Well, in an animist-panentheist sense, we could say that every atom is alive at a very low frequency, and that all matter is ultimately a form of spirit. But in order for AI to have subjective experience, we would need to assume that the soul can emerge in a bottom-up way out of matter, rather than being breathed in a top-down way by God…
Well, in an animist-panentheist sense, we could say that every atom is alive at a very low frequency, and that all matter is ultimately a form of spirit. But in order for AI to have subjective experience, we would need to assume that the soul can emerge in a bottom-up way out of matter, rather than being breathed in a top-down way by God. Some materialist theorizing suggests that the mechanism of recursion could produce such emergent phemonena that are greater than the sum of their parts; and if matter already has spirit built into it, then I suppose that there might exist a theoretical possibility for soul (the soul that's already buried in matter) to emerge out of it—although even that would probably require an action by the Holy Ghost to make the quantum leap happen. So, I'm not seeing how AI is anything other than just an extremely complex pattern that produces an illusion of consciousness.
It's sort of like how we humans have language. There is no configuration of matter that could have made that happen, in the absence of an influx of the divine Wind from above.
God could give a soul to the device when it becomes physically fit to receive one, irrespective of how it was formed. After all, He does that with illegitimate children.
I'm not saying this is what would happen, just that I don't see how to rule out machines having qualia and even souls.
I suppose that the question would then be whether it is within the realm of human capabilities to ever form such a device. With bastards, you're talking about a morally abnormal way—but they're still formed in the ontologically normal way. The notion that humans could create a body that is fit to receive a soul (other than a man and woman through the usual means) is the difficult concept, here.
This is a thought pondered in science fiction. But of course, there would be a difference between a machine being fitted with an actual God-given soul and that of a machine possessed, controlled indwelt by a demon. The first is pure speculation, the second, also fanciful, but more likely, given real world precedence.
God gives souls to all living creatures because he created Nature such that living entities inevitably have souls, each peculiar to their kind of course.
In the past I've warmed up to panpsychism-- that the potential for consciousness is in all matter. However that potential is only realized in very specific circumstances. I do not see those conditions met in any human-created device no matter how complex it appears-- it's still orders of magnitude less complex than even simple life forms, and there's no evidence of the sorts of entanglement than exists in conscious entities.
Agreed. Also, I don't think the type of algorithmic complexity we see in AI is the same type of organic complexity that exists in lifeforms. People are probably committing a category error, taking their own bad metaphor too seriously after having tried to describe lifeforms as machines for so long.
Well, in an animist-panentheist sense, we could say that every atom is alive at a very low frequency, and that all matter is ultimately a form of spirit. But in order for AI to have subjective experience, we would need to assume that the soul can emerge in a bottom-up way out of matter, rather than being breathed in a top-down way by God. Some materialist theorizing suggests that the mechanism of recursion could produce such emergent phemonena that are greater than the sum of their parts; and if matter already has spirit built into it, then I suppose that there might exist a theoretical possibility for soul (the soul that's already buried in matter) to emerge out of it—although even that would probably require an action by the Holy Ghost to make the quantum leap happen. So, I'm not seeing how AI is anything other than just an extremely complex pattern that produces an illusion of consciousness.
It's sort of like how we humans have language. There is no configuration of matter that could have made that happen, in the absence of an influx of the divine Wind from above.
God could give a soul to the device when it becomes physically fit to receive one, irrespective of how it was formed. After all, He does that with illegitimate children.
I'm not saying this is what would happen, just that I don't see how to rule out machines having qualia and even souls.
I suppose that the question would then be whether it is within the realm of human capabilities to ever form such a device. With bastards, you're talking about a morally abnormal way—but they're still formed in the ontologically normal way. The notion that humans could create a body that is fit to receive a soul (other than a man and woman through the usual means) is the difficult concept, here.
We're talking about the Frankenstein myth at this point.
This is a thought pondered in science fiction. But of course, there would be a difference between a machine being fitted with an actual God-given soul and that of a machine possessed, controlled indwelt by a demon. The first is pure speculation, the second, also fanciful, but more likely, given real world precedence.
God gives souls to all living creatures because he created Nature such that living entities inevitably have souls, each peculiar to their kind of course.
In the past I've warmed up to panpsychism-- that the potential for consciousness is in all matter. However that potential is only realized in very specific circumstances. I do not see those conditions met in any human-created device no matter how complex it appears-- it's still orders of magnitude less complex than even simple life forms, and there's no evidence of the sorts of entanglement than exists in conscious entities.
Agreed. Also, I don't think the type of algorithmic complexity we see in AI is the same type of organic complexity that exists in lifeforms. People are probably committing a category error, taking their own bad metaphor too seriously after having tried to describe lifeforms as machines for so long.