[FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

[Jochen Fromm]

Good question. Philip Ball promised to send me a copy of his book "Critical Mass" which is about the concept of a "physics of society". It is on the top of my pile of books to be read. A physics of Minsky's society of mind would be nice. I have thought for a long time that the confusing feeling of self-consciousness is somehow related to a strange attractor in this "society of mind". (The basic idea is that confusion in general means chaos and contradicting currents in the flow of information. Insights and pressure are like a flood, pain is like a drought or drain, because our brains are built to reward new insights, to seek pleasure and to avoid pain)-J.
-------- Original message --------From: Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> Date: 9/19/21  04:56  (GMT+01:00) 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, 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?  - StephenP.S. Didn't realize John Searle had his Emeritus status stripped from UC Berkeley for violating the Sexual Harassment policy. 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/Bq2bfSzkTfUI 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 personhttps://youtu.be/WwipmspceOUWhat 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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