Poll: Do Robots Have Souls?

[Realitycrash]

By my personal definition, a robot does not. An android (more complicated mechanism) is a different story.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between the two?

Now, this is just a personal opinion of mine, but my perception is that robots are best defined in Isaac Asimov's universe, where they have been advanced-but-limited in terms of development. Intelligent and capable, but will many times be hit with severely-compromising logic errors due to the complexities of the world versus their programming. Conflicts arisen within the Three Laws system Asimov developed proves that something as small as the wrong command can lead to numerous hazardous problems or at least brain-death for the robot. Only way to get around it was for robots to develop loop-holes (The Zeroeth Law, in the Asimov case). In other words, what can be a small development problem for a human being can sometimes be a daunting or horrific task to a robot.

Whereas, my definition of an android is that you develop a complex machine to emulate the most complex ways of thought and a physical status being as closely-functional to man as you can. The easiest example (and universally-accepted, I hope) would be Brent Spiner's role as Commander Data from Star Trek. He was incomplete in that a catastrophe interrupted the fullness of his development, but you could see that his intellect was largely an unhindered thing, except for where it hadn't been completed. An android is supposedly more open and capable of intuitive thought and reasoning. If you tell an android that an answer is wrong, it will not mechanically insist it is right, but rather question this thought and rethink its calculations.

This is how I would choose to reason it out in a manner that seems rational. If I'm wrong, no biggie.

Didn't we just admit in a different thread that an Android and a Robot can be synonym?
A robot is just "a machine that performs a task", more or less. An Android is "a human machine".

I don't recall admitting that. I recall making a joke about science and not sweating the small stuff.

Alright, alright. I'd say they can be used as synonyms at times, but if you disagree, that means there really were a paradox, so WIN!

 

[Jfswift]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

Even though your robot may be sentient it likely does not have a soul. I define a soul as being a "lifeforce" that organic beings have, with their bodies being nothing but organic machines more or less. A robot I suppose could have one although it'd need to be manufactured or transplanted/ grafted onto it's frame.

 

[Delock]

I subscribe to the belief of anything living has a soul, and that life constitutes more than just a pulse or the flow of energy, and is hard to describe but easy to name. This fits in with my particular idea of the meaning of life to be the full formation of a soul, and then the shaping of it, which is where the idea of sentience comes into play.

To put it simply, there's a difference between an "advanced soul," which is the idea of a spirit, something that carries on thoughts and mindstructure, and a soul, or just a "spark of life." A spirit has a whole afterlife (which I truly haven't really delved into as much as I should have. All I've really come up with is that there's a form of Hell, be it oblivion, punishment, or just damnation, ie. in the absence of an omnipresent force. If there is a Heaven or opposite of Hell, I've yet to really focus on it), while an unformed spark can at most become part of new life. It's important to note that sentience only comes into the shaping process, not the forming (meaning nonsentient life may fully develop itself, but a sentient one can go on to shape what its spirit will eternally be like).

So if a robot is more than just a machine performing a simple task (and I mean something like just an arm here), than yes it has a soul. If it does not think however (doesn't have to think up complex ideas, it just has to be able to supply its own input such as finding a solution to its power source being low just like an animal has to do when they are hungry), it does not have a spirit.

This system is actually just as (un)fair to humans as it is to everything else I apply it to (so robot soul advocates who want to complain about how cruel it is for thinking robots that can't work outside of their programming should listen up), as it's rather harsh on people who die before their time, or who are raised wrong, or suffer brain injuries and don't die immediately.

 

[Realitycrash]

If we go with a biblical soul then the idea an none human could have one is I'm quite sure it is out of the question. However soul has slowly come to mean consuness to us in this day and age. A shift that makes for an actual debate

So we are shifting this towards "Does Robots have consciousness?" from "Does Robots have souls?"
Quite a difference, since several robots clearly do not have consciousness, while others might arguably have. What do you consider are the requirements for consciousness then?

 

[Therumancer]

It's a hard question to answer to be entirely honest. By definition a soul is kind of a mystical thing that comes along with being a living thing, being intristic it goes along with a person despite a change in his physical form. Basically even if you transfer your mind into a robot body or something, you'd still have a soul due to your origin.

Now, a robot being a creation...

I think the best way to answer that would be to say that a robot could most accuratly be said to share the soul of it's creator. Sort of like how an artist puts an undefinable essence into a painting, musical creation, sculpture or something similar which goes beyond the merely technical. Something that people have talked about with artwork for a long time, how the creator influances it, and something that shouldn't be good objectively will wind up that way for some reason, and something that is technically perfect might be missing some trait that is impossible to quantify. A robot would be a sort of extension of the person who made it.

So basically, if we get to that point I'd say that Robots have souls in a way, but they don't have their own souls. This doesn't mean that a robot is merely a puppet or anything, after all artistic creations sometimes take on a life of their own and go in radically unexpected directions from what the creator intended. Look at great works of art and how they have been used, or re-interpeted long after their creator was gone.

 

[HotKakes]

Well, obviously the religious doctrine would oppose such an outlook but personally I feel having a soul is free reign to all. Yes, even the animals, even the grass that grows, heck even the the bacteria has a spark of life that gives it a function. Mind you, I like to think we all have souls though I know its only a preference on how I like to think, kind of like how I like to think what goes around comes around. Never the less, I say that a soul is a universal quality that isn't reserved for just the creatures who created the word "souls".

 

[Realitycrash]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

Even though your robot may be sentient it likely does not have a soul. I define a soul as being a "lifeforce" that organic beings have, with their bodies being nothing but organic machines more or less. A robot I suppose could have one although it'd need to be manufactured or transplanted/ grafted onto it's frame.

If organic beings are nothing but machines, why can't this "lifeforce" be an electric pulse in a robot?

 

[Realitycrash]

In the future, if people are going to say "By definition, a soul is..", I'd like them to give me a hyperlink to this definition, and explain why their definition is the valid one, instead of the dozens of others.

 

[jawakiller]

A robot is not capable of even simple emotions. They can imitate them but not actually create them so therefore they have no souls. Of course they will take over the world one day and put us all into a video game. Nerd paradise, all the way.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

well, humans don't have souls either silly child. our conciousness (spell fail) and awareness of our being is what we mistaken to be "souls."

 

[emion]

what really O.- Im pretty sure they don't cuz their a manmade object. made out of metal an stuff :3

yes, and we're made out of blood and stuff, that shouldn't define whether or not we have a soul though

eh... you asked about my opinion, you got it. so bugger off -.-

hi *offers hand* welcome to an ethics debate

O.- really, I though it was more like a POLL !!!
why making it a poll when you obviously have such strong opinions about robots having soul's... HAHA reminds me of that ginger video X'D

the poll is for people to state what they think, the reason we comment is so that we can argue our case

well then SOOORY (gay-wave) the only reason I commentet was to get a stupid badge -.-; really didnt think I had to argue my case to the d*mn court O.<

 

[Dumori]

The Cardinal Problem of Psychophysical Dualism (I.e "How can something purely Spiritual affect something purely of flesh") has some flaws, yes, but nothing says the soul has to be purely of spirit.

Agreed. However the pervading action of people is to say lets assume the cardinal soul. So it seems only fair for me to focus my debate on to showing it's flaws.

I my self am of the belief that thing like written text stored data exist above the physical but in a way they can't effect it on there own. The same can easily apply to souls and such. However while such a belief is hard to support I have found it as hard to attack.

I also agree that there could well be a set of as yet undiscovered Psychophysical laws and due to the fact they'd likely involve minor changes in the brain its easy to think such could be very hard to pin down and discover.

 

[FalloutJack]

By my personal definition, a robot does not. An android (more complicated mechanism) is a different story.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between the two?

Now, this is just a personal opinion of mine, but my perception is that robots are best defined in Isaac Asimov's universe, where they have been advanced-but-limited in terms of development. Intelligent and capable, but will many times be hit with severely-compromising logic errors due to the complexities of the world versus their programming. Conflicts arisen within the Three Laws system Asimov developed proves that something as small as the wrong command can lead to numerous hazardous problems or at least brain-death for the robot. Only way to get around it was for robots to develop loop-holes (The Zeroeth Law, in the Asimov case). In other words, what can be a small development problem for a human being can sometimes be a daunting or horrific task to a robot.

Whereas, my definition of an android is that you develop a complex machine to emulate the most complex ways of thought and a physical status being as closely-functional to man as you can. The easiest example (and universally-accepted, I hope) would be Brent Spiner's role as Commander Data from Star Trek. He was incomplete in that a catastrophe interrupted the fullness of his development, but you could see that his intellect was largely an unhindered thing, except for where it hadn't been completed. An android is supposedly more open and capable of intuitive thought and reasoning. If you tell an android that an answer is wrong, it will not mechanically insist it is right, but rather question this thought and rethink its calculations.

This is how I would choose to reason it out in a manner that seems rational. If I'm wrong, no biggie.

Didn't we just admit in a different thread that an Android and a Robot can be synonym?
A robot is just "a machine that performs a task", more or less. An Android is "a human machine".

I don't recall admitting that. I recall making a joke about science and not sweating the small stuff.

Alright, alright. I'd say they can be used as synonyms at times, but if you disagree, that means there really were a paradox, so WIN!

Except that I removed it with science.

SCIENCE!

 

[dagens24]

Humans don't have souls so I can't see why robots would.

 

[Realitycrash]

A robot is not capable of even simple emotions. They can imitate them but not actually create them so therefore they have no souls. Of course they will take over the world one day and put us all into a video game. Nerd paradise, all the way.

How do you know that they can't "create" emotions? Are you an AI-engineer? What does emotions have to do with a soul?

 

[Realitycrash]

By my personal definition, a robot does not. An android (more complicated mechanism) is a different story.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between the two?

Now, this is just a personal opinion of mine, but my perception is that robots are best defined in Isaac Asimov's universe, where they have been advanced-but-limited in terms of development. Intelligent and capable, but will many times be hit with severely-compromising logic errors due to the complexities of the world versus their programming. Conflicts arisen within the Three Laws system Asimov developed proves that something as small as the wrong command can lead to numerous hazardous problems or at least brain-death for the robot. Only way to get around it was for robots to develop loop-holes (The Zeroeth Law, in the Asimov case). In other words, what can be a small development problem for a human being can sometimes be a daunting or horrific task to a robot.

Whereas, my definition of an android is that you develop a complex machine to emulate the most complex ways of thought and a physical status being as closely-functional to man as you can. The easiest example (and universally-accepted, I hope) would be Brent Spiner's role as Commander Data from Star Trek. He was incomplete in that a catastrophe interrupted the fullness of his development, but you could see that his intellect was largely an unhindered thing, except for where it hadn't been completed. An android is supposedly more open and capable of intuitive thought and reasoning. If you tell an android that an answer is wrong, it will not mechanically insist it is right, but rather question this thought and rethink its calculations.

This is how I would choose to reason it out in a manner that seems rational. If I'm wrong, no biggie.

Didn't we just admit in a different thread that an Android and a Robot can be synonym?
A robot is just "a machine that performs a task", more or less. An Android is "a human machine".

I don't recall admitting that. I recall making a joke about science and not sweating the small stuff.

Alright, alright. I'd say they can be used as synonyms at times, but if you disagree, that means there really were a paradox, so WIN!

Except that I removed it with science.

SCIENCE!

Bah! HUMBUG! I'll remove you with fire, sir!

FIRE!

 

[Grospoliner]

Nope. The soul is a medieval pseudo-mystical concept that tries to rationalize cognition, sentience, free-will, and the limitations of the physical world; and reconcile it all in the framework of the judeo-christian religious dogma. The concept was so pervasive that even scientists attempted to quantify the soul by measuring dying individuals to determine if it had a weight. Obviously they found out that it didn't.

Ultimately philosophers on this subject would have to conclude that souls/spirits/anima/etc, in order to exist, would have to have no physical component whatsoever and yet somehow mystically retain the capability to interact with the physical world (with nothing short of the extent that it could control human beings, oops so much for that free-will thing). Naturally this can never see eye to eye with scientific thought whose fundamental basis is that every cause has a quantifiable effect.

Not that this stops people from believing in supernatural.

"There's a sucker born every minute"
-P.T. Barnum

 

[SinisterGehe]

Soul doesn't exist therefor robots can not have souls. But this is subjective to your spiritual views, in my view there is no soul, spirit or being, there is only complex calculating machine that originated from a random event in random situation.

 

[Realitycrash]

The Cardinal Problem of Psychophysical Dualism (I.e "How can something purely Spiritual affect something purely of flesh") has some flaws, yes, but nothing says the soul has to be purely of spirit.

Agreed. However the pervading action of people is to say lets assume the cardinal soul. So it seems only fair for me to focus my debate on to showing it's flaws.

I my self am of the belief that thing like written text stored data exist above the physical but in a way they can't effect it on there own. The same can easily apply to souls and such. However while such a belief is hard to support I have found it as hard to attack.

I also agree that there could well be a set of as yet undiscovered Psychophysical laws and due to the fact they'd likely involve minor changes in the brain its easy to think such could be very hard to pin down and discover.

Unless this thread spiral out of control, like all philosophy threads do in the end, perhaps you as OP would like to put up some limiting conditions for what, in this sake of argument, a soul is?

 

[Jfswift]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

Even though your robot may be sentient it likely does not have a soul. I define a soul as being a "lifeforce" that organic beings have, with their bodies being nothing but organic machines more or less. A robot I suppose could have one although it'd need to be manufactured or transplanted/ grafted onto it's frame.

If organic beings are nothing but machines, why can't this "lifeforce" be an electric pulse in a robot?

I suppose you could run a virtual soul inside a machine since I treat a soul as nothing more than say, an extra limb, an extension of the body, possibly being extra-dimensional in nature. I think a real soul would be more beneficial though seeing as if the body is destroyed it would act to preserve what memories the body had. Now that I think about it I wonder if the Geth have a soul then since they back up everything to a harddrive somewhere.

edit: by "real soul" I meant one that is outside our dimension. A field of energy attached to that body, which is the core of it, all of it's memories and thoughts, a place for it's consciousness to that is protected.