if it’s being played, but by deaf musicians and for no audience? does that mean that those musicians are actually doing nothing?

Hitetlen:

In conclusion: I have two problems with your concept of “abstract objects”. The word “object” insinuates that they exist somewhere, independent of the mind - so the question is: where are they and how do they interact with our mind?

i have to admit that it’s mildly amusing to me to see you ask me “where are abstract objects?”, when you are so happy to tell theists that the cosmological argument is silly because it requires asking “what happened before time?”, which is obviously an absurd question…

we intuit them.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

Of course not. The fact that we cannot know precisely how many hairs were on Einstien’s head at any given moment, does not mean anything more that we don’t know “exactly”. We can make an estimate, however, and safely say that he had between 0 and 300,000 hairs on his head at any given time.

right. so just because somone can’t tell you exactly how to formulate some kind of definitive test for something’s rationality in no way entails that there isn’t one.
Hitleten:

By the way it was NOT impossible in principle to count his hair at any given moment, so your example is not relevant.

wrong. it’s in principle impossible now. and since his hairs weren’t counted back then…
Hitleten:

The idea of a soul is impossible to verify not just any given moment, rather in general. Not the same thing at all.

wrong again: we are acquainted with abstract objects. acquaintance with abstract objects requires an immaterial principle of intellection. therefore we possess a non-corporeal rational substance.

hey presto - verificato.

of course, if you mean that it can’t be empirically verified, then you may be right, but so what? there are lots of things that can’t be empirically verified and, what’s more, don’t need to be.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

I never said otherwise, I just said that it is the “cheapest” way to establish it - and you acknowledged it. Why the surprise now?

i’m not surprised.

but i asked you another question: of all the possible behaviours that count as evidence of rationality, why believe that capacity for conversation is a sufficient behavioural condition for judging something to have intelligence?

Hitetlen:

Not necessarily, but it is a useful technique. To see if someone has diabetes, we need all sorts of complicated measurements. To decide if someone is alive, all we need is to see if he breathes - for a sufficient length of time.

but without the EEG, how would you decide whether the comatose being that is obviously non-conversant nonetheless has a “functioning” brain? which apparently matters to you.

Hitetlen:

I am not that impatient, and for an experiment of such importance, I would invest more time than that.

how long? days? months? years? how many years?

Hitetlen:

To err on the side of caution But seriously, it is not possible to make absolutely sure that the being on the other end of the line is truly sentient. However, we can pretty much ascertain that he is not sentient. By extending the conversation we can minimize the error that we declare someone non-sentient when in fact he is.

this is all i ever said: while ability to converse may be evidence of what you’re calling “sentience” (and i’m calling rationality), it’s not dispositive, and is subject to correction by other data.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

if you’re asking me how many possible combinations of notes, and numbers and arrangements of instruments there are, then the answer is infinite. i would have thought that was obvious. surely you believe the same thing, you just don’t believe that they all exist “somewhere” and “project” themselves into the minds of composers (which makes two of us).

Yes that is obvious. I think that maybe I understand what you assert, namely: “that a sequence of arbitrary air vibrations corresponding to the 9th symphony existed as a possibility before Beethoven actually sat down and wrote it”. If this is what you mean by “abstract object”, then I - finally - agree with you.

The trouble is (as far as I am concerned) with the phrase of “abstract object” that it insinuates an “objective” real existence, not just a possibility.

If all you ever meant is a possibility, then I apologize for the long misunderstanding. My only defense it that you never mentioned the word “possibility” in all your posts. Maybe it was obvious to you, but not to me - especially, since I look at the language in an analitical fashion, English not being my mother tongue.

If my understanding is still in error, enlighten me.

 

[Hitetlen]

john doran:

wrong again: we are acquainted with abstract objects. acquaintance with abstract objects requires an immaterial principle of intellection. therefore we possess a non-corporeal rational substance.

In the light of my understanding that “abstract objects” are simply possibilities, which may or may not materialize in reality, I see no reason to accept that they require an “immaterial principle of intellection” - again - whatever that may be. (A simple explanation would be appreciated, so at least I would know what are you talking about. It seems like an elaborate way of saying “soul”. But I may be mistaken. Would not be the first time.)

Our mind is still nothing more than electro-chemical interactions of billions of neurons, which are able to conceptualize real objects and imaginary reflections thereof, and also totally impossible ideas. Therefore the “non-corporeal rational substance” is an unnecessary concept to explain our conceptualizing powers.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Spyder1jcd

You write: “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 “vegetative” soul if the Catholic definition of a soul is the spiritual life force of humanity? How can a soul be anything other than spiritual?”

No, St. Thomas Aquinas represents the pinnacle of Catholic philosophy and he teaches, like Aristotle, that all living things have souls. A soul is simply a principle of life. What separates man from animals and plants is that he possesses a spiritual soul. It is Descartes who confused everybody by suggesting that animals were mere automata, soulless machines. In hylemorphic philosophy, all material things are composed of form and matter, and soul is simply the name given to the substantial forms of living things.

You write: “And even if it could be anything else, are you suggesting that a mere sentient soul could evolve into a spiritual soul?” No, I am not saying that. Souls do not evolve, but are principles which actually tend to keep things in the same species, not evolve them to higher ones. If a spiritual soul is given by God to man, it requires a creative act.

You write: “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 sapiens, it did not have a soul.” First, why do you necessarily oppose evolution theory to Genesis? My book, Origin of the Human Species, shows how the traditional Catholic reading of Genesis may be understood as compatible with evolution theory. See my website: www.origin.youshoppe.com On the hypothesis that man evolved from earlier primates, the earlier primates would have had sentient souls until God transformed their body into true man by informing it with a spiritual intellective soul.

You write: “Since a true AI would be, by definition, sentient, shouldn’t it have a “sentient” soul?” No, first we should note that the term, “artificial intelligence,” is virtually a contradiction in terms. If something is artificial, it is made by the “art” of man and does not possess substantial unity. But to say it has “intelligence” means it has intellect which is spiritual. But no artifact can have a soul, much less a spiritual soul, since it is not in fact alive and soul is the principle of life. Lacking a soul, it would thus lack a sentient soul. It could neither sense nor understand anything at all, contrary to the clever appearances its human programmers would have given to it.

You write: “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.” Again, if it is merely a machine, it does not sense at all. A “sentient machine” is a contradiction in terms, since being a machine, it lacks a soul, and lacking a soul, it lacks any sense faculties by which to experience any sensations.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen,

You write: “The concept of non-contradiction is part of the laws of thinking: “A” and “not A” cannot be true at the same time, because otherwise there would be no such thing as a “true” or “false” statement. “A” is “A” (everything is itself) is evident, because without it we cannot know what we are talking about. Nothing mysterious about these.”

Correct, but you fail to realize that logic is consequent to metaphysics. It is because the mind first grasps the concept of being that the natural metaphysics of human intelligence affirms these logical constructs as an application of the prior metaphysical principle: Being is being; being cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. While the consequences of denying the principle reveal that its denial is absurd, you confuse the application of the principle with its foundation.

You write: “The “suffiency of reason” is evident, but not based upon some esoteric metaphysical reasoning, rather based upon billions of observations, hypothesis formings, their usage for predictions and their empirical verifications. Finally: “causality”. It is presumed to be true also because it was empirically verified billions of times. There is no need to explain them, they just are, and everyone accepts them as self-evident (chemists, etc.).”

On the contrary, if these principles are “self-evident,” why do they need to be, or why does it even matter, if they are “empirically verified billions of times”? Like all materialists, you fail to grasp the distinction between sensation and intellection. We do not “see” causality. We “see” through sensation a given phenomenon and “understand” with our intellects that in that phenomenon causality is at work. But to establish the universal validity of causality could never be the work of “billions of observations,” since the particular can never produce the universal, even if the particular be measured in terms of billions of instances. These metaphysical principles are not the work of mere sense observation, but rather the product of an intellectual analysis of the experience of being and its implications. This goes back to the half millennium before Christ when Parmenides first stated the principle: “Being is; non-being is not. Non-being does not beget being.”

You do not appear to realize that natural science’s origins trace to the Greek philosophy of nature. In fact, until the 20th Century, the natural sciences were merely sub-sciences of the philosophy of nature. That is why they do not defend their own first principles, but assume them as reflectively defended by prior philosophical sciences. If you doubt the history here, ask yourself why it is that the most advanced university degree given just happens to be the Ph.D., that is, Philosophiae Doctor or Doctor of Philosophy? Many natural scientists have simply forgotten (or were never informed about) their roots in philosophy and assume their metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions are “self-evident” or obvious and based on “empirical verification.”

Finally, you cite me as follows:
“Originally Posted by Dr. Bonnette
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.”

To which you reply: “But it can. Not deductively, but experimentally.”

By saying that you can “experimentally” answer the question as to whether the content of sensation can be trusted to conform to the real extramental world, you have betrayed your complete lack of understanding of the dilemma materialists face in defending extramental knowledge. By appealing to “experiments,” you are using your senses to observe physical phenomena. And then, you use your conclusions from your experiments to try to verify the validity of your senses. This is an obvious vicious circle from which your philosophy has no escape, since your only recourse to truth is “empirical verification.” The philosopher employs rational analysis of sense experience in order to justify its validity, but does not assume the senses can be trusted at the outset in order to make his analysis. When you do an experiment and then try to prove your senses thereby, you have first trusted your senses to read the data of the experiment and then used that data to prove you can trust your senses.

I do not doubt or deny the validity of sensation. I am simply saying that your epistemological premise of “empirical verification only” is clearly insufficient as a philosophical worldview, and that natural science is a valid discipline which presupposes principles traditionally, and correctly, taken from other disciplines, namely, the philosophical sciences of metaphysics, psychology, and epistemology.

Dr. Bonnette