Mindfuck time:
If you program a robot to believe it has a soul, does it?
This is a serious question.
The concept of a soul is a
qualia.You fundamentally cannot describe what one "is", anymore than you can describe what "red" is.
In this resepect, if you create a fully autonomous robot that processes external sensory data through a proceedurally generated matrix that is initially created (and continually modified) by an adaptive program that attempt to create causal relationships between those sensory processes, and it comes to believe that it has a soul--
Does it?
The implication of this question is paramount to LB's line of argument.
LB is asserting that he/she experiences having a soul, and therefore does. (Basically.)
If we replace the physical nature of LB with that of a robot, (admittedly, a very very complicated one), does it asserting that it experiences a soul, actually mean it has one?
Afterall, we can induce many perceptions of qualia in humans by stimulating their brains with electrical signals. Further, schizophrenic people's brains produce signals identical to those of people processing real sensory data when they have their hallucenatory episodes.
For them, the hallucenations are indestinguishable from reality.
How can LB be sure that what he/she is experiencing, is in fact, a soul?
There are many ethica and philosophical implications riding on the answers to this question, because it questions weather or not what we actually experience is actually "real", and calls into question the very conceptual nature of what "real" represents.
For example, if we make the assertion (for sake of argument, mind), that we are merely complex signal processors that are generated from a biological template, using an imperfect process that leaves variability in our physical construction which is made up for by a dynamic data processing algorithm that can cope with these inconsistencies between physical productions of the hardware gracefully--
How do we know we actually have bodies, actually are in front of our computers, and that the universe around us is in fact real, and not a very complex, interactive simulation?
How can we trust any sensory input we have?
How can we possibly ascertain what is and is not actually real?
I don't believe we can. I believe we can only ascertain what is conserved between observations, and what is consistent.
In this scenario, "the matrix" can have us, and we would never know.
If we cannot trust our perceptions of reality to begin with, how can we determine that our perception of having a "soul" are real?
All we can do is assert that we do.
Which brings us back to the robot.
It says it has one. We built it. We know every diode, every circuit, every line of code.
Does it have one?