Poll: Do Robots Have Souls?

[razer17]

Personally I don't think souls exist, but if they did then I imagine it's more applicable to biological beings.

 

[Twilight_guy]

No. Luckily you are confusing souls and the essence of a person. They are not necessarily the same thing. Souls are a religious sort of thing and confined to that realm. A person's essence is much harder to nail down and is sort of the personality and sentience of the being. Robots can progmatically have this in as much or more so then humans do. Humans are just highly complex machines afterall. Souls though are distributed and controlled through much harder to define aspects then simply being aware and the mechanical essence.

 

[krseyffert]

As an atheist, i don't believe in souls, however i still think you argument holds value. Perhaps not a soul, but if the robot is capable of sentient thought on par with humans, including emotions, reasoning, compassion, etc., i feel it deserves the same rights we all have, is free will not the defining characteristic of a sentient lifeform/robot? is a robot possessing free will any less deserving of life than a human, simply because it is a metal construct?

I don't know if this is off topic, but i think it ties in somehow

 

[interspark]

Then you define a soul as consciousness. Fair enough. Pretty sure you wouldn't use that word in any other discussion when talking about a conscious being, but okey.

As for the "independent" Robot..Are you familiar with Fatalism and Determinism?

nope

 

[Realitycrash]

Flight was regarded as a fever dream until there was a plan. The idea of dark matter is born of arrogance. According to the equations the universe hasn't enough mass to account for the gravity it would take to keep it from firing off into eternity so instead of trying to figure out what was wrong with their hypothesis they invented an unverifiable X-factor to show that they were right all along. It's non-sense, they might aswell have blamed goblins for it. Dark Matter is just a new version of Phlogiston.

Actually, Einstein conceived Dark Matter in order to fix a problem he had with his Theory of Special Relativity. Then he regretted it and called it the greatest blunder of his career.
Annnnnd around fifty years later, when they pulled the equations and realized that SOMETHING had to fill the damn void, Dark Matter actually made sense.
It isn't proven, but it's a damn better hypothesis than Phlogiston (though Phlogiston is awesome).

There's a solution to everything in the Universe. Neat, plausible and wrong.

Phlogiston fits in the exact same way dark matter does, it accounts for something perfectly. You can't see it, scan for it, no-one has made any articially or sampled any natural source but honest it's real. I also have an invisible, non-corporeal spaceship in my garden... but you can't come over and check.

Dark Matter might be wrong, but everything else is wronger. Get my point? It's the most plausible theory we have..SO FAR.

I don't have a problem with the hypothesis as long as it is treated as an hypothesis, but it is treated as real. It can't be proven but it isn't considered an X-factor anymore, it's considered the explanation that isn't true YET. It prejudices any data when there is considered a seet outcome, the data will be twisted to fit the hypothesis rather than the other way around. It's dangerous and every day it continues it sets us back.

When has anyone ever said that its a fact? They just treat it as a plausible theory, the MOST plausible so far, and thus base most (but not all) of their experiments around this theory. That's how we do science, y0.

 

[Realitycrash]

Then you define a soul as consciousness. Fair enough. Pretty sure you wouldn't use that word in any other discussion when talking about a conscious being, but okey.

As for the "independent" Robot..Are you familiar with Fatalism and Determinism?

nope

Fine. Basically, it says that everything is due to causality, every action we take, thought we think, words we speak. Now, when it comes to robots, causality is actually very trackable (just crack them open and see the algorithms and patters), and thus, an "independent" Robot becomes very..How shall I put this..Questionable.

 

[Beryl77]

Define soul. There are many different definitions of what a soul is.

 

[Arehexes]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

A scientific team creates a robot, the very latest tech, it has independant thought, can have detailed conversations with humans, sharing and exchanging new knowledge and even ethical views on subjects, it can make its own decisions on what is right and wrong and even decides how to spend its own time, and, and this is the real important factor, it even has the capacity to fall in love.

The question is, does this robot have a soul? Personally I would say yes, I don't think our origins should determine our right to be human beings, rather, our personalities and emotions should be. Doctor Who once said, "there's more to being human than flesh and blood"

EDIT: sorry, I don't mean to sound bossy, but a lot of people are openly saying "souls don't exist", so can we just respect other people's views and not state our own as if they are concrete. You don't KNOW that for a fact so could we please say "I think", thanks.

I'm a Negima fan and I was under the assumption Chachamaru(I can't spell her name) was also built with magic as a core part, which would have some effect. If we are talking about our tech then no robots have no souls, but to be fair I think Akamatsu only made Chachamaru like the way she is to please the fans of Female Robots (Gynoid I think is what it's called, and I say that because she has a orgasm when Negi turns the key gear on the back of her head to wind her up...which is creepy enough).

 

[interspark]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

A scientific team creates a robot, the very latest tech, it has independant thought, can have detailed conversations with humans, sharing and exchanging new knowledge and even ethical views on subjects, it can make its own decisions on what is right and wrong and even decides how to spend its own time, and, and this is the real important factor, it even has the capacity to fall in love.

The question is, does this robot have a soul? Personally I would say yes, I don't think our origins should determine our right to be human beings, rather, our personalities and emotions should be. Doctor Who once said, "there's more to being human than flesh and blood"

EDIT: sorry, I don't mean to sound bossy, but a lot of people are openly saying "souls don't exist", so can we just respect other people's views and not state our own as if they are concrete. You don't KNOW that for a fact so could we please say "I think", thanks.

I believe that the word "soul" and the word "identity" are inter-changeable. And as an identity can be projected onto anything (as an identity is a man-made construction), anything can have a soul.

I feel that every mystic explanation is simply a poetic interpretation of the observable.

Saying "his soul will live on", is similar to saying "he has made an impression on all of us, and through us, he will live on". The concept of a soul does not have to be tied to a belief in life-after-death.

If a robot can make me feel, or change the way I feel, then I would say it has a soul. Just as a work of art, a piece of music, etc can have soul; a deeper meaning and connection that makes me feel alive.

If your question was based on the assumption that anything with a soul "goes on" to the afterlife. I'd say that a robot with a soul would be a perplexing question indeed. I don't know if there is an afterlife, and therefore do not claim how one could work.

TLDR; As far as my limited experience of reality goes, "soul" is just a word. A word with a long history filled with the poetry of human life, joy, and suffering. I enjoy reflecting on poetry, but I exist only in reality.

wow, that was just brilliant, i think you really captured the meaning of the thread there, good answer dear chap! i'm sorry i have to send you a friend request now...

 

[Subbies]

I was reading Negima earlier (fellow fans will get the reference) and it made me wonder something. Here's the scenario,

A scientific team creates a robot, the very latest tech, it has independant thought, can have detailed conversations with humans, sharing and exchanging new knowledge and even ethical views on subjects, it can make its own decisions on what is right and wrong and even decides how to spend its own time, and, and this is the real important factor, it even has the capacity to fall in love.

The question is, does this robot have a soul? Personally I would say yes, I don't think our origins should determine our right to be human beings, rather, our personalities and emotions should be. Doctor Who once said, "there's more to being human than flesh and blood"

i'd say an AI has one, since the basic idea of a soul is what sets us apart from animals, and what sets us apart from animals is the ability to freely think the way we do.

How do you know that animals don't have souls? Taking evolution into account, humans are only a species of animals that have evolved in a way to make use of their greatest tool : our intelligence. Other animals apart humans mourn their dead (elephants), wage wars (ants), are able to recognize themselves in a mirror proving their self awareness (primates), learn from their mistakes (dogs), capable of using tools (crows and certain other birds). So our ability to think does not set us apart from animals, it's just that we've developed our intellect (our brain has the biggest size/body ratio) while other animals developed other sets of skills.

 

[Kamehapa]

Souls don't exist. No I'm not going to put "I think" in there, because you are doing the exact same thing by automatically assuming they DO.

Now, if by chance you actually meant to ask if it was self aware or capable of thoughts and emotions than yes, it is by your very definition.

If I am correct in what I think you are asking about the existance of an undefined part of existance that does an undefined thing that makes you live on after you die, then it is possible but like many things that probably don't exist, probably doesn't.

BRB The Invisible Pink Unicorn is playing his mute guitar a little too loud.

 

[Ekonk]

I'll come back later when there's an objective definition of a soul.

 

[Blind Sight]

Rather then say 'I think' like the evidence for and against souls is equally balanced, I'll say this: The evidence FOR souls in a spirtual sense is extremely lackluster and largely built on faulty arguments and unproven beliefs, while the evidence AGAINST souls is vast due to them never being scientifically recorded or observed. To say that both sides of the argument are equally valid is to ignore facts for unfounded spiritualism. There is, of course, the possibility that souls do exist, but scientifically speaking it is safe to assume that they don't unless new evidence emerges.

Therefore, at this time: Robots do not have souls, as humans do not have them either.

EDIT: After reading a bit into the thread, I figured I should comment on the concept of a soul as more a romanticized notion of human free will then a spiritual concept as well. Basically, I view this concept of the soul has far too broad and illogical to actually measure constructively. Its use in fiction is all well and good, but attempting to apply it to reality just comes off as a lazy excuse to define something in far too broad a term. So I'm also going to negate this on the grounds of an ineffective and untestable description.

 

[Easton Dark]

Does anything have a soul?

I prefer 'sentience', that robot you described has sentience, but having a soul is a much larger question NO ONE can answer.

 

[Realitycrash]

I'll come back later when there's an objective definition of a soul.

I'll see you in never-ever land then.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You'd have to define both a soul and a robot first. They can cover a variety of entities.

 

[old account]

If people ever understood Sir Martin Rees theory of virtual reality or read Philip K. Dick's book 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'
Kevin Warwick formulated artificial intelligence to interact with surrounding environments, even though the intelligence was that of animals less then cats or dogs, but he believed for them to have full consciousness, in the sense of the word. So in theory... if a robot has both intelligence and consciousness, then that makes him alive, and according to some ancient beliefs, everything alive has a soul or spirit, so my answer is yes; Robots do have souls.

 

[kikon9]

Given that there is debate as to whether or not souls even exist, I'm gonna go with no.

 

[Polyg0n]

The concept of soul is kinda hard for me to believe to begin with. I don't think such a thing exists so of course in my opinion robots can't have it.

 

[TheNarrator]

Assuming that 'soul' in this context means self-awareness of sorts, not an immaterial aspect of a personality (I don't believe in that), then yes, robots could theoretically have a soul. At least, I believe that a machine could theoretically be created to simulate human feelings, thoughts and responses. Imagine a ridiculously powerful computer that has software to manage all known particles (protons, electrons and stuff) on an individual basis who all respond to the laws of physics as we know them. If you would then analyze a human brain atom-by-atom and reconstruct it digitally with that computer, you would have a digital, probably functional copy of a human brain. You basically get a machine that is capable of simulating a mechanism to generate human emotion and reasoning.

From the moment self-awareness is involved, I think it matters very little what the mechanism behind it is, whether that be biochemistry or electronics.