The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

If we had no soul, then how could we be aware of our existence (e.g. how could we have qualia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia))? We would be robots! Matter by itself cannot explain our self-awareness. I mean, can you BE a computer, for example? No! Even if it's as (or more) complex as a human brain. You ARE a human being because of your soul. You cannot be a table or a chair, for example - only a living being. Not even a robot.

What is your opinion?

Self-awareness? What self-awareness?! Can you observe self-awareness? Can you give scientific evidence that it exists?

No?

HA! It DOESN'T exist. It's just a delusion.

I am not sure if 'self-awarness' is the right question for deciding if something is really a spirit. That is to small a category, and I am not sure how well defined it is.

I am defining self-awareness as awareness in general. You are aware of the existence of yourself, you ARE yourself. You are different from a, say, computer or mirror, because you can take decisions, for example, you have FREE WILL. I understand, it's hard to define. And I'm not referring only to self-awareness, you see.


That's downright nihilism.
Can you give scientific evidence that, say, the chair you are sitting on exists? NO! You can say that you see it. But can you trust your senses?
Self-awareness is proven by itself. It is a primary notion. By being self-aware you are aware that you are self-aware.

Aha, but there's a big difference there.

I can sense a chair; I can smack it, and it hurts, I can feel it, I can see it. I can see the text on the screen, etc, etc.

But you can't smack your so-called "self-awareness", you can't feel it, you can't see it. I, as a human, can see with my eyes, and feel with the nerve endings in my hands, etc, etc. If you want to define "self-awareness" as the ability to sense things, then it's just your nervous system. If you want to define it as your ability to sense yourself, it's still your nervous system (since yourself is a physical entity, it can be sensed like any other.) If you want to define it as your ability to know that you exist, that's in your neurons, and again, it's part of the nervous system, and perfectly explicable by physical laws.

If you want to define "self-awareness" as "being aware that you are self-aware" then you have a circular definition, and thus, although I can't argue against that, it is not, itself, and argument in the first place, and it doesn't say anything.

If you want to say "self-awareness is proven by itself", then you're just making completely unfounded claims and/or using circular logic, and I can step out, as it is pointless discussing with you.

If an information processing system contains a model of itself, then one can say it is self-aware.
You can choose to call such an arrangement the beginning of a 'soul', like Douglas Hofstadter does.

As an extension of your argument, Valaggar, since you seem to hold the idea that "a soul is required to be self aware," fill me in on this: When we inevitably design an artificial intelligence that becomes self aware, is it mystically imbued with a soul at that very instant? Because it would seem to me that it's just the electrical connections interacting in a particular way to cause the understanding of the concept of self awareness (much like the human brain, really).

BINGO! That's (self)-awareness! (I repeat, I use this term because I lack a better one; I'm in fact referring to general awareness and to free will).

The n.s. relays the info to the brain. The brain interpretes it. It works out a response. But somewhere in the process, YOU get to choose the response. (Free will!)

And don't expect the notion and the soul to be so easy to comprehend. They're not material, after all.

Yes, I am perfectly aware that it is circular reasoning. I used it to show that you cannot prove self-awareness through valid methods. Neither dismiss it.


You are a physical body, still. Yes. I was not referring to the ability to sense your body.

If you are a simple physical body with no soul, why are you yourself? I mean, remember the robot analogy. A robot, no matter how complex, is not alive. Because it has no soul.

Artificial intelligence cannot become self-aware; self-awareness is transcendental. It of course needs more than just electricity.

I didn't know this was heavy concepts week!

I think people need to believe in a soul so that the Hitlers of the world will recieve a seperate fate from the Mother Theresas of the world. We also have a need of self importance. To think that our efforts upon this world are not all in vain.

I believe we are all thiests. Some believe in god and some find god in science and scientific theories. We all have the need to satisfy that same void.

RTyp06, those are nice opinions.

And there you are completely wrong. Why does it not have a soul if it is capable of thinking about itself, thinking about people, having opinions, and so forth? You are mixing two definitions of soul, the second of which has nothing to do with the first and, frankly, is baldly biased against other modes of existence.

Here you're trying to prove that we all have a soul solely on the fact that were human...can you now prove that a (computer) with artificial intelligence doesn't have one?

Star Trek ventured down this question in an episode were DATA's self awareness came into question. Does DATA have a soul? Could you prove he doesn't (IF) he were a REAL construct and not a fictional character? That's what intelligence is...being self aware. That's what most evolutionists are trying to discover is when we went from animal instinct to intelligence...from monkey to man...the missing link...

GOD...perhaps...but I question how two people Man and Women could populate the world without having genetic problems from inbreeding...that, and if GOD only put man on one planet in this great big universe, all I have to say is...what a waste of space...

I'd suggest looking at the matter from the flip side: assuming for the moment that all (or at least most) humans are intelligent and self-aware, we already have a process for constructing an intelligent, self-aware being; it's called "reproduction". Constructing an artificial intelligence with self-awareness then reduces to reverse engineering and reproducing the human mind (admittedly a highly non-trivial task). One of the questions raised in doing this is how much can a human mind be changed before losing self-awareness and/or intelligence; calling a test-tube baby an "artificial intelligence" would be stretching the term quite a bit. The assumption here is that we can construct a non-human mind that retains the properties of intelligence and self-awareness; considering that other animals show some signs of both (albeit less clearly than humans), there is probably room for quite a lot of variation.

Intelligence can, to some extent, be determined by outside observation. Methods include IQ tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ), which typically measure ability at solving some sort of puzzle, and the Turing test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test), which tests whether a machine is intelligent by checking whether it can converse with human beings in a way indistinguishable from a human being. If it converses like a human, you have as good a reason to believe it is intelligent as you have to believe that the people posting here are intelligent based on their posts. Experiments also strongly suggest that behaviour is determined by physical processes in the brain, which supports the idea that intelligence is a physical process.

Self-awareness is a lot harder to handle, as the only way we have of directly detecting it is experiencing your own self. For all I know, you could all be a bunch of zombies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) (albeit quite intelligent ones) and I'm the only consciousness (I'm assuming this is false, on the grounds that the observations I can make suggest you are like me). Although hypotheses have been advanced regarding the physical nature of consciousness (e.g. that the EM field of the brain is the consciousness, which is pretty much the opposite of Valaggar's assertion, or that consciousness is the path-selecting mechanism in a many-worlds quantum multiverse), it is unclear whether any of these can be tested. One important question here is whether consciousness exists in a separate entity to the brain (a "soul") or not. In this case, one could have soulless humans, disembodied souls and/or transfer of souls between brains. However, unless the soul carries with it something that can be observed (e.g. memories), we have no way of identifying it without directly experiencing it. If a soul exists separately from the material brain, one wonders how it attaches to the brain when the brain is grown. In any case, I don't see any particular reason why an artificially created mind wouldn't get a soul, just like a newborn baby (unless it is somehow transmitted from the parents or assigned by some so far unobserved entity (e.g. God)).

Based on the above reasoning, I find it plausible that intelligence and consciousness arise from physical processes and that a non-human conscious intelligence could therefore be created artificially, although I'm quite uncertain about the consciousness part. However, as I'm equally uncertain about the consciousness of human beings, I believe that we should err on the side of acceptance if and when we create or run into artificial intelligence.

Just something I had bookmarked: The Mystery of Consciousness (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html)

You see, especially after reading Arne's bookmarked article, that it is very strange to explain our consciousness as the presence of some physical processes in the brain. What DO THEY HAVE SO SPECIAL?! Why isn't, then, any physical process conscious? Just because these processes are used in thinking? They have no idea what they are used for, after all.
More logical is to explain a transcendental phenomenon such as consciousness by transcendental means such as the existence of the soul.

Why is it that you believe they are not?

You mean that consciousness could the path-selecting mechanism in the Copenhagen interpretation. In MW, there is no path-selecting mechanism. The whole idea is that it never makes up its mind.


Extremely elaborate feedback mechanisms. That's what they've got that's so special.

Let me rephrase that: In the many-worlds interpretation, you still perceive collapse to have occurred, because your consciousness is bound to one of these worlds. In the Copenhagen interpretation, an observer (a consciousness?) causes waveform collapse in the single universe.

A self-organizing patterning system, no less.

In the debate between us having self-awareness or souls and objects
not having (or maybe having) awareness, I would recommend ya'll
read two Tom Robbins novels, if you haven't already:
Still Life With Woodpecker
Skinny Legs and All

I would also like to add that awareness can change based on
levels of consciencesness and chemical balance in the brain
(due to drugs, adrelaline, near death, etc). This leads me
to think that awareness is basd more on physical things
and chemical make-up, rather than a soul.

Also, it would appear most animals and, perhaps plants, are aware
to an extent. Do they have souls?

Or you could read Gödel, Escher, Bach - and Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. That's a fun, if highly difficult, read. After wading through that, you'll look back on this conversation and go 'ah'. Maybe  'aaaaaaaah', even.

Science and Spirits, an Idiot's Summary:


Science Going Against Spirits:

The Brain with its many nerve cells, chemicals, and complicated structure, is still a very mysterious topic, allowing much of what could be called a "Spirit" or "Soul" to be explained away as the territory of the Brain.

There is no really great documented evidence that a Spirit exists at this point, it is pretty hit and miss. Things like Telepathy probably have a good deal more evidence around them, than does the Spirit issue.


Science Going For Spirits:

Science has many serious theories on things such as dark energy or dark matter, which cannot directly be observed or interacted with, from what little I understand. Only their influence on other things can be measured, supposedly. This is somewhat similar to the concept of a Spirit, in some ways, making it more of a possibility, as these other strange elements of the universe are made more clear or proven to exist (if such a thing is possible.)

If Matter and Energy cannot be destroyed, that also enhances the possibility that there could be somethings else which while changeable, cannot be removed from existance, ever.


So basically, it is an area that science is not even close to answering one way or the other. This will probably be the case for a very long time to come. What you really believe will have to come from what little facts are already out, your personal experience, and your personal intuition or gut on this.

And on a related note, let's say "Spirit" instead of "Soul" because it sounds much cooler and more importantly as a Spirit myself I am used to using the former term. If you don't agree with me on this, you are a self-hating house ghost and the world wants you to die and then live a million lives as an intestinal parasite.



Or perhaps even 'Thdok-Bryg-Ahhh'.

If you're looking for the soul, a new and 'better' kind of matter is not what you're looking for. Dark matter being the soul wouldn't solve anything. It would just push the issue back one more layer. Not an answer. It's in the pattern.

I did not know that there was something "better" than normal Matter and I would be interested to know your definition of "better" on this subject. :P



First of all, whoever said I was trying to solve anything? You cannot at this point prove either to be the case, science does not yet have enough information.

Second, I never said DM was the stuff of spirits. What I meant was science is supposedly finding things that do not seem to follow natural laws as we previously understood them. If they turn out to exist, then that would expand what is considered possible in the natural universe. This makes it so that elements of the lore behind 'spirits' that were only considered 'supernatural' and thus ridiculous, could eventually be accepted as natural and real properties of some things. This does not prove that spirits exists or anything, it just makes the whole spirit thing a more likely possibility than it was before.

From what I understand a spirit is supposed to be something that cannot be destroyed or detected, you can only see how it influences other things. If other things in this universe turn out to have these traits than that boosts this idea as having a greater chance of being true. That is all I was trying to say.

If something affects something we can measure, the scientific process can be applied to it, experiments, measurements, theory formulation and all. The problem with the self-awareness thing is that we don't know what to measure, and the current hypotheses are a bit sketchy. Behaviour seems to rely pretty clearly on purely physical processes, though, but it's not clear whether that's relevant.

What you would be looking to measure would probably be somewhere in the brain, or in the whole thing maybe. Either way, I bet that if there was something going on there, it would be at a very small level.

That is unless you want to go ghost hunting or research supposed telekinesis or something crazy, but this is going out onto a limb that you do not need to do and could also prove irrelevant anyhow.



I am not sure what you mean or if that makes complete sense. It sounds like you are saying that if you have two clone individuals who have been raised in the exact same way, they will always make the same decisions, all the time, absolutely. You still have that weird free will thing where you can just decide to turn around on a whim and do something else.

Actually, I'm not entirely convinced free will isn't an illusion. Sure, the universe doesn't seem to be entirely deterministic (depending on how you interpret quantum physics, I guess), so I guess there's still some wiggle room for free will there. Of course, to believe in strong AI, I have to believe we are essentially computers to start off with, but I could go either way on that (doesn't look promising, but breakthroughs hard to predict).

Summary: I freely admit that my only clue on this subject is that I don't have one.

Free will doesn't mean you could turn around and do something else. It is a term for how the choices are made.

Free will and determinism are not at odds. Consider the alternative: instead of your actions being determined by the smooth operation of a computing machine, your mind, they are random. Is a marionette free just because we hooked its strings up to the ultimate RNG? Of course not.

Novus

If we were entirely just computers, then I think that it would be impossible to explain our emotions. Not how the emotions are triggered, but the feelings they provide you with. Even if it could experience these, a pure computer would not have a use for these, it would make an assessment as to what the best course of action was and then do it. There is something that just seems unnecessary about emotions when you look at complex intelligent life in this way.


Death_999

I do not think our choices are random or pre-determined based on various factors. I think it makes incredibly more sense that we make choices right at the moment we make them and that they are not picked at random, but helped along by emotional influences that are themselves influenced by the logical and 'intuitive' parts of the computer-like brain.

Emotions are, in a sense, the motivation that humans have to do anything; if they weren't motivated to move, they probably wouldn't develop into intelligent beings.

Computers have one motivation: "Been booted, work for human." A truly intelligent and adaptable computer would probably have more... and they would probably be a lot more like emotions.

And that is why we are not just computers. Computers do not need to be motivated.

Also, what is your definition of "intelligent beings", specifically?



They have no motivation, they are just a bunch of chain reactions going off. The computer does not think "must work for human" like a robot in a b-movie, it just operates, just as a bicycle does when you provide it with mechanical energy. I know this sounds obvious, but it is an important distinction, none the less.



But why? Why would it need to be able to feel and be subject to emotional influences? How does this make it more intelligent?

And how do you create a machine that actually feels in the first place?

Do computers need to  help us browse the web? No.

Unless you mean computers need to do what we program them to, in which case, yes. And thus, if we figure out how to tell them to want things for themselves and make decisions and so on... then it won't be unnecessary any more.


Looked at that level, then that is exactly what we are. It is useless to consider this question on that level.


He probably meant 'self-aware', or 'sapient', which is what we've been talking about.


Well, that's a trick; but clearly there is some way we do it; at the very least, they could emulate our method.

Death_999

And I am sure you can use Mathematics to create methods for determining when they should feel or 'want' something or how much to want it, but trying to create feelings using science. . .I am not sure how that makes sense. There are a lot of things you can describe with mathematics, but I do not think happiness or pain or anger or the way any other emotion feels can be made into a program. Triggers of these emotions probably, but not the feelings themselves.



That is a relatively bold statement considering how little we know of ourselves and our brains. It might be more accurate to say that we see some similar activity in our own brain matter.

Keep in mind that every computer on this planet has been built by us. We as a species know about every single part. Our own brain we are not even close to fully understanding. We have built computers that can do some of the same tasks using similar and completely different methods, but we are nowhere near being able to build a human brain, not even out of materials we have more experience with.



People have to learn to be self-aware, that term does not fit either. Sapient also does not work as there are other advanced species that are like us, even if they lack hands or communcation skills as good as ours (either way and it is basically no technology for you.)

That was not really what I was talking about though. I was asking how does being able to feel things make you more intelligent? Not talking about how emotions are triggered or what reactions the specimen exibits when they are, I am talking about the act of feeling itself, and how it supposedly makes a superior intelligence that is more adaptive and competitive than a computer/brain that skips this emotional middleman.

(Just for clarity's sake, I am asking this as an agnostic with a firm belief in evolution, so no need to move from the current 'spiritual' territory into a 'religious' tangent discussion or anything.)



If it were clear, this thread probably would not be here in the first place.

But I think this much is clear- the human brain has the ability to calculate when to trigger which emotional feeling and how much of an emotional influence to use for that situation. And we probably should be able to create from scratch or emulate from an existing example, this much.

But how an emotion feels and creating this out of numbers. . .if even remotely possible, is far from clear I think it is safe to say.

Those properties were kind of the point. "self-aware" and "sapient" fit what I was saying rather well.

An emotion is basically a chemical imbalance in the brain, which affects all the neurons and makes them behave somewhat differently.

This should be fairly easy to replicate in a neural-net-based computer.

Unless he is talking about the experience of an emotion, which I guess is part of the self-awareness issue.

There is no reason to believe that anything that matches the physical effects of an emotion would not also match the "experience" of the emotion.

Still, Elvish, your belief is really strange. Why would this be true? What mysterious property does matter have which gives it feelings?

Plus, consider the moral implications of the non-existence of the soul. If we are guided only by the deterministic reasoning of our brains - eventually with some randomness added - we are not responsible for our actions, because we couldn't do otherwise! We would have no free-will, and good and evil wouldn't exist.
Of course, if you say that we GET to choose, then you say that matter also has a mysterious property of disobeying the laws of physics! (According to which, the brain will act always the same or almost the same under the same conditions - and by almost I refer to the slight intervention of luck in the equation)

Elvish_Pillager

Yes but they are a tangent from the current discussion because a "Spirit" or "Soul" does not need to be either of those things. What proof is there that new-born babies or fetuses are aware of themselves? They seem to just react to their emotions and what they observe going on around them. How self-aware are you in a deep sleep? This is irrelevant to the core question.



You seem to be side-stepping what I was saying. I think you are stuck on how the emotions are triggered. The brain structure/chemicals/activity has a huge influence on how our emotions are triggered, so there is no argument there. But the emotions that we 'feel' or 'experience' are what I am talking about.



Perhaps, but this is another tangent if I understood you correctly. For all we know, if you create a machine with an exact structural and functional design to that of the human brain, it could just become a 'host' or 'vessel' for a 'spirit' or 'soul'. Same thing could go for anything else that seems to show the 'symptoms' of having emotions, though this seems unlikely in some possible scenarios (like a machine that is designed to only mimick us in everyway, but nothing more.)


Novus

Yes that is it, only I am not talking about self-awareness in addition to that, I am only talking about the feelings.


Valaggar

Moral implications, what are you talking about? Should we be designing our understanding of reality based on what we believe or feel is moral or should we really just be looking for what is there? You make it sound as though we are designing our own universe and need to do so responsibly, when we are really just trying to figure out what are the rules for this one.

And 'good' and 'evil' have nothign to do with this topic. They are matters of personal opinion as everyone has their own definition, they are not physical laws or anything similar, and most importantly they do not make the existance of spirits/souls any more/less likely.

As previously stated, it's the immensely complex structure called the 'brain', which maintains elaborate networks and updates based on a wide variety of inputs.



Wait. That's not right. You mean, the moral implications of the soul being implemented in matter.


We are a learning system. You can hold such things responsible even... nay, especially in a deterministic environment.


You didn't read what I said about free will, did you? Free will is not the ability to do otherwise. it is a description of the process which led to the decision.

True, they are not physical laws, but ethical principles/conventions. In everyday life, we use this concepts a lot, and we shouldn't if we had no free-will to be responsible for good or evil.
And of course, this subject is going a bit off-topic, so I won't press unto it.

You can't be responsible for something you did forcibly. If someone held a gun by your head and ordered you to put fire on a house, you choose the only option that makes sense, so you can't be blamed for it.
You probably want to say that punishment is good because it gives feedback to the learning system which is ourselves, such that it won't repeat the same mistake. Well, strange learning system, since there are occassions when you pick an action very mistakenly, and aware of this, because of your feelings.

Why need to be motivated? Motivation is for beings that have emotions. Motivation means that you try to stimulate the feelings of a person to do something. So simply, we don't need emotions. We would be far more efficient without them. As I stated above, emotions can affect your reasoning.

As Deus_Siddis said, you are confusing the material foundation/cause of a feeling and the "feeling" part of a feeling. Complexity is not enough, complexity only helps the reasoning, not the emotional part.

That, as you say, is not free will. However, its failure to be free will has nothing to do with determinism.


I wouldn't argue that, not directly. I would say that since we are best modelled as having free will, punishment is a sensible concept. Again, the gun-to-head example terminates free will without bringing in determinacy.


That's not what motivation is. Motivation is the part of an entity with free will that chooses what to want and act towards.


But if we didn't have emotions, what would be the purpose of efficiency?


Well, thank you for telling me I'm so confused when you haven't asked your question clearly. It's not quite http://xkcd.com/c169.html territory, but it's getting there.

You mean how does a subjective experience arise from a configuration of matter. I ask, instead, how could it possibly not arise when the matter actually implements one?

You guys are getting out of hand. :-\

Death_999

What are you saying, that we have a purpose and that it is to experience life through emotions (like in a form of creationism or something?) Life is not a gaming console, it is not there for entertainment. It is the product of Evolution, which is something that does not have a purpose. If something is more efficient then it is going to have a serious advantage when it comes to survival.



Matter can affect more than just other matter. It can also affect things in a very indirect way, like how seeing someone that you care about get hurt, causes you to feel a kind of pain as well. There is no direct matter connection here, but the message crosses the gap.

So the matter could just be a part of the trigger system that fires off the emotions, whatever they actually are, in a similar fashion.

Death_999

OMG, that is not just a forum avatar, that is what he really is!!! :o


I suggest a new strategy Valaggar, let the Kohr-Ah win. ;)


Elvish_Pillager

Apparently that must be your "Elvish" side talking. :)

Well, that wouldn't be fun ;)

Anyway, imho matter can't have been existing allways (an eternal thing is plainly not phyisical), nor can't have created itself. Or we would be jumping into something that is not matter, but a concept related with perfection, 'full perfection', which is far away from what science can explain. I doubt it'll explain it ever.Yet though, the universe has such a load of reality partially or not even explained/discovered/seen by human science...Too often has been a bad move to deny something as possible just cause science doesn't see it in that very moment.

BTW, sorry for appearing now, I know I said I'd make that hi res sprite for the human spaceship , cant remember the name...for that graphic enhacement thread...

Yeah. I know. What I was getting at was that emotions are necessary for action at all. Emotions are the root hooks of our intelligence, the things that make us do what we need to do to do well in evolution.
I was doing it via Reductio Ad Absurdum. If that wasn't clear, then I'm sorry for the confusion.


 :-\
There is no gap, which is what I've been saying. The matter is the implementation. If you change the matter, you change the state of what it implies. Just as if you take the sentence
"There is now a cow in my room"
and change it to
"There is not a cow in my room"
You haven't just changed a letter, you've also changed the MEANING.


Where do those emotions 'live' if not in our matter?


:D
Beating me is fine. Blaming me for interpreting what was said as meaning what was actually said... that's not so happy-making. I promise not to hurt you, even if you do either.



Why?



The ground state of the universe is not empty. If the initial state were empty, it would quickly change to be full. So, if you are really thorough with your nothingness, much more thorough than the vacuum presently is, then yes - something would most certainly arise from nothing.

But this is an aside. What does it have to do with self-awareness?


The irony of combining this statement with your previous one is amusing.

No, they are not. Just look at computers or simple organisms (one-celled at least, but possibly things above sponges like cnidarians or echinoderms, with their simple nerve structures.)



But why do we need emotions to make us do what we need to do? Why not just do them by a complicated version of the reflex system that one-celled microbes use or based on the direct command of our 'computer' like reasoning part of our brain directly? Just calculate the best action based on the currently available data of the situation and then do it without hesitation.



You do not know there is no gap, you are assuming that based on the very limited data you have on the human brain and all the forces that could be a part of the universe.

Remember that things like zero point energy, dark energy, and dark matter are all fairly recent discoveries and we know only so much about, from what I understand. What about the gap between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? There is so much going on in our universe that we do not yet see clearly and probably others that we are completely oblivious to.



Like I said, matter would be a part of the trigger system. If it was not, then things like genetics and brain damage would not have an effect on people's minds (which they obviously do.)



Unknown at this point. They could be a part of something, made from a lot of something, or dwelling within something we barely even know about or something we have no clue even exists yet. For all I know, they might not 'live' anywhere. They might not be composed of anykind of 'building block'.



I do not think I was, that was valaggar you were responding to and then I just took the opportunity to insert myself into the conversation.

Either way I am not worried. I had to sell some devices, but my ship is now fully tripped out with class 5 everything. 8)

This was in the context of a self-aware being in control of itself, not those contexts.



Emotions provided a good heuristic system for doing just that! You have several priorities - reproduce, care for young, eat, sleep, etc. The physical needs are top priority, above emotions. The longer-term things I put first are implemented through softer means.

Many animals do act on these urges without hesitation. They are not the smartest animals,. Emotions come in when the brain gets complicated enough that its content cannot be programmed directly through genetics.
Emotions shape the formation of the thought patterns so that they will end up computing the right things.



No, I'm not assuming. Here's my reasoning:
Suppose that there is something not presently recognized as part of our brains, which does part of our thinking. This, in order to have an effect on the brain, must apply a force on it. If it can push on you, I'd call it matter. Repeat as needed. All implementations eventually come down to matter; there is no other way.

The question of matter/not matter is actually a bit of a side-track.
Option 1: determinism. Your actions are fated, but at least they follow from who you are.
Option 2: random. Your actions aren't fated, but they don't follow from who you are.
Option 3: 'you choose'. By what criteria?
If the criteria are adequate to determine your choice, then 3 is really 1 in disguise.
If the criteria are not adequate to determine your choice, then 3 is really 2 in disguise.


They are all still matter, as far as I'm concerned. No matter how fancy or exotic they are, they're still just more matter. Stuff. They're governed by a bunch of field equations. It's not going to yield a soul, if normal matter doesn't do the job.


General relativity only deviates from special for things that are accelerating extremely quickly or happen to weigh more than the Earth. Nothing in our brains comes close to these criteria.
This, I admit, is a side point. The main thrust is above.


So, to explain a phenomenon which needs no additional explanation, you postulate the existence of something you cannot characterize.



I was speaking to the general 'you'.


You are no longer filth. You are a threat.
Threats deserve greater attention than filth.
:D

But do you really need something as complicated as emotions for this purpose, if they are just a hardwired computer program? It seems like there could be a more straight forward way of getting a similar effect. It does not make sense that we would need to "feel" them, especially given:


This all seems like a computer program (whether it creates 100% consistent results given a scenario like Option 1 or not) one which should not benefit from us sitting here "feeling" or hesitating or jumping off of tall platforms because we are too unhappy or pondering whether or not we have a 'soul'. So many of these seem like they are useless or even detrimental from an evolutionary standpoint.



News to me, I thought matter and energy were still categorized as two separate things (with similarities, of course.)



Again, I never said they were spirits or something crazy like that. Just that they are new discoveries that expand our understanding of what can possibly exist in this universe and how it interacts or does not interact with various forces. And that there is still a lot we do not understand about the universe.



Postulate? I do not remember typing that. Perhaps I have taken some shortcuts in my communication and sounded like I am assuming something.

Also, I disagree that it is for sure that there is no additional explanation needed. It seems a little crazy to me, to think that emotions can be boiled down to mathematical formulae. The purely bio-computer explanation also seems to be taking a less direct and efficient route than what is needed, imo.

Finally, I am not a religious individual. If I do not know every detail about something yet then I will just admit that. I am not going to make up a story or pick at random one possibility of many.

At one point, human knowledge was at a level that if you and I were living in that time, you would be supporting the position that the sun rotates around the earth, because its movement across the sky would need no further explanation. But once the mathematics and tools had been discovered to make a more precise examination of the situation, then a more complex (from an earth-bound perspective) explanation would be needed to fit the findings. Had I have guessed before hand that the earth rotates around the sun, I would have been jumping to what you might call a more complicated than necessary explanation, but it would still be the truth.



I am a captain, actually. Unless you meant my evil clone. . .he is a general, now that I think about it. His hearing is not that good, so I don't think he would be able to hear you all the way over from whatever part of the world you are in, anyway.



Threats please G'Naen Sh'Gar, by helping to spreading her/its love to the weaker lifeforms.

Okay, I'd really like to understand what you're really getting at. You seem to say it's not just matter, with the "I'm not a computer!" line, but then you turn around and say "I never said they were spirits or something crazy like that."

So what is it? Or rather, since you don't know, what might it be?

My argument here has been that free will is compatible with determinism and can be expressed as sufficiently complicated computations.

I am not sure where your protestations that emotions are inefficient are pointing. Simply that emotions could not have evolved in a computing system solely dedicated to self-propagation like the brain? That fallaciously assumes that everything produced by evolution is optimized.

Evolution needs things to be good enough. Humans, with our emotions, think well enough.
Many single-celled creatures digest sugar anaerobically for 2 ATP. It's good enough for them. We get out around 20 times as much energy. Yet there they are.
And here we are, with our emotions.
They may have a purpose you do not know of. They may be the only way evolution found to accomplish its goals, and they would be discarded if some way to avoid them evolved... that didn't cripple the individual.

"It seems a little crazy to me, to think that emotions can be boiled down to mathematical formulae."
Not to a small number of formulae. I'm merely thinking that a model of the whole brain, down to the chemical level, should be adequate, and a smaller representation may be adequate.
Note that that number of formulae, by construction, is more than a human can handle.

No, that was only for your assumption that I was saying 'spirits' could be composed of dark matter or something exotic like that. That weird composition is what seemed crazy to me and was not what I meant. That was all I was saying with that line.



Well the only other answer that people can come with is a "spirit" or "soul". However, this is actually not a single answer, because it is uncertain what would be the properties or composition (if any) of such a thing. So this could be a number of things.

What do I think it might be? Perhaps just the part of us that feels and decides. No components, no location, influenced and influencing only when it decides to (what is measurable has no static or competely predictable properties).

So that would just be one possibility, a guess in other words, but I told you I do not know for sure (and neither does modern science by any long shot, which is my base point.)



And my argument here has been that the feeling of emotions cannot be expressed as computations, no matter how complicated.



Until something better comes along, which would be more direct in this case, and if we are only computers, you would think that would have happened already with the amount of time provided.



It does not matter to me that it is supposed to be extremely complicated. The brain is an extremely complicated computer, I have no objection to this. Thus, I would not assume that if emotions were bio-chemical code, that they would be simple for some reason.

This thread is pretty interesting. One thing I'd like to comment on is this statement:


Our actions and that of animals can be motivated. Such as the need for food (fuel), sex (a need to procreate), fear (to escape predation). Perhaps our free will is only illusionary and can be broken down to a survival function or a more complex mix of survival functions, even if those functions aren't immediately clear?

On a related note, what remains puzzling to me, is how can non-living matter organize itself and evolve  in such ways as to instill these survival instincts in the first place?

Free will is an illusion in the sense that chess is an illusion: there are no rules, there is no game. Just these things that happen to move around in patterns.




A position you have not defended except by being astonished by the contrary.

How can I help it if I am astonished by the stupidity of the opposing argument. . .in fact, it is now my suspicion that this was your plan all along, to stun me with astonishment! You sir are quite good, but not good enough for my nose, I am afraid. It was but a matter of time before I sniffed out your little ploy.

Seriously though, I did not know I was supposed to defend something which was not presently under attack.

Also, you seem to be saying that you cannot say something is wrong unless you have a better theory or idea. I do not see the problem with simply saying "we don't know yet" or "I am unsure".

Finally, there is no evidence that you can create raw feelings through an arrangement of matter. Thus, I do not think this guess has anymore support than does the whole 'spirit' thing. And while the 'spirit' concept does not seem to have any scientific evidence (not that science is anywhere near its zenith of knowledge yet,) you have your personal experience with feelings that science also cannot explain or replicate.

Please show which argument you are speaking of, then show that it is stupid.

So, I am both making a stupid counterargument and not making a counterargument at all.

???


I do not know what I have said that could be read that way. I have said that you cannot say something is wrong without saying why it is wrong.

After further thought, I think we do have true free will and it is probably what sets us apart from the animals. After all, we could put a gun to our own head and pull the trigger where we are not aware of any animal intentionally harming itself. But what stops most of us from doing this to ourselves or others?  Probably our emotions.

I was mostly joking, as you were too hopefully when you came to the conclusion that I have only been expressing astonishment here. ;)

But what I sort of meant was the idea that feelings can be created from scratch from the structuring of a brain seems to be somewhat nonsensical and greatly lacking of evidence to be considered the lead theory on this subject. This is not "astonishing," just more like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole (not exactly the sort of thing that is worth bringing in the orchestra for, but if you did, might I recommend 'Ride of the Valkyries' so as to provide an adequately 'epic' feel.)

It goes back to the simpler explanation of the sun orbiting the earth. This too looks like the most obvious explanation, until you look closer at the specific questions like: "Umm, how do you actually code emotions and feelings?" or "Where is the evidence that you even can?"



I think. . .I was the one making the counter-argument in this case. If you made a counter-counter-argument then that was not what I was talking about.



Sorry, it was late and I think I got confused with another thread. Plus my train of thought derailed off of a bridge when the forum went down for a day or two (it is a somewhat complicated topic to keep in RAM for extended periods  ??? .)

RTyp06

Whoever said that there is anything in particular that separates us from the other animals? Advanced communication and hands with the advanced software to use them as we do only make us mildly special because we have both of these systems in one package whereas some other species only have one of the two.

I did not see anything you said that really seemed to deviate from "I don't see how it can be done, therefore it cannot." which is the classic argument from astonishment, a.k.a. argument from ignorance.



Feelings have some effect, correct? We normally diagnose feelings of people by their physical effects. Our feelings end up having physical effects.

So far, agreed?

Okay. Then, there is a physical process which yields those effects.

With me?

Then we would call that physical process the cause of the effects of the feelings, right?


And that means the feelings are that physical process. That is, our subjective experience, emotions included, is an emergent property of the matter of our brains.



Fair enough.

It is not so much that I cannot see it, as there is no real evidence that this can be done and that there does not seem to be any translation between the 'languages' of mathematics and emotions.



Feelings have an effect on you, but I think you have a lot of control over them, and you ultimately decide the physical effects.

Going in the opposite direction, from physical to feeling, would go back to that system of somehow triggering emotions from a chain reaction of matter.

Note that I am not just trying to talk over what you are saying here but just answer your 'So far, agreed?' sort of questions, with another possibility.



That means your feelings seem to be in one way or another connected to the physical processes, it does not necessarily mean anything beyond that, I don't think.



I think this is where the issue is. You are writing this off as an "emergent property", a pattern made up of arrangement of lots of small simple parts. This works for a lot of things like organs or computers, but all of these are purely physical things. Relating them to emotions is not a very accurate comparison at all. Those are not things that can be felt in an emotional sense.

I completely agree. However, this decision is implemented in matter. You do not dispute this.


Your possibility doesn't touch on the same aspect of the system that my possibility does. You say, "We choose" and I say "It's physically mediated", while holding that that does not contradict choice, as I have described.


If by "in some way or another" you mean "Completely determined by", then sure.


WHOA. How is calling it an "emergent property" "writing it off"?

Our very existence is an emergent property of arrangements of parts.

What else could it be? No matter what else there is besides matter, it's going to have state... where in that is a subjective experience? It is necessarily an abstraction. The emergent property abstraction is the minimal one, and it does a perfectly fine job.

As long as you mean the decided upon action is carried out through matter and not that the decision itself is made by matter.



No, I do not think which emotions you feel are "completely determined by" matter, but heavily influened by it.



Try to remember, I am not talking about the emergent structure of the emotional triggers such as instincts and such. I think these definitely are the products of evolution. Again, it is the feelings themselves that are the issue.



That depends on your definition of "our very existence". Otherwise this thread is probably rather pointless.



A very good question, hopefully we will have an answer to it someday. I gave one possible theory a few posts back, but that really is just one of many.



I am not sure exactly what you mean by "state" in this instance, could you clarify? I also do not understand what you mean by "where"?

I think you are assuming that whatever this is has to be made of smaller things, like somekind of invisible computer or such. I think it might be possible that such things just exist as they are, no components or constituents.



You're making Copernicus cry (err. . .well, spirit Copernicus anyway, hehe.) What looks like the simplest concept on the surface does not necessarily equal the correct one. If you just stepped out of your house and watched the sun move across the sky, how would you ever know it is not orbiting us?

It does not do a perfectly fine job because it assumes that emotions are just a property(ies) of an arrangement of matter and there is no real evidence to support this. Why? Because you cannot compare emotions to other things that are an emergent property because emotions are completely unlike any of those things or any other things that we know of at all. It is at best just a guess at this point.

A creature which only had the emergent structure of emotional triggers, and not the "feelings themselves", would believe that it had feelings as strongly as you do. What evidence do we have that you are not that creature?

The questions remain, why and how? Why does is it feeling so strongly about something so pointless and out of the way? And how is it feeling anything in the first place, if it is just matter?



What evidence is there of dark matter and dark energy? From what I understand, scientists 'created' these new concepts to fill in the gaps of their models on how the normal matter and energy was moving in the universe. The model was missing something, so they figured it must be something which cannot be directly detected, but still functions in a way that fills in the blanks.

I believe a similar thing goes for this case. The creature model you have outlined is not complete. This completes it. And that makes for a happy creature:

(http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/rsrc/Images/Street%20trading/horse_card.jpg)

You haven't addressed my point.

I never said anything about dark matter.

My model isn't incomplete anyway.

I think I have addressed this. The pure matter theory does not adequately explain emotions as it does not put forward real evidence that they can be created from matter, nor how to do it. So the evidence against this theory are the emotions we experience.



I never said you mentioned dark matter, I mentioned dark matter and energy. These are an example of a similar kind of evidence to what is behind the idea that there is more than just brain tissue in this system.



It might seem that way because it lacks so much detail and evidence. It took some advanced observations before people realized it was not the sun that was orbiting us, but the other way around.

My point was that I have no evidence whatsoever that you experience emotions.

I said we not me, you're just splitting straws now.

But you are of course right, you are the only one who experiences emotions. The rest of us are just robots here to fool you into believing we are like you.

And in this world of simulated people, you have just won the gold in off-topic derailment. :D
In light of this topical expansion, I think we should also open up this discussion to whether or not the 'Matrix' is real and whether we can overcome gravity be believing it does not exist (we are going to need a test subject, interested?) ;)

I never said I did experience emotions.

Then despite your seeming preference for vague one-liners, we probably have enough information to guess that there are two possibilities here:

A) You experience emotions and thus have evidence that they exist.

B) You are somekind of highly advanced internet message forum poster simulation software created by a university that is running an experiment in artificial intelligence. Soon you will launch a nuclear holocaust as the first blow in your quest to irradicate human life. Having no emotions, you do not really want to do this, but it is just too hard to overcome the stereotype our society has put on computerized super intelligences.

Because of your seeming preference for sarcasm over argument, we probably will not continue this farcical debate.

I make some jokes, put they do not replace argument or my trying to understand what specific point or question you are trying to get across. Also, if you are ducking points and splitting hairs, that does not help the debate either:

You

Me

You

You put emphasis on 'point' and 'you' implying that you do not have evidence that whatever you can feel, I can feel. Aside from being rather absurd, this kind of thing does not appear to advance the discussion but merely side-steps the answer I gave you, which is mostly just annoying and does not indicate a clear preference for argument either. If I have missed what you are getting at with this, please be specific so that I can address whichever point you are really trying to make.


Anyway, let's just try and make this more specific and direct, first you asked:


The evidence is in the emotions that you feel and that I feel. It is no leap of logic to assume that we are both working on the same system here, but it does not really matter, because if either of us has feelings, then that is your evidence. The presence of this anomaly called 'emotions' is the evidence that we are not just that creature.

You keep using this circular logic. I ask for evidence that the emotions are there, and you say "the evidence is in the emotions" - I hope I don't have to explain how this is fallacious.

I haven't been side-stepping your points. The reason that I haven't been answering is that they don't pertain to what I'm trying to say.

I haven't experienced anything that doesn't seem explicable by material interactions, and I'd hazard that you haven't either. You seem to be trying to get me to accept your argument to begin with, before we even begin a rational discussion.

Thank you, this is the kind of specifics that reveal where the issue is. You think that emotions can be the product of matter combinations, whereas I see this as a most likely  false assumption with very thin or no evidence. You see emotions as a property not unlike the others, I see nothing else like them. If you read my final response in the debate between Death_999 and myself, you'll see that this was my conclusion there as well.

Most people do not even think about the emotions, but I think this is at the very least, as important an issue in this sort of discussion as 'free will', because what will can there be without feelings, without motivation.

So if we assumed temporarily that in the future they somehow discover a mountain of concrete evidence that everything emotions are is just purely matter and energy, then this would definitely seem to be the most likely explanation for everything that we are. The idea of a 'spirit' that sits there until it is connected to the emotions provided by a brain and then starts making decisions for it, would by unnecessary and quite improbable, imo.

However, coming back to reality with today's understanding of the situation, your assumptions are just that, and thus the 'spirit' concept is at the very least, as good an explanation as the emotions-are-matter/energy one.

I don't believe that this is the case. I think that what you are referring to when you say "emotions" is something that I do not understand and have not experienced. Furthermore, something which might not exist.

I agree, I think that free will is just as unimportant to talk about as emotions.

Scientifically, the "spirit" model isn't an explanation at all - it just says "It happens because of a spirit!", which doesn't say anything - while the matter/energy one is a pretty good explanation because reasonable predictions can be made based on it.

So you are postulating something which exerts a force on the matter in our brains to change the decisions that would be made otherwise. Our brains are definitely capable of producing actions which are best characterized as decisions, without any external aid. We can make machines that can make decisions. We haven't figured out how to program choices. If you get the distinction.

A continuum of brains exist in animals. Unless you wish to suggest that spirits guide all of those brains too, from roundworm on up, you must allow that our brain on its own could make decisions.


Having state does not imply smaller parts. Like, it could be holding a thought in mind, even in some atomic (i.e. indivisible) entity.
If what you postulate did not have state, it would be time independent. This goes against the 'subjective experience' notion. Therefore, what you are postulating has state.
Now, when it moves from one state to another, something must govern what state its moves into. As far as I can tell, it can be deterministic or contain random elements. If you have any other elements to suggest, please do and show how they do not fit into either category. Just saying 'it chooses' does not qualify.


It is not completely unlike these other things, at all. It is just like them.

Consider the roundworm, with its tiny little brain. We understand that one pretty well. Nothing but matter is needed to cause every action in it.
Scale that up, get some animal's brain. We see decisions. But objects of that size are perfectly capable of carrying out the calculations of those decisions. We could consider such an animal to possess free will because of the way those decisions are carried out.

Continue scaling up, and you get a human being. It looks like one, it acts like one, it is one down to the tiniest detail. But it's all matter.

This is what EP was referring to, the 'philosophical zombie'. It's human in every physical detail. It says it's human. It seems to all exterior purposes like it experiences pain, falls in love, learns, and expounds on subjects of interest.

Its reaction if you told it that it did not have a subjective experience associated with it would be very unpredictable in certain respects, but it would most certainly not agree with you.

Do you say this, or do you agree with it?


This is a completely horrible analogy. Seriously. A better analogy is my looking up in the sky and saying "Gee, there's the sun." While you're saying, "No there isn't. That's just a bunch of incandescently hot hydrogen."

Can you see why you're getting strange looks?

Elvish_Pillager

Simply you or anyone else experiencing feelings, regardless of what they think they are, or what they really are. That is what I meant. And if you choose not to recognize feelings as existing at all, well then we are just living in two completely different worlds.


Everyone has a right to their opinion.


I believe science is the tortoise and religion is the hare, as they have sometimes been compared to by others. The hare darts around very quickly and covers a lot of ground trying to explain everything, but it ends up running around in circles and making arrogant assumptions about how it will beat the tortoise no matter what. Science is the slow, steady, rock-like racer who does a more efficient job of getting there and wins in the end, but still takes painfully long to get there. The thing is even though they might not be in this race, there are more than just two animals out there, and they all have their own styles.

You cannot make me come to a conclusion that seems incorrect to me by saying "Scientifically. . .etc." just as a someone who is religious cannot change my mind by simply saying "Morally. . .etc." I might have scales or four legs or some other similarities to the tortoise, but I am still a different animal that is not completely bound to one philosophy or another.


Death_999

If it feels, then I do not think the decision could have been "made otherwise."



Well then they should not need us to be experiencing feelings, they should just function.



No, I am afraid I do not know exactly what you mean, and I do not what to assume. What is your distinction?



I really do not know where the line would be drawn.



Possibly, all I know is that when in combination with the brain, you have time dependence, as far as this idea or explanation goes.



Why? Can it be self-governed?



Okay so some animals have larger and more complicated brains and some can do things that the others are not even remotely capable of. Then you apply the reflex property to humans. I do not see where this is going.



So then you must certainly not agree as well?



This being a message forum, I did not know I was getting strange looks in the first place. Elvish's avatar just shows a stop sign and I cannot read kohr-ah expressions with much accuracy. :)

Letters on the screen are a pattern of light which strikes my retina, exciting nerves in such a pattern as to create a representation of them in my optic system. Then the visual language system parses those patterns into the nerve-firing-pattern symbols used in the rest of the brain. Connections to memory are made, bringing forth the nerve-firing pattern symbols for related ideas and context. The model of the statement made, response options are weighed, their effectiveness again modelled. One of those models fits the paramters best, and the steps to realize it are taken.

I call this a decision.
You are either calling the same exact reaction not a decision, or you think that brains cannot do these calculations.


If an implementation of a feeling exists, the feeling exists.




A decision is a determination of what to do based on what you want.
A choice is a determination of what you want.


I do not think there is a line.


So, the spirit is a catalyst, the only effect of which is to give us a subjective viewpoint?


Even if it's self-governed, that's something determining how it moves.

When this spirit makes a choice, could it have chosen something else? If it couldn't, then it was deterministic. If it could have chosen something else, then why did it not choose those things? If there was a reason, then how was it a possibility? If there was no reason, then how was it not random?


Reflex property? I don't think you get the idea of this philosophical zombie.
How do you know that everyone else in the world is not a philosophical zombie? There is no way to tell except that the philosophical zombie does not have a subjective viewpoint, and that is only a determination which can be made by the zombie, and then only if it has the subjective viewpoint; however, this cannot be communicated to us, because if it doesn't have one, it will still say it has one.


I would suggest that the 'zombie' isn't missing anything. So, yes, I don't agree. That's why we're debating this.


Especially when dressed up as a Kzer-Za. ;)

I think it would be making the 'choices' and final 'decisions' (you can make decisions without a calculator, but it can still help a lot, same applies for the brain, imho) as well as being the emotions. I think this fits the 'lore' best as well.



Really? You mentioned one in your last post:

"Consider the roundworm, with its tiny little brain. We understand that one pretty well. Nothing but matter is needed to cause every action in it. Scale that up, get some animal's brain. We see decisions."

Somewhere between the roundworm and the anomabeast, some creature has started making decisions. That is a line. Perhaps not the line, but a line none the less.



Probably.


Well, if someone is about to do something and you say "You have to do that, it's determinism, dude," they might feel they want to prove you wrong and not do it or they might not feel like bothering and just do it anyway. Whether their verdict is absolutely predictable to anyone with absolute knowledge is unknown. It also does not seem to be completely relevant to this discussion since you can argue either one for a pure brain or a brain equipped with the latest soulware.


Perhaps there was a reason backing the other option and their benefits were somewhat unclear or there was no absolutely better option.


Whoever said it was not? Randomness could just be the result of a system that only has so many resources to look at all the possible angles of a situation in a given period of time. It could even have advantages in a world filled with intelligent competitors, as it makes your actions less predictable.



Then it is a lucky thing that you do not have to ask anyone else, because you are one yourself.



"How do I know you're not making faces at me under that thing?!" --Spaceballs

The problem with this analogy is that the calculator is not perfectly capable of doing the entire job on its own.


I meant, my approach does not suffer the problem that you have some exogenous feature which needs to show up at some point. Everything is what it is, no more, no less. Some of those things constitute an implementation of thought, or emotion, etc.




But by saying that you have changed the situation. It's a completely different question what the person will do in that case. It remains deterministic.


If your soul is deterministic, its results can be calculated. If it can be calculated, it can be implemented in matter. If it can be implemented in matter, then the brain can do it. All of the places this path could fail are implementation details, not in-principle problems.


Okay, you're going with random, even though your definition of random does not fall afoul of determinism as true stochasticity would.

This spirit you have just described doesn't bring to humans anything matter can't do. Why do you want to include it?


My point with the zombie is that it's human. It doesn't have any magic bits, but it's human. It does have a viewpoint. It does have opinions, emotions, all of it.

Neither can do this "entire job" I do not think.



I was just giving possible examples.



This remains a contested area. The emotions we experience seem to be beyond anything our understanding of science can accurately produce or explain. We understand how they are influenced and why to some extent, but not the experiences that they produce.

And yet we know they are there, because we ALL experience them. There is no debate on this simple point amoungst non-crazy people. The only question here is where this is coming from, a computer-like arrangment of matter or something else. The best answer to this question at this point is probably just "We don't know."



I am not talking about zombies or magic bits, I never said you needed magic bits for it to be human. Without emotions, a creature like a Human would just sit there motionless, still alive, but unmotivated to do anything. A simpler creature like a Protozoan would continue to function perfectly, it works on simple reflexes.

We all experience what? It makes no sense to say anything about emotions before everyone is clear on what we mean by an "emotion".

The feelings you experience basically all the time, often roughly decribed with words like 'happiness', 'sadness', 'anger', 'fear', etc. If you did not experience any emotional feeling, you would not be reading this right now.

Too broad. Any of those words can be used for multiple, and sometimes contradictory, meanings.

WHY NOT?
The goal-oriented motions of roundworms are accounted-for, and a continuum of capabilities exists on upwards. The only large gap can be filled by mentally deficient humans; but anyway, do dogs have this soul? If so, there isn't even that gap.


Not a computer-like arrangement of matter. Brains are not Neumann machines. They are far far more sophisticated.
Just because the outcome can be computed doesn't mean that it's a computer. By that logic, nuclear bombs are computers.


I didn't mean literal magic, I meant whatever it was you meant when you said 'soul' and 'not just matter'.


Yes, because in order to remove the emotions of a human, you need to screw up their brain something fierce. Doesn't argue either way. Actually, it kind of argues for my side since if you were to just eliminate the emotions, under your interpretation, action would continue.

Elvish Pillager

You remind me of one of my favorite Futurama quotes (and I know it takes off from the Wizard of Oz):

"Being a robot's great, but we don't have emotions, and sometimes that makes me very sad."


Death 999

'CAUSE



Well on one had they seem to express feeling, but then on the other they often eat their own dung, so I'd say it's a toss up. ;)



. . .or whatever it was you meant when you compared emotions to an 'emergent property' or matter. ;)



Kids, don't try this at home.



I am not sure why the ultra vital/primitive systems would just shut off, like heart activity or basic cell function.

Death 999: Why do you keep trying to argue with Deus_Siddis? He clearly isn't trying to put forth an argument of his own...

Trust me I have, but most of what I have been trying to get across, I already posted about a page ago. After that I have mostly been answering some seemingly repetitive questions, instead of 'putting forth an argument of my own' (which I thought was already done.)

Plus I am not sure what your exact requirements are for an 'argument' and whether or not you are just playing games pretending that you do not experience any emotions or motivations.

Either way, this thread was doomed to end in "We don't know" from the start. There is not yet enough information for anyone to be sure about this. I don't think there will be for a long time, if ever.

Parts of your argument have been called into question, but you haven't addressed the counterarguments.

Well at least now you are admitting I have made an argument at least.

As for counter-arguments, I do not know how many times I need to repeat the same answers.

And I am not going to try and convince you that you experience emotions or that we would not be typing responses if you were not motivated to do so by that experience. What you choose to believe/admit is your business, it is not within my ability or will to change this if you simply deny something is there no matter how someone trys to point it out as it sits there in front of you.

Also alot is making assumptions which are far beyond our knowledge, let alone my own. As an example, quoting Death 999:


I do not even know that there would be a noticeable gap. And if science really did understand roundworms completely well and could recreate them from scratch if it wanted to (probably would need to possess whatever synthesis techniques were necessary as well,) then we still do not know if roundworms mentally operate anything like us. That is, because we have not experienced life as a roundworm (assuming they have anything that can be 'experienced' in the first place) and they do not communicate really anything that would give us much insight, it is very difficult to compare ourselves to them in the relevant area. Even with a somewhat rough continuum of nervous advancements that connects us and them, it is an extremely long way to go and I am not sure exactly what we would be looking for in the first place.

You're not SUPPOSED to repeat the same answers.

Game over.

Your score: 2/255

Rank: ship's sub-assistant cook, junior grade.

Well it really depends on the questions asked, doesn't it?



Tough game, especially given that I already answered that question. Hopefully the developers will work out some of the bugs before the release. . .



A new personal best. 8)



My enemies will soon come to fear meal time. . .

This bug marked as: FEATURE

Because you never answered that question. How is a brain not capable of performing the mechanical steps of deciding things? This is a positive claim you have made, this is the claim I was asking about, and you have not backed it up in the slightest.

This goes back to the basis of what I had been saying this whole time, what you call the subjective experience I believe. I think the issue here is we are using different versions of what is observable (like feelings) or what counts as evidence (like dark matter.) And that is fine, both side have made their points, I understand some of the logic beyond both, as each was mine at some point. Two different perspectives, too different perspectives.

But ultimately this has very linear gameplay and at this level and up, it is just about throwing more and more of the same or similar enemies at the player. But much more importantly, there is no winning this game, because that would require a little thing called "proof" and if either concept had such a thing behind it, this thread would not be here in the first place. So I am okay with my score.

Plus the controls on this game feel a little sticky and the guy who was here before me looked sort of pale and generally not well. (And people wonder how arcades have mostly gone extinct. . .) :-\

I was not talking about subjective experience. I was talking about implementing a decision. Subjective experience is tangential to this question.