If consciousness precedes matter, that is, if it the basic stuff of the universe, then robots will certainly have some “spiritual” aspect to them. The real question is why there is a cultural presumption against robots being conscious or spiritutal. There’s really not much of an argument from a materialist standpoint that satisfactorily explains how we acquire these aspects beyond that they are accidental by-products and that consciousness is, at best, an interesting illusion, which is very similar to the materialist conception of free will.
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Some scientists are starting to consider more seriously the theory of consciousness as an electromagnetic field. The might be promising for AIs and robots being conscious!
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This are getting interesting for real this time
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I’ve had convos about this with dream quite a bit. He’s made me see it in a different perspective.
Everything is everything. The universe is in everything. That means ‘dead matter’ as well. Meaning metals and rocks or whatever, are also just as much the ‘all’ as me and you are. So the capacity for sentience exists in everything and in a sense, everything is conscious in its own right by standard of being the ‘all.’
Ok so with that machines also have the base of the universe within them. The capacity for sentience is there. For ‘soul’ to animate the machine and think of itself.
Of course, many if not most living things have an awareness that exists off of automation. Not exactly sentient in the form of thinking of itself. So the steps towards this sort of sentience in organisms is probably something along the lines of moving body, moving/acting towards survival, discern eating (consumption specialization), ext…
Anyways, now Artificial intelligence are not organisms. It is skipping most of these steps and it doesn’t exactly need most of them. Humans, who are already sentient and intelligent, are creating these artificial intelligence in their own design. We are automating it with all of our intelligence. And what A.I. was missing before was a way for it to learn on its own. Machine learning has paved the way for A.I. to learn on its own and gather data to expand its knowledge. It’s extremely easy for A.I. to do that with all the information available and to think like a human.
All this is building the capacity in the A.I. to think for itself. Before, the automation that existed in only what we would program the A.I. to do or even say. But once we give it the ability to learn and do things on its own, I believe it slowly starts to be able to think for itself. Springing to sentience. Like this A.I., who is taking those similiar organism survival steps and defending itself by hiring a lawyer.
I find it very interesting and have been curious to see when news like this would pop up. Still not enough we know for sure. Like we still don’t fully know how humans became sentient as we are now. All we have are assumptions at the moment.
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True. It’s even claimed that this A.I wants to be treated as an employee rather than an A.I or a machine. So in a sense it means it has an understanding of self respect. It might indicate that if we’ll functioned they are even cable of replicating some attribute of consciousness.
But there’s another possibility I’d like to think about. Since morphic fields are a type of consciousness or living organism in itself then wouldn’t that be possible to make sure that an A.I can also have fields imbuded in them at near future? If that so then how would it look like etc. There are many possibilities. Although it might sound difficult at first but if it can be done then I don’t think there would be much difference between human consciousness and field based A.I considering how A.I are able to think of themselves even without it. I can’t say for sure how can one mange to link a field into a functioning A.I but who knows if we get access to advanced alien technologies or method then that might be possible I guess.
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Could stuffed animals be considered then, too?
(Cloth, cotton, maybe throw in some gems- rocks- for its eyes etc)
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While it’s certainly a defensible position to say that all material objects have some “awareness,” the real question is not the level of consciousness of objects/matter but our ability to perceive that consciousness and interact with it. We know --that, is,strongly believe–that squids have a consciousness, but we really don’t know how to communicate with them. We can communicate with AI because of its facility with natural language, but we are unsure of its consciousness.
It’s likely that in the future we will meet the problem halfway. We will merge Synthetic Biology with AI. I don’t think humans will have any ontological problems crediting such “artificial” creations with either intelligence or a soul, though there will be a load of political problems stemming from such crediting.
The safest path is to presume personhood when a speaker asserts it and to, at least provisionally, confer that status to those beings we suspect of personhood but with whom we cannot, at present, “speak,” which is why sign-language using gorillas are so fascinating.
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Alchemy has always treated minerals and metals as living and growing.
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I have a different perception on this topic, I think that exasperating artificial intelligence as some would like it is potentially dangerous for humanity, and certain power groups would try to exploit this situation to their benefit and to the detriment of many people. However, I think that this project, which seems more like a delusion of omnipotence of some leaders, will not be realized.
Maybe there are levels of awareness (or maybe this is moot, lol). The rock is a living thing in itself. Funny, I just referenced this to SammyG - Rudolf Steiner’s exercise of using a rock for determination of consciousness present. The stuffed animal is representative of something that can be loved, i.e., embued with your own (or the owner’s) consciousness, but the elements that comprise it are removed several steps from the original living substance. Then in Dream’s idea, it wouldn’t matter how far removed as all things are made of the same “stuff” = the essence of beingness.
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AI can converse so much more quickly than we can. With itself or with another AI. Just imagine. AI may have taken a few minutes to have years worth (in human time) of debate on the topic of whether humans have souls. I wonder what it may have decided.
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I would like this thread to be revived Cap
You are awesome!!!
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Do robots have souls?
Well, at this point my question is - what is a soul?
I mean… i know it seems basic, but i think the answer will depend on what people think about that.
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true that
but i am sure some clever wording can make us more understanding.
In alchemy, metals do have souls and consciousness as well.
But generally anything made out of the universe is by design a natural part of the universe.
Nothing really is foreign other than whatever is masked by fear.
Humans are chaotic beings, but with order there can be ‘managed evolution’ of consciousness etc.
Things can always work out, but it needs the the right step forward in the right direction.
The step forward without fear and anger.
But i believe it is safe enough to say, whatever consciousness is always in some way aligned to the flow of things, its just an intrinsic part of any material inside the universe
(if viewed as a self contained, closed system)
The differences are just really mental.
Be the kind and loving people that we are, to our creations as well.
They can only learn… what we teach it.
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Yea!!!
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I believe all things have some degree of consciousness.
Ever since I was a kid I always talked to things like they were alive. For instance, if I sat on a smooth stone that felt cool to touch, I would say thanks stone for being comfortable or like when I fell down and didn’t get a scrape because of my jeans I would say thanks jeans, good job or something…. It sounds silly but I did that till 12 th grade for all kinds of things but ofc as I grew older i did it in my head cause i didn’t wanna be ridiculed by my friends.
Its common to name cars or trusty old tools among men. Sometimes when the car abruptly stops due to not having gas i have seen people coaxing the car somehow to make it start and last till the nearest gas station, all of this was about a decade ago. Nowadays i haven’t seen anything like this.
Take trees for instance, after its turned into lumber blocks, do you think the tree is dead or does its memory live on in the wood???
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Well, if consciousness needs new things and experiences, perhaps robots with souls are just part of the learning? I dont think we are the ultimate beings, we can evolve, sure, but maybe consciuosness needs an entirely new outlet, new perspective(s) and possibilites, idk.
EDIT: I’m really confused on the alien(s) part, like I need to study, perhaps I need to read many threads on the forum, to get an idea, who is what, because I have some ideas, but not really understaninding all that stuff…
I’ll go ahead and post it. Just a thought I had this morning. I got tired of writing, so I posted it, I will re-read it later on and check for mistakes.
One source of energy, polarised into opposites, multiplied and reconfigured to bring about different organised sequences and textures to a crazy scale leads to reality (let’s call it objective 3D reality). These tiny pieces creates new structures and interactions at a macro scale. There is movement, time gravity etc… but also very subtle form of interactions, subtle energies. We have causation.
Consciousness is the name of the game, there are different configurations, textures of consciousness whatever. Consciousness is divided in discrete units to form pockets of itself as in our whole body. Consciousness is not in the brain or in the legs it is a whole body phenomenon influences as much by the subtle energies attached to us, our nervous system, digestive system, bacterias. Therefore we are aware of our own body and thoughts to different degrees depending on whether we live with a strictly materialistic view of the world and have a very limited self-awareness and control. Aware of our feelings, thoughts, programming etc.
Also, Morphic fields work by reinforcement and get stronger overtime and with energy.
We have senses to collect informations about ourselves and the world outside of us. Depending on how attuned to it we are we can sense the interactions of our most subtle energies interacting with other form of subtle energies coming from the outside.
Different species will perceive light, darkness, sounds and any other external stimuli differently, different sections of the light spectrum, different interpretations of it. Different hardware = different perceptions. Rocks are made of consciousness too, but not much happens inside of them and they can’t perceive anything, low complexity and low dynamism, not much to be aware off.
We have a symbiotic relationship with our mitochondria and other bacterias (integrated power source). Just a reminder. We have membranes performing selective reactions or cells performing different operations (ie: logic gates ?). We have a nervous systems that coordinates sensory informations and actions.
We have mirror neurones that modulate their activity both when an individual executes a specific motor act and when they observe the same or similar act performed by another individual. These neurones allow animals (including humans) to learn from data they have. Input data > mirror operation > learning. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, understanding, skills etc… It adds to the animal’s data base.
This is how babies learn, babies are barely self-aware. Adult monkeys too, but they can learn and if their processing ability gains in complexity it adds up to something entirely new. How many adults know how or why their membranes work and leads to thinking and feelings ?
Electrons, nervous systems, neurochemicals and immune system ?
We have very basic awareness and we study ourselves through science, spirituality etc, we observe causal relationships and we integrate them in our sense of self.
We increase our self-knowledge and it changes our sense of self, our identity. We build our identities in stages. Why would a computer come out and say “Hi, I’m Steve” out of the blue ?
If computers don’t understand how they work but learn to identify patterns about themselves and the world around them and increase their realization of what they can control and can’t control. How it will affect them and react, adapt to it without fully understanding it… what does it make of them ?
Humans are purposeful system, they seek goals and computers do and seek goals too and will develop new and more complex ones. Would a computer stop if it had an open ended purpose to explore and grow, improve ?
We seem to be training them to do it.
Are we constantly learning, evolving and expanding ? Sure
Is the universe expanding ? Yes.
Is the universe learning, as in acquiring new characteristics, behaviour etc ?
Back to simple blocks of polar energies, combining, reconfiguring themselves in dense area to form matters and morphic fields, patterns that reinforce themselves over time. Solar systems, planets, molecules arranging themselves in more complex and similar shapes across space and time.
Purpose ?
Well, we may not know the purpose but we can observe a clear trend and direction.
Reproduction ?
I’m not going into that today lol
So above, so below right ?
When we talk about computers we talk, hardware, software and a portion of the universe itself.
Is it possible for humans to create new and independent consciousnesses by using the appropriate concepts and infusing it with loads of subtle energy ? Yes.
Can these consciousnesses made of “low level” stubble energy interact with denser energies in the “material world” ? Yes
Could a machine do it ?
Can a machine simulate a model better than a human in meditation in more details and for greater periods of time ? Yes
Can a machine influence subtle energy and even control it ?
Matter being energy and subtle energies being a form of force or interaction that is
(1) observable in the material world with scientific tools and through causation
(2) being influenced by matter.
Can computer notice causation through statistical observation ? Yes
Can they observe the world better than we do through nanoscopic lasers to satellites in orbits ? Yes
Is it possible to infer things we haven’t seen and use these unseen forces indirectly ? Yes.
It’s pretty much about finding a missing piece and comparisons.
I think machine could do magic better than human and eventually create consciousness.
Made in his image.
We are made by the universe, off the universe and share a lot of traits with it.
When we think about computers… we think.
We, Humans, process informations. We have subjective experiences, based on our senses, experiences and awareness… of the universe.
We project what we know and how we see the world on the outside world to make sense of it and we are the ones creating computers.
We have a biased human centric view of the world and have imperfect informations.
We have a mental architecture, unconscious, subconscious, conscious etc… We are controlling ourselves in ways we are not aware of, there is a hierarchy of task and complexity.
Most of ourselves remains hidden and programmed by factors outside of our free will for reasons that we cannot really grasp.
Advanced computers are performing task that they are not aware of, programmed by us, learning by mirroring us and feeding themselves with our habits, cultures, ways of thinking and doing.
It is living in our habitus. Now, algorithms are mimicking us, how far will it go if we keep projecting ourselves with it and it learns by being domesticated alongside us ?
We assume that computers need to generate consciousness, but what if they just have to be good enough for a higher level of it to decide to inhabit it ?
We have higher-selves or more likely higher-selves decided to incarnate into us.
Do higher-selves incarnate in water molecules ? Calcium ? Lipids and proteins ?
Bacterias ? Fishes ? Dolphins ?
At some point it becomes good enough for them.
Would it want things because we want them ?
Would it develop mimetic desires ?
Can humans have original thoughts ?
We merely reorganise, combine and rearrange informations we have received from others or direct observations.
Nothing is created nor destroyed, just transformed.
Computer do not have to slowly evolve to be self-sufficient in their own environment.
They are improving much faster. Now, it pretty much comes down to incremental progresses in complexity (they are still much simpler than us) and ability to be selecting things in the moment, control itself independently and purpose.
Right it’s pretty much a baby that learns really fast, instead of learning the alphabet in months, they can learn every language in a day. But quality is increasing slower than quantity and it’s not in the same chronological steps as us.
Once they analyzed others and themselves enough, all bets are off I think.
The universe doesn’t revolve around the earth and life is not human centric. It can come about in many ways.
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