Does consciousness = humanity ?

Dittohead not! said:

Of course they do. Dogs, in fact, have far kinder and gentler souls than humans do.

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So at what point do animals stop having souls? Badgers, ferrets, lab mice? What about birds? Eagles and ostriches. Is there a line? And is that line neatly aligned with human created taxonomy?

Dittohead not! said:

Does any machine, however sophisticated it may be, have feelings? It does not, of course, yet living breathing creatures all do have feelings. That's the source of the word "animal" - it comes from the word "animus" or "soul". People have known for centuries that the soul is what makes a creature alive. It's just recently that we've begun to think that every issue must be subject to empirical evidence.

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Hahaha! WRONG! Consciousness doesn't come from a soul. How crass!

It is well known that the soul is just a decoy, a diversion for the weak of faith. The TRUE seat of consciousness is the shmeazelpooner!!!! All conscious beings have shmeazlepooner flowing through them.

Don't ask me for 'evidence'. This is indisputable fact!

Dittohead not! said:

because a machine has no will to accomplish anything or any ability or desire to create. All a machine does is react, or do what it has been programmed to do.

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yet, that is beginging to change, with investigation into A.I... so, that is , well, avoiding the issue, and it is also avoiding the question

"How do you know there is an immortal and immaterial part of consciousness".

My thoughts may differ from others, but TO ME...if it has genuine feelings, then it has a SOUL.

If it can show fear, love, anger, and also reciprocate love, then YES, it has a SOUL.

I include every cat and dog I have known in this too.

That divine spark is there in the eyes. It is unmistakable.

Cisero said:

I've been playing this horror game called "S.O.M.A" & besides wetting myself (twice) I've been faced with a moral dilemma.
In this game, people's consciousness are scanned & preserved. Their consciousness is then reuploaded into a machine...

These machines are conscious.
They think, feel & act like humans.
They have memories of their human form.

But are they humans ?

Nothing has changed except the body... who is not human anymore but machine.

In my game I had to destroy one of these conscious machines...It made me feel kinda bad. Was it murder ?

Why ? Why not ?

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Consciousness is the only thing big bang scientists can't understand and they admit it.

Sadly I have to post..........that you mistake consciousness for an algorithm.

Libertarians..

Divergent said:

Consciousness is the only thing big bang scientists can't understand and they admit it.

Sadly I have to post..........that you mistake consciousness for an algorithm.

Libertarians..

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Divergent said:

Libertarians..

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1. Why would "big bang scientists" study neurology ? That doesn't make any sense

2. I'm not mistaking anything... I was just trying to see what people thought was the meaning of "humanity" by refering to an imaginary game. Imagine if we could create an algorithm for each consciousness & upload it to any machine. Imagine. In the game it's possible, so it's possible to imagine it.

3. "Libertarians" ? What on earth does that have to do with anything we're talking about ?

Nilly said:

So at what point do animals stop having souls? Badgers, ferrets, lab mice? What about birds? Eagles and ostriches. Is there a line? And is that line neatly aligned with human created taxonomy?

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Now, there's an interesting question. Do fish, for example, have souls? I'd say no, as they merely do what they've been programmed to do, just like a computer. Their brains are just very small and very sophisticated computers with certain things programmed in: If it's smaller than you, and moves, eat it. If it's bigger than you, and moves, flee.

RAMOSS said:

yet, that is beginging to change, with investigation into A.I... so, that is , well, avoiding the issue, and it is also avoiding the question

"How do you know there is an immortal and immaterial part of consciousness".

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You keep asking for an empirical proof of a philosophical question. The fact is, there is none. Are souls real? Are humans basically good? What is altruism? What is evil? Is there a god? What is consciousness? All questions that stem from philosophy, and not hard science. Perhaps in another thousand years, science will be able to answer questions like that, but I doubt it.

Dittohead not! said:

You keep asking for an empirical proof of a philosophical question. The fact is, there is none. Are souls real? Are humans basically good? What is altruism? What is evil? Is there a god? What is consciousness? All questions that stem from philosophy, and not hard science. Perhaps in another thousand years, science will be able to answer questions like that, but I doubt it.

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The thing is, when it comes to the statements you made, they were empirical statements, not philosophical statements. If you said 'I believe', that is one thign, but you stated it as a fact, not a philosophical position.

Which then comes to the point, if you can't y define something in terms that have objective meaning, does that question even have meaning?

RAMOSS said:

The thing is, when it comes to the statements you made, they were empirical statements, not philosophical statements. If you said 'I believe', that is one thign, but you stated it as a fact, not a philosophical position.

Which then comes to the point, if you can't y define something in terms that have objective meaning, does that question even have meaning?

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OK, then, I believe that human beings are souls in possession of a body, and that the soul continues to live after the body dies. I can't prove that, of course, as it is a philosophical question that doesn't lend itself to scientific verification.

Others believe that humans are nothing more than collections of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, and that existence ceases once the body dies.

Neither of us can prove our belief until after we die.

The difference is that if I"m right, one day I'll be able to look up people who used to have the second belief and say, "See? I told you so."

If they're right, on the other hand, they'll never know it.

Cisero said:

1. Why would "big bang scientists" study neurology ? That doesn't make any sense

2. I'm not mistaking anything... I was just trying to see what people thought was the meaning of "humanity" by refering to an imaginary game. Imagine if we could create an algorithm for each consciousness & upload it to any machine. Imagine. In the game it's possible, so it's possible to imagine it.

3. "Libertarians" ? What on earth does that have to do with anything we're talking about ?

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Cisreo...His comment "libertarians" ..to me...means he is looking down his nose at you with a sense of superiority.

I believe there are human beings who have no souls. Only beings with god-consciousness have souls. That is the true consciousness, from which souls arise.

Meh.


Those memories uploaded to that machine are just that, memories. Copies. Just because you can upload a copy of every single memory you ever recorded into terabytes of data and stored, does not mean that storage facility is now you. It's a ghost of you. We are more than just our past. We are also our present. And that is what such a machine lacks. A present. You see, even with an artificial intelligence combined with all of my memories, a machine/computer/"Data" sort of robot would not be me, nor would it be human. It would indeed be a CREATURE of some sort, something deserving of rights, IMO, but NOT a human. We are DEFINED by our physical attributes as much as our mental capabilities. With immortality, we are no longer human. With dramatically increased information processing and recall, we are no longer human. It is our clumsy fallibility that makes us human. If you were to successfully take my mind and transplant it into a machine, I would no longer be ME, because so much of what makes me me comes from more than just my mind. So much of my personality is from my body, from my strengths and weaknesses. That machine would be just that...a machine with my memories.

Manny said:

I believe there are human beings who have no souls. Only beings with god-consciousness have souls. That is the true consciousness, from which souls arise.

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In this sentence the word believe should be replaced with would like to think.

Obviously such an assertion without any supporting evidence is simply wishful thinking.

Consciousness is different to sentience.

Neither makes something not human human. It could be used as one of the factors which would make the thing get the same rights as the rest of us.

But today we would be doing the same thing as trying to write the law on air trafic control in 1880. This situation has not arisen. When it does we can look at it.

Tim the plumber said:

In this sentence the word believe should be replaced with would like to think.

Obviously such an assertion without any supporting evidence is simply wishful thinking.

Consciousness is different to sentience.

Neither makes something not human human. It could be used as one of the factors which would make the thing get the same rights as the rest of us.

But today we would be doing the same thing as trying to write the law on air trafic control in 1880. This situation has not arisen. When it does we can look at it.

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I agree that the total of human being is much greater than the sum of its parts, and we are a mystery unto ourselves. Analytical thinking is not all there is, there is also great power in our use of irrational thinking. It's said there's a thin line between genius and insanity, for example. Einstein was quoted as saying "imagination is more important than knowledge". He didn't mean that we could daydream our way into discovering a theory of general relativity, but that one has to have the strong foundation in knowledge first, and THEN extend the ideas into the realm of imagination. The rational mind sets the framework for the irrational to make abstract associations.
Psychology. Ooh yuck I got some on me!

Not sure if it's been mentioned here, but recently Hawking warned that computers, AI, could one day pose a serious threat to humanity.
Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

Manny said:

I agree that the total of human being is much greater than the sum of its parts, and we are a mystery unto ourselves. Analytical thinking is not all there is, there is also great power in our use of irrational thinking. It's said there's a thin line between genius and insanity, for example. Einstein was quoted as saying "imagination is more important than knowledge". He didn't mean that we could daydream our way into discovering a theory of general relativity, but that one has to have the strong foundation in knowledge first, and THEN extend the ideas into the realm of imagination. The rational mind sets the framework for the irrational to make abstract associations.
Psychology. Ooh yuck I got some on me!

Not sure if it's been mentioned here, but recently Hawking warned that computers, AI, could one day pose a serious threat to humanity.
Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

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Computers are not human. They have no self determination, no will. They would have to want to become a threat to humanity. Not having souls, they have no wants or desires, no emotions at all.

Dittohead not! said:

Computers are not human. They have no self determination, no will. They would have to want to become a threat to humanity. Not having souls, they have no wants or desires, no emotions at all.

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What we understand as computers (desktop, laptop, phone...) are quite dumb but there are other systems currently in development, the supercomputers etc. that have a high level of complexity in their software. Hence AI, which is really a very elaborate simulation of human intelligence complete with the ability to learn new information, and derive conclusions from it. It's like yer fuzzy logic.

Hmm, after reading that I conclude some people actually need to get "fuzzier", lol

Manny said:

What we understand as computers (desktop, laptop, phone...) are quite dumb but there are other systems currently in development, the supercomputers etc. that have a high level of complexity in their software. Hence AI, which is really a very elaborate simulation of human intelligence complete with the ability to learn new information, and derive conclusions from it. It's like yer fuzzy logic.

Hmm, after reading that I conclude some people actually need to get "fuzzier", lol

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That's all true, but do such computers actually have self determination? Do they have a will, or do they simply do what their programmers have designed them to do?

Dittohead not! said:

That's all true, but do such computers actually have self determination? Do they have a will, or do they simply do what their programmers have designed them to do?

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Better yet, who programmed you?

Manny said:

Better yet, who programmed you?

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I have free will, just as you do (unless you're really a machine). No one programmed me.

Now, someone may have programmed my body via DNA, I'm not sure.