[FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

[Stephen Guerin]

Jochen,

The Chinese have a famous thought experiment called the  "John Searle Room"
(虚构研究员, 1984).

Take the living John Searle, and place him in a sealed closed room. In a
short time, he is no longer alive, has no cognition, no consciousness, and
certainly no soul. Place a common conception of a robot in the same closed
room (not isolated) and it will continue to function. According to
Searle's Chinese
Room <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/>, the robot as a
mere symbol manipulator has no true cognition, no understanding. Nor does
it display consciousness nor a soul.

We've come to understand living processes as necessarily open and
far-from-equilibrium with "life" being a decentralized property of the
system.  MIght cognition, consciousness, and soul (however defined) as
higher-level properties necessarily be decentralized properties, too?

- Stephen

P.S. Didn't realize John Searle had his Emeritus status stripped from UC
Berkeley for violating the Sexual Harassment policy
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/john-searle-complaints-uc-berkeley>.
Frank, did you study with John Searle in the 60s at Cal?

On Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 2:45 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:

> I have watched John Searle videos on YouTube today and stumbled upon the
> question of personality again. If we assume that there is a special
> substance that makes us a person, can an advanced robot or AI acquire it?
> Can a robot be lazy, diligent, dull, intelligent, friendly, nit-picky or
> even creative? John Searle would probably say it is not a good question...
> https://youtu.be/Bq2bfSzkTfU
>
> I would say the answer is yes, because if the special substance is simply
> the personality or persistent character of a person, there is no reason why
> a robot should not be able to learn a bundle of typical behavior patterns
> (i.e. special mappings between perceptions and actions) that are
> characteristic for a person, even if this behavior is implemented totally
> differently. The resulting personality helps to define and maintain the
> identity of a person
> https://youtu.be/WwipmspceOU
>
> What do you think? Is there a special substance that makes us a person,
> and can an advanced robot or AI acquire it?
>
> -J.
>
>
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