Gooch's dad

Huh? Then what does a soul do? Is it conscious? Is it aware of any part of the natural world? Does it have memories? Then yes, it does process information.

Since you doubt it can process information, why don't you tell me what a soul can do? What is it made out of? What are the repeatable and measurable properties of a soul?

yguy

Yes, if it desires to be.

The CNS appears to be its interface with the environment. Absent that, I believe the answer would be no.

Of itself? I don't know.

Incline itself towards good or evil.

Damned if I know.

The capability of being embarassed would be one. If you expose a person with a soul to an unpleasant truth about themselves that they are unaware of, they will be embarassed. They may get angry as well, but the embarassment comes first, though their anger immediately engulfs it.

SimplyAtheistic

Heh, so embarassment is now a function of the soul The fact is, you can't even define a soul, so you have no grounds on defending its existance or lack thereof.
Jake

crocodile deathroll

IMO those identical manifestations of you would momentarily both be you. But due chaotic random effects as they are both differentiate through entropy, you randomly favour one over the other like a pendulum swinging between two magnets, it ultimately becomes attracted to just one of them.

Goober

Not at all. It doesn't matter one bit if I can actually do it with the technology available, it only matters that it would be not be logically impossible to do this. I only want to show that it is logically possible, not feasible. It's a thought experiment.

But that misses the point of the argument. The point is that if gradually replacing someone's brain with silicon chips never causes them to cease to be conscious, then you could concievably end up with a brain made up entirely silicon chips that is conscious, and if we can make circuits which are concious, then isn't it so much simpler to cut the crap and admit the whole consciousness thing is just a matter of brain function.

Also, you assume the soul 'lives on in some other plane of existence'. Can you verify this? I don't think so.

PS. If souls do all this thinking crap, what exactly do brains do anyway?

Wounded King

My point was that the logic only holds if you can demonstrate that a chip which accurately recapitulates the function of a neuron is actually possible, otherwise the troublesome little soul will just be ascribed to whatever functionality the chip could not provide. I wasnt questioning the ability of modern technology to do such a thing I was pointing out that we dont know if such a thing is actually possible with any level of technology, I suspect it probably is, but there isnt any real evidence that this is the case.

yguy

Why exactly would we need to replace neurons one at a time to build such circuits? Isn't consciousness what AI is shooting for? If it is, I suggest it will be a clean miss, because intelligence is not consciousness.

I never said souls do any thinking.

Goober

So what exactly do they do then??? Surely consciousness would involve thinking? Or does your un-thinking soul get whisked off to heaven, leaving your thinking brain behind to rot?

You have every right to question whether or not this is possible. And although I can't prove that it is actually possible, scientists already have an excellent idea of what neurons do, how they act, respond to stimuli, pass stimuli on and so forth. I don't think there is anything mysterious about them that would make them impossible to recreate. In fact, after all evidence points to them having absolutely nothing mysterious about them.

Wounded King

I certainly dont see a need for any supernatural phenomenon involved at any stage in consciousness thought or whatever people choose to see as the characteristic for which a soul is required.

Not all of the problems need to resort to the supernatural however. If Roger Penroses ideas on the basis of consciousness being a result of quantum mechanical effects in the microtubules, which seems highly doubtful to me, then this might be another factor that a simple chip could not recapitulate properly.

I have to admit Im playing something of a devils advocate here. I pretty much agree with you that the brain is nothing more than an incredibly complex organisation of essentially simple units and that we should be able to reproduce the functionality of these units and one day ,theoretically , of the whole brain.

paul30

I have no idea what a soul is.

I think "soul" is like "time"--a word we use as shorthand to describe a whole constellation of perceptions, but which is not really a "thing" in itself but simply a concept we have in our heads.

The Buddha said we do not really have a "self"--and I think that is similar. What we think of as our "self" or "soul" is simply a pattern of memories and feedback loops and habit patterns.

This does not make us less worthy or sublime.

If humans have souls, I am sure all other living (and maybe non-living) creatures must have them.