Spiritual Machines

[nfotxn]

As of late science has really started to challenge my faith. Even though I consider myself a great believer in science all my life it's never provided all the answers. For instance a cloned cat isn't exactly like it's original. Also queried in this slashdot discussion pointed out by iberianbear is weather or not emotions, personalities... soul if you will... are stored in our matter like like meta-data or are they some sort of fluent and intangible spiritual nothingness?

It's my belief that although science has not emprically proven the existence or non-existence of soul/god/creator/source. Now faith is the belief in an answer in absence of a solution. I guess it's my faith that our very essence of being is something tangible and that we're only slightly more complex than we can presently comprehend. Also, most importantly, I think it's going to take a great deal of faith to believe in the empirical measurement of our being. As an example, imagine sometime in the future a simulation of a human mind is completed. For all intents and purposes it is a person possibly of vast or maybe highly limited intellectual capacity but still experiencing emotions and expressing desires however capable. When do we believe it? And as an extrapolation when do we believe that we are not the extension or facimile of the divine but a result of the infinite? No third party involved.

Ok, so that was a little flakey sounding. I'm gonna go rustle up some Asimov from the basement now..

Comments

[slothel.livejournal.com]

The thing that has always made me prefer science over religion is that most of the time, the good scientists (and it's important to note the use of the word "good") say things like, "to the best of our knowledge, based on what we can see, this is what we think is the truth," while more often than not, religious people say, "This is the answer, and if you don't agree with me, this book says I can kill you, and even if I don't, when you do die, you are going to go to a very, very bad place."

Granted, this is a gross generalization, and there are plenty of scientists who are as dogmatic as fundamentalists and there are plenty of religious/spiritual people who are open-minded in the best sense of the word. I just tend to lean toward the science side of things because they at least seem to be out there looking for the answers.

[littledemon.livejournal.com]

We have set out as a race to become gods , not to say that we will ever achieve it. As we expand our knowledge so do they. We have set ourselves up to learn the details of life. On the Journey I believe we will finally learn how connected we are to the infinite and in general to everything. We are shadows of that soul, physical aspects aside.

Not far from today science will explain all the mysteries yet unexplained. And this is the process we have started.

Once that occurs we have to judge for ourselves if this is good and worth our journey?

[mathan.livejournal.com]

It's interesting. Environment is a huge part of what makes who we are, what we are.

[cub4bear.livejournal.com]

So a cloned cat isn't exactly like the original? Just because two cats are clones of each other doesn't mean that the genes they share will be expressed to the same extent in both cats.Identical twins aren't identical either; genotype is only one factor affecting how an organism looks/acts/behaves/etc. Environment plays a factors, and it can affect the development of any organism at many stages of its life. That's why identical twins aren't identical.

weather or not emotions, personalities... soul if you will... are stored in our matter like like meta-data or are they some sort of fluent and intangible spiritual nothingness?

Sure emotion and personality are stored in matter. If they're not, then how can chemicals alter them? How can an anti-depressant make a depressed person happy, or dopamine cause a schizophrenic to manifest symptoms almost right away? How could marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and heroin work if emotion and personality were not stored in matter?

[notofthisworld.livejournal.com]

How could marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and heroin work if emotion and personality were not stored in matter?

Because recreation drugs are spiritually endowed gifts given to use by God. That's why recreation drug use is a spiritual practice. Duh!

[soul-spider.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't pretend to know the answers to any questions (except perhaps "stats?" and "cut or uncut?"), but as far as the existence of a soul and/or a god, I threw my hat in the science ring a while back. My undergraduate degree was in psychology, and the last course I took was a class called "Neurophilosophy", which was taught by the future director of a brand new research institute that had just been founded on my campus. It was the perfect blend of hard science and a philosophical concepts to hook me. For life.

After that, I took as many classes as I could in neurobiology and anatomy, evolutionary neurobiology, developmental neurobiology, etc... and learning more and more about the biological foundations of what makes us US... people... it just left less and less room for the idea of a soul.

An amazing book that you should definitely check out if you like to play head-games (*snort*) is "The Mind's I" by Douglas R. Hofstadter. After that, read his "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". Both books touch on your thoughts about the simulation of intelligence and what the heck that would BE. And then so much more.

[teljanin.livejournal.com]

to chime in.. I agree that I like the way things are stated in the passive voice in science a lot. I'm a psych/bio major and I read studies a lot and words like, 'suggests, leads us to believe, has indicated' are words and phrases that I like to hear.
I wouldn't say i'm a very spiritual person but I has have been taught in my psych classes that religion is somethign that we don't really anaylse...meaning that we leave that one alone in most cases. So, I think that science suggests that you can trace behavior through neural mechanims while enabling one to still believe in a soul.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Science (knowledge) tells us How.

Science is tool that we often use to ask Why. But it is just a tool.

One can usually tell if you are on the right track in asking "how/why" questions by trying to restate the question. "Why does this drug make people happy?" becomes "Why does this chemical affect this part of the brain?" becomes "What does this part of the brain do?" becomes "Why does this particular set of chemical reactions lock into these neuro-receptors". Even that doesn't get you very far sometimes since one will ask a question that gets more specific, like "... lock into these neuro-receptors" which leads you into a larger question like "How is the system that these neuro-receptors are a part of affected by these chemical changes".

The "why" questions seldom get reduced to such simple questions. "Do I have a soul?" This question often reduces to "What happens to me after I die?". This leads you to question "death" and "me". It leads you to question "life". Taken one direction, it leads us to ask the little questions about what makes up life and death. Taken another direction, it leads us to ask the big questions about how you live and interact with those around you.

So, why should science challenge your faith? We don't have enough answers with science to answer some of these hard questions. Why would a cloned cat be exactly like the original? Can you step into the same river twice?

At best, science is a tool. To base a philosophy around a tool that is only good at tearing things down to their components and showing how those components seem to relate you would need to know either everything about how everything related to everything else, or you would have to stop at some point and say "this is a black box I am not going to open" and take the rest on faith.

Lest you think science is without faith, check out the definition of an axiom.

I consider myself a spiritual person. I've experienced a few too many odd things to not be. I do believe that something of the person, a soul, survives after death. However, and this thought is probably terrifying to a lot of people, that soul has relatively little to do with "you". Your personality, your memories: Not important.

But that discussion is for another time.

Potatoes answer the big questions

[(Anonymous)]

I acknowledge all the complexities of the relationship between individual biology, individual history, and accumulated history in the development of personality, soul and identity. I think your concerns are spot-on.

My two cents: Cloning on a large scale is dumb. This was proven by the Irish Potato Famine. All the potatoes in Ireland were grown from an original handful of tubers that Sir Walter Raleigh brought back from the Americas. They were genetically identical, so when the blight hit, every single potato plant on the island was susceptible to it.

We might be able to clone master copies of ourselves or our livestock (including certain unmentioned heads of state), but the rest of the biosphere is out there breeding like rats, varying its genes, adapting to environmental stressors, and generally having a blast. Soon they will encounter a chink in the clones' genetic armor and BLAM!

Whew. What a great idea of a dystopian move!