[FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

Sat Sep 18 23:41:40 EDT 2021

Hi, StephenG

If you mean by what you wrote, could consciousness, etc., be properties of the organism’s (or the robot’s) relation to other objects, my answer is emphatically  YES.  I hate to smear you before the rest of the group by agreeing with you, but you’ll just have to fight to get your reputation back. 

But the way,  as you know, I have always shared your fascination with Benard cells.  It seems to me that the atmosphere, at least at the regional scale,  has two ideal ways of being, depending on whether there are vertical entropic (?) differences between the surface and the tropopause: a quiescent regime, in which it settles out into quiescent, non-interacting layers, and a active regimen in which it is organized in columns of rising and falling air.  All actual atmospheres are combinations of these two regimes.  Critchlow’s Maxim applies not only to layers but to columns, since they the upward moving columns are composed of much different air from the downward moving ones.  

Now as I fret over the social turbulence that we seem to be trapped in right now, I wonder if there isn’t a metaphor to be made there,  In one phase the layers of society are vigously stirred and seem to be much composed with people moving up and people moving down.  In the other phase, people sort themselves out into layers and reside easily with one another,  the layers slipping by like  other as if grease.    Anytime you get confection in any layer, it’s top and its bottom become bumpy and create turbulence in the layers above and below.  

It’s ok if you pretend you don’t know me.  I don’t mind.  

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2021 10:55 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

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 <mailto: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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