<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">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". </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">(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)</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin@simtable.com> </div><div>Date: 9/19/21 04:56 (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> </div><div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul? </div><div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr">Jochen,<br><br>The Chinese have a famous thought experiment called the "John Searle Room" (虚构研究员, 1984). <div><br></div><div>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 <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/">Chinese Room</a>, the robot as a mere symbol manipulator has no true cognition, no understanding. Nor does it display consciousness nor a soul.</div><div><br></div><div> 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? <br> <br>- Stephen<br><div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" class="gmail_signature" dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><div>P.S. Didn't realize John Searle had his Emeritus status stripped from UC Berkeley for<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/john-searle-complaints-uc-berkeley"> violating the Sexual Harassment policy</a>. Frank, did you study with John Searle in the 60s at Cal?</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 2:45 PM Jochen Fromm <<a href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net">jofr@cas-group.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto">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...<br><a href="https://youtu.be/Bq2bfSzkTfU">https://youtu.be/Bq2bfSzkTfU</a><br><br>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<br><a href="https://youtu.be/WwipmspceOU">https://youtu.be/WwipmspceOU</a><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">What do you think? Is there a special substance that makes us a person, and can an advanced robot or AI acquire it?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div><br>
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