Poll: Do Robots Have Souls?

[Connor Lonske]

No.

OK fine, they don't have souls because there is no such thing. Now if you ask me if they can think and have a logical thought process, then not yet, but now they are pretty close with that super computer on that game show they had a few days ago.

 

[Flatfrog]

This is a great answer.

*Bows*

But I have a question regarding the last definition: since our personal identity is always changing (most of us change much more than we are willing to admit). Are we always changing our soul?

There's no shortage of unanswerable questions once you want to talk about souls. I find that the best analogy is with clouds. Clouds clearly exist, and yet at any one moment it's hard to say which water drops are part of a cloud and aren't. Also, there is a clear sense over time that this is the 'same' cloud that it was a few moments ago, despite the fact that the cloud has shifted, morphed, lost and gained molecules etc. Clouds, like souls, are fuzzy, amorphous, virtual things, that only have any meaning as a high level of description. Other such 'epiphenomenal' concepts are words like 'community' - we all know that phrases like 'the gaming community' mean *something* but we can't be sure what it is.

That's the problem with discussions like this - they're always arguments about word meanings more than about actual facts. Speaking for myself, I'm happy to use the word 'soul' in my own way, which is close enough to everyone else's meaning that it mostly works, but when you want to discuss it seriously, you have to be a bit more precise.

I think in this case, there's a much better word to use, which is 'person'. If I was asking the same question (or what in my opinion is the same question!) I would ask 'could a robot be a person?'. It's interesting from a legal perspective too: could a robot commit a crime? Go to prison? Be a victim of torture? When people abuse their Sims characters, we don't feel they're committing a moral wrong, but as those characters get more sophisticated, does that become a more difficult thing to be sure of? I think so.

 

[tzimize]

Souls in the traditional sense is a "thing" that can stay behind after you die, or...move on...whatever.

I dont believe in souls, and so I dont believe robots can have them either.

If for some reason I DID believe in souls...meh...I dont...so I simply cant imagine. The thought of souls is stupid to me. Especially when you think about advanced robotics. Or even advanced genetics.

Its a bit arrogant to think that we have souls just because we are carbon-based life forms instead of say...silicone or....something else entirely. The origin of life matters little, it is still relatively possible to define. Souls does not make sense. In us, or in robots.

 

[PurePareidolia]

No. A soul is essentially a word people use to describe a "ghost in the machine" - an invisible, undetectable quintessence that separates things that think from things that don't - Something that bridges the gap between consciousness and instinct. The problem is that no such gap exists, at least not in any possible way we can measure. Especially in the case of the robot. With the robot, everything it can do would be programmed by it's creators - there's no need for a "soul" to explain any part of it's behaviora - that would simply be a violation of Occam's razor, and after all - how could it get a soul? at what point would one bind to it? how could you tell the difference between a robot with a soul and without one - it would be an impossible task because there's no clear definition of what a "soul" is.

I can use the same reasoning to state humans don't have souls - how can you "have" something that people just made up to fill a void in our knowledge? especially when it's impossible to prove that a "soul" represents any more concrete a concept than that? humans are just biological robots - there's nothing in our behavior inexplicable or unlinkable to our neurological activity, in exactly the same way there's nothing a robot could do that couldn't be traced back to it's programming like I said.

Because the human and the robot are equivalent by every empirical standard, we are forced to accept that either both have souls, or neither do. To assume the former without compelling evidence is intellectual dishonesty. Actually this particular thought experiment is one of the best arguments against dualism that could be presented, because only wishful thinking can lead to an affirmative conclusion.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

No they do not.

Which puts them on the same level as humans I suppose.

 

[Flatfrog]

No. A soul is essentially a word people use to describe a "ghost in the machine" - an invisible, undetectable quintessence that separates things that think from things that don't - Something that bridges the gap between consciousness and instinct. The problem is that no such gap exists, at least not in any possible way we can measure. Especially in the case of the robot. With the robot, everything it can do would be programmed by it's creators

I can't let that one pass. That's like saying 'everything I do is programmed by my genes' - in one sense it's trivially true, and in another it's rubbish. A robot (or any program) that was sophisticated enough to be considered a candidate for consciousness (assuming that the engineering problem of building such a thing can be solved, which I think it can) would have to be one that can learn from experience. That learning *ability* would have to be built in somehow, but what it learns, the personality it develops as a result and any opinions it might have on the world would be completely contingent on its experiences. In that sense it would be no more programmed than you or me.

there's no need for a "soul" to explain any part of it's behaviora

I don't think a soul is an explanation, I think it's a description; a single term that fuzzily defines a particular kind of conscious being. I realise that others disagree, which is why I think the *word* is a problem - it just means too many different things.

I really should be working, but this happens to be my all-time favourite topic - can you tell?

 

[Exterminas]

Something that can not be measured, doesn't exist. If it would be otherwise the word "existance" had to be redefined. Because it would mean anything that can't be measured (read: everything) would be allowed to be regarded as existant.

Have you ever heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? A pristine example of things that are unarguably in existence, yet cannot be measured. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot measure with 100% certainty the location and momentum of quantum particles. If you know the momentum at a single point in time, the location is immeasurable. Yet would you argue that the location is nonexistent? Of course not. That would be absurd.

Existence and measurability are not the beginning and end of a cause and effect relationship. Besides, measurement is very inaccurate. If you measured the circumference of the Earth 10,000 times, you would get 10,000 different results, no matter how sensitive your equipment. Why do you think the concept of significant digits was invented?

Unrelated: my captcha just had the Greek letter 'psi' in it. What the hell, Escapist?

Stuff like that is considered existant, because it can be assumed so, based on measurable stuff. Sure there is a leap of faith involved, because you ultimately can't prove it, but it's a far smaller one than required for the christian soul-idea.

 

[randomrob]

No they don't. They could be considered a person the same as most Humans can be, but robots don't have souls and neither do humans. However, if you insist upon invoking unnecessary metaphysics into the equation and you think humans have souls, then for the sake of semantics they could be said to have a soul. I would recommend Star Trek Next Generation: "The Measure of a Man" for this issue, as the episode asks the question of whether Data is a person, or a mindless machine that is the property of Star Fleet.

 

[VulakAerr]

There's no such thing as a soul. However, I believe in time, robots will have as much self-awareness and emotion so as to be considered equal with humans.

We are, after all, a very advanced but fallible computer.

Regarding the edit in the OP: The burden of proof is on those claiming the existence of a soul. Sorry.

 

[ChocoFace]

As Descartes put it: If it thinks and feels, it has a soul.

 

[Flatfrog]

As Descartes put it: If it thinks and feels, it has a soul.

Or to quote someone else (can't seem to track down the original source): The question is not "does it think?" but "does it suffer?"

 

[randomrob]

I can't let that one pass. That's like saying 'everything I do is programmed by my genes' - in one sense it's trivially true, and in another it's rubbish.

But you are totally programmed by your genes, your environment and your upbringing. Libertianism is bullshit and determinism is the inalienable truth of the matter. The argument is as follows:

1) Everything in the macroscopic universe obeys physical laws of nature and of mechanics, in other words, everything is causal discounting quantum phenomena which are random.

2) Therefore everything that happens is either causal or random

3) Your actions are something that happens

4) Therefore your actions are either causally determined or are random impulses, or are a combination depending on the action. In short: Free choice is an illusion.

This experiment proves it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ4nwTTmcgs

And here is the wikipedia article on the philosophical concept:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

I will turn down my beliefs and say that humans do have a soul in this scenario, therefore I can answer your question properly.

I would strongly say no, just because a robot becomes sentient and cognitive does not give it a soul. I think we could agree that in this scenario, if souls are real then we could assume that there is some form of god or deity without sounding to presumptuous. In that case I would think that this god or deity would limit souls to only natural beings e.g. Humans, tigers, lions, bears etc.

It doesn't exactly seem prudent to give robots, even sentient and cognitive ones, souls. I know that may sound too harsh, but if you think to the near future, robots like that will start being made every day in factories so they can do all the tasks we don't want to do. Imagine if every computer on Earth was given a soul, there would be far too many of them to handle for that god or deity thing.

Now thinking harder, it seems to answer this question we must define soul, cutesy of Google definitions I found this.

Define Soul:
the immaterial part of a person; the actuating cause of an individual life
person: a human being; "there was too much for one person to do"
deep feeling or emotion
the human embodiment of something; "the soul of honor"

Notice the third definition please, so according to these definitions it may well be possible for advanced robots to posses souls. I would still say no, even if souls are real, but I would definitely have to not disagree with them having souls quite as strongly as before.

 

[TheScottishFella]

May I answer your question with a question? Does this robot have the ability and instinct for survival? does feel lonely when left alone? These aren't perfect qualities of Humans but if you don't have the Instinct for survival whether you be Man or animal you don't have a soul wehther or not a soul is real. So I can't vote yet. However this is my opinion.

 

[Ithos]

Souls? dunno.
But with all the "spirits of nature" going around to every damn tree in the forest, I'm shure the machines have spirits too

 

[Seneschal]

No. A soul is essentially a word people use to describe a "ghost in the machine" - an invisible, undetectable quintessence that separates things that think from things that don't - Something that bridges the gap between consciousness and instinct. The problem is that no such gap exists, at least not in any possible way we can measure. Especially in the case of the robot. With the robot, everything it can do would be programmed by it's creators - there's no need for a "soul" to explain any part of it's behaviora - that would simply be a violation of Occam's razor, and after all - how could it get a soul? at what point would one bind to it? how could you tell the difference between a robot with a soul and without one - it would be an impossible task because there's no clear definition of what a "soul" is.

I can use the same reasoning to state humans don't have souls - how can you "have" something that people just made up to fill a void in our knowledge? especially when it's impossible to prove that a "soul" represents any more concrete a concept than that? humans are just biological robots - there's nothing in our behavior inexplicable or unlinkable to our neurological activity, in exactly the same way there's nothing a robot could do that couldn't be traced back to it's programming like I said.

Because the human and the robot are equivalent by every empirical standard, we are forced to accept that either both have souls, or neither do. To assume the former without compelling evidence is intellectual dishonesty. Actually this particular thought experiment is one of the best arguments against dualism that could be presented, because only wishful thinking can lead to an affirmative conclusion.

Agreed on all counts. But if there is no gap between hard-wired programming and sentient thought, you'd get a sentient being by merely ramping up the complexity of a computer (though you'd probably have to model its structure on a human brain). Then a robot with simple algorithms would basically be something like a pigeon, while a sufficiently complex robot would be indistinguishable from a human. Except they'd be purely software, unless we programmed them with digital hormone-analogues. But even then, a consciousness that's basically independent of a body needs no concept of gender. And if we have technology advanced enough to produce these AIs, can't we do it with carbon and call it "pregnancy"? I mean, unless we treat them like robot slaves, we're essentially procreating, only without DNA.

Okay, these questions probably go a bit beyond the scope of the thread. I just think that if we get to the point where we make human-like artificial intelligences, we'll have trouble pinpointing what exactly a "human" is.

 

[Flatfrog]

(Sorry everyone, I'm going to get a bit off topic and up my own arse now!)

I can't let that one pass. That's like saying 'everything I do is programmed by my genes' - in one sense it's trivially true, and in another it's rubbish.

But you are totally programmed by your genes, your environment and your upbringing.

I don't deny it, but that's so much programming it becomes indistinguishable from free will. Once you take into account that many factors, chaos/complexity theory comes into play. The question is how *predictable* my behaviour is, and the answer is that it's pretty variable but a hell of a lot less predictable than the behaviour of, say, Jupiter. Free will just means that you'll make a better prediction of where I'll be tomorrow by asking me than you will by analysing the atoms in my body and my surroundings and putting together a complex physical model - or even making a complete map of my neurons.

That's not to say that at heart, I'm not a mechanical object subject to the laws of physics, and that in theory such a mechanical model isn't *possible*, but that to try to predict my actions that way would be to miss all the interesting levels of structure in between, from molecules to genes to cells to tissues and organs to neural connections to symbolic representations to thoughts and beliefs.

1) Everything in the macroscopic universe obeys physical laws of nature and of mechanics, in other words, everything is causal discounting quantum phenomena which are random.

You could just as easily say that *nothing* is causal. Causes and effects are phenomena that only make sense when you describe the world at a level more complex than atoms. In a pure, Theory of Everything way of looking at the universe, there are no people at all, just subatomic particles interacting according to infinite laws where the entire state of the universe is a single piece of information. As soon as you want to talk about causes and effects, you have to talk about macroscopic objects and that raises the possibility of free will.

This experiment proves it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ4nwTTmcgs

The Libet experiment is a bit of a red herring in my opinion - it involves measuring a 'moment' when you make a 'conscious choice'. The idea that such a 'moment' exists and can be measured at a millisecond level of accuracy is very questionable - choice is something that is distributed through the brain over a period of time.

Two great books by Daniel Dennett: the classic Consciousness Explained which should be required reading for everyone interested in this kind of thing, and the much trickier but very interesting Freedom Evolves.

 

[interspark]

EDIT: sorry, I don't mean to sound bossy, but a lot of people are openly saying "souls don't exist", so can we just respect other people's views and not state our own as if they are concrete. You don't KNOW that for a fact so could we please say "I think", thanks.

I only don't know if souls exist "for a fact" in the same way that I don't know Spider-man doesn't exist for a fact. And as of yet, I haven't found a consistent definition for what a soul even is (which is a big part of the reason we can't "prove" they don't exist). The concept of a soul is inherently vague and increasingly it's functions are being supplanted by theories developed from actual observation instead of specious metaphysical assumptions.

What evidence or reason do you have for thinking souls exist? If you don't have any, don't you think it's a little presumptuous to assert that they do? You have no right to act offended when I or anyone else rejects your unfounded, vague assumption right there on it's face.

firstly your example is a lousy one, you CAN prove Spiderman doesn't exist because it was written as fiction and no-one ever claimed it to be reality, nor has anyone seen him, which they would have done if he did exist, secondly, there is ample proof of the existance of souls, while science may be able to provide explanations of how and why we move and function, no-one can possibly hope to explain the intricacies of thoughts actually forming in our heads, "I think therefor I am", finally, i never claimed for a fact that souls exist, i simply stated that i think that they do, and all i ask is that others state their opinions in a similar way, and not act so arrogant as to claim that they know for a fact things that can confirmed be nothing short of death

 

[interspark]

EDIT: sorry, I don't mean to sound bossy, but a lot of people are openly saying "souls don't exist", so can we just respect other people's views and not state our own as if they are concrete. You don't KNOW that for a fact so could we please say "I think", thanks.

Really? You need that extra little bit of assurance?

I THINK that the idea of a soul is utter bullshit.

Does it really help?

the assurance that, after death we don't simply cease to exist and spend an eternity in utter blackness devoid of the ability to think? yes, i think the assurance is quite nice, thank you very much

 

[The Long Road]

Something that can not be measured, doesn't exist. If it would be otherwise the word "existance" had to be redefined. Because it would mean anything that can't be measured (read: everything) would be allowed to be regarded as existant.

Have you ever heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? A pristine example of things that are unarguably in existence, yet cannot be measured. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot measure with 100% certainty the location and momentum of quantum particles. If you know the momentum at a single point in time, the location is immeasurable. Yet would you argue that the location is nonexistent? Of course not. That would be absurd.

Existence and measurability are not the beginning and end of a cause and effect relationship. Besides, measurement is very inaccurate. If you measured the circumference of the Earth 10,000 times, you would get 10,000 different results, no matter how sensitive your equipment. Why do you think the concept of significant digits was invented?

Unrelated: my captcha just had the Greek letter 'psi' in it. What the hell, Escapist?

Stuff like that is considered existant, because it can be assumed so, based on measurable stuff. Sure there is a leap of faith involved, because you ultimately can't prove it, but it's a far smaller one than required for the christian soul-idea.

For someone with such a strict definition of existence, you certainly have a rather liberal view of 'measurable'. When you start justifying your position by quantifying leaps of faith, it's time to revise your argument.

But I'll move on to other non-measurable things. What about the Higgs boson? Neutrinos? Dark matter and dark energy? These things are all currently immeasurable, and may remain so forever. Their existence is only justified based on incomplete data from other experiments and calculations. Scientists literally made something up to fill the gaps in their understanding. They could be totally wrong. Basing an idea off of a lack of data is a shaky idea at best.

Which brings me to the single most frustrating and hated idea in science: you can't prove a negative. Anyone who has taken an introductory geometry course has done proofs, and the only things that can be proved are positives. Implied proofs are the only way to demonstrate the truth of a negative, and those are simply saying 'because, to our knowledge, X any Y cannot exist at the same time, X is false because Y is true'. Even still, it relies on the idea that a positive is provably true. Since the very idea of a soul is something that transcends our reality, it would make sense that science wouldn't be able to do anything regarding it.