Neither existence nor nonexistence is obvious. Ergo, differences of opinion. Militants on both sides are problematic. I strongly dislike Dawkins, in the same way as I do people knocking on my door trying to convert me to any other religion.
At least the zealots who knockon my door. I've had a few good conversations.
Ditto for LLM sentience. We have no evidence either way.
I think a coherent framing is to imagine that the soul is a perceptual construct built into the hardware layer of human perception.
Sort of like how the collection of particles you see as a tree doesn’t look like that without being passed through a bunch of brain hardware. If we want to be pedantic we can accurately say that trees don’t exist, but given that physical object and tree are constructs in the human brain it’s pretty convenient to just treat them as “real”, while at the same time understanding that at some granular level they aren’t truly “real” (and at some further granularity we actually have no clue what’s real).
And the older I get, this does make sense to me. Belief in a soul doesn't really require proof for me. I understand that this may not be satisfying in an academic way for some, but "humans have souls and machines probably don't" strikes me as the wisest default position until we have some other very strong proof otherwise.
What evidence is there for humans having souls to support your "wisest default"? What would constitute "strong proof otherwise" in the case of machines?
Wouldn't the wise position be that since there is no evidence of souls at all that the default should be that both humans and machines do not contain a soul until proven otherwise?
Not to me. The wise position starts from "Humans are mysterious, but I am one and I see that others are like me, so I think we have souls." along with "I get what a machine is from first principles and based on all I know, they don't feel."
I get that this isn't as rigorous as one might like, but I think in the real world it's wise.
Neither existence nor nonexistence is obvious. Ergo, differences of opinion. Militants on both sides are problematic. I strongly dislike Dawkins, in the same way as I do people knocking on my door trying to convert me to any other religion.
At least the zealots who knockon my door. I've had a few good conversations.
Ditto for LLM sentience. We have no evidence either way.
I think a coherent framing is to imagine that the soul is a perceptual construct built into the hardware layer of human perception.
Sort of like how the collection of particles you see as a tree doesn’t look like that without being passed through a bunch of brain hardware. If we want to be pedantic we can accurately say that trees don’t exist, but given that physical object and tree are constructs in the human brain it’s pretty convenient to just treat them as “real”, while at the same time understanding that at some granular level they aren’t truly “real” (and at some further granularity we actually have no clue what’s real).
Op said "accepting," not proving.
And the older I get, this does make sense to me. Belief in a soul doesn't really require proof for me. I understand that this may not be satisfying in an academic way for some, but "humans have souls and machines probably don't" strikes me as the wisest default position until we have some other very strong proof otherwise.
If humans have souls, do other organisms have them too? Is this a trait unique to Homo sapiens? Did Neanderthals, for example, have souls?
And if the theory of evolution is true, at what point did “humans” begin to possess souls?
Does zygote have a soul? At what point does soul form or start exist? Or is it there in two parts or something from start?
So many questions when you put tiniest bit of thought in whole concept...
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The soul is what makes a being alive. Every living being has a soul.
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What evidence is there for humans having souls to support your "wisest default"? What would constitute "strong proof otherwise" in the case of machines?
Wouldn't the wise position be that since there is no evidence of souls at all that the default should be that both humans and machines do not contain a soul until proven otherwise?
Not to me. The wise position starts from "Humans are mysterious, but I am one and I see that others are like me, so I think we have souls." along with "I get what a machine is from first principles and based on all I know, they don't feel."
I get that this isn't as rigorous as one might like, but I think in the real world it's wise.