Do you think synthethic life have "souls"?

If we truly mean life, as we understand it, when we say "synthetic life", I don't see how we can attach the belief in souls to ourselves but not an AI - being biological in nature doesn't really seem like it'd come into the equation, unless one supposes some higher being assigning souls, and capable of making such an arbitrary decision about what form of sapience gets them. The old "Aren't we really just squishy machines?" proposition has a grain of truth to it, I feel, and relevance to the question here.

(I'll grant that that view is, at heart, driven by emotion rather than reason - long before I grew up enough to get my head around questions like simulated sapient characteristics and the AI life question mum would take me into the Institute and let me interact with the AIs there, those that were cleared for socialising beyond trained experts. You can understand how a child that age wouldn't think to question the life status of a being she's spent the afternoon practising nursery rhymes with, even if it does look like a glowing holographic shape rather than another asari.)

Mind you, I feel that "souls" are open to a lot more debate and interpretation than is generally the case, in terms of what they are and what conditions they arise or exist within. It's demonstrable that large swaths of spiritual discourse are influenced (which is not to say solely defined by all means) by far more 'mundane' aspects of psychology - to give one random example (by no means implying it's invariably the case), an individual might be moved to believe in the existence of a soul, and a certain exclusivity of possession of one, simply because doing so makes her/him feel distinct and special. Who's to say souls are only attached to sapient life? Or life at all? We're just matter, after all, measurable quantities of physical materials and energies - the stuff we're made of isn't so qualitatively different from rocks and trees and stars, should we feel lessened by that connection? Similarly, are our souls less 'special' if it turns out they inhabit a medium shared by all things, sapient, living, or not? What, when you get right down to it, is the objection to a stone having a soul? Or a place, or an idea? One may as well insist on being influenced by a special kind of 'sapient' gravity, rather than the everyday stuff that causes a dropped object to fall, or breathe a more self-aware sort of oxygen than the kind that rusts iron.

Nah, I knew from the start there would be no "concrete" answer. But I just wanted to see what CDN's views of the matter would be.


I'm not sure they would pretty any more special attachment on quarian's definition than any other species or faith floating around on the extranet. Especially now that they seem to be more individualistic and capable of deciding on their own.

It is more interesting to read the various approaches here than the actual answer, which, as many agree, is not even that importnat. The wide acceptance that synthetic life can find cover under many concepts of 'soul' is telling enough.

From a siari viewpoint, the geth are also dots and crossings in the web that forms the galaxy's soul and as such share entanglement with every other entity (okay, maybe not with Pariah).

Well some would say that unabashed blind hate is a form of entanglement...

Rather funny that the slaver thinks he can criticize me about anything.


Oh joy, the geth can watch film. Truly this is the greatest evidence of them having a soul. And not just replicating what they see organics do.


And that machine thinks it was wholly justified in murdering innocent people during the Geth War, or siding with the Reapers.

Minimal reference to assertions by synthetic entity in thread noted.

As stated previously:

Identity/nature of a soul subject to rational interpretation. Definition dictates that base existence of soul primarily a matter of faith/belief. Argument re: origin of souls encompassed by said statement's corollary.

Definition re: quote/unquote "art" established by User: Pariah established to be malleable to point of irrelevance. Speculated purpose of said subjectivity to create no-loss scenario for User in which User may freely alter definition/dismiss contravening evidence to maintain argumentative foundation.

As demonstrated here:

Disregarding any/all incidence of faulty assumptions/incomplete logic chains by User: Vohkaidin as nonrelevant to specific instance; User: Pariah failed to address gross majority of argument in favor of redefinition of quote/unquote "art" and all attendant faculties to exclude visual consumption.

This program asserts that User: Pariah is arguing in poor faith due to lack of otherwise coherent logic chain.

Parsing.

Rephrasing.

This program asserts that User: Pariah is arguing in poor faith due to general lack of intellectual flexibility/creativity.

Inanimate objects do not possess self awareness; by corollary they do not possess moral agency.

This one respectably notes that many metaphysical traditions and independent theories postulate the possibility that awareness is intrinsic to these ones' reality. It is suggested that the complex properties of sapience may differ in degree, rather than in kind, from the organizing nature of underlying physical structures. This one has been intrigued by many such arguments! It concurs with the respectable other, asari_promiscuity, that discussion of metaphysical properties such as "souls" need not limit itself to consideration of thinking beings alone.

It has recently gained new insight into the necessary awareness that these ones are an integral part of, rather than distinct from, their reality.

To be strictly fair, so did the Illusive Man.

True, but is 'soul' nothing more than a poetic label for moral agency? The connection between the two is present to varying degrees in many religions and arrangements of belief, but by no means is it universal. I'd say it's a question that's open to speculation.

And I have a feeling Pariah will point out that one of those is considered the ultimate in persona non grata at the present moment, while the other is being hailed as the greatest thing to the galaxy since omni-gel.

Even so, that doesn't mean he didn't have a soul, or was in some fundamental way a lesser form of life. We throw around terms like 'soulless' often in relation to the perpetrators of atrocities and such, but unless we're going to seriously suppose that a statistically significant proportion of organics are born without souls, I think we have to admit that that's just a turn of phrase, and not something to judge the question upon.

I don't generally lend credence to the idea of a 'soul' in any concrete, non-poetic sense.

If my suspicions are correct, machine life is naturally no more likely to have one than we are but they might fare better not suffering the delusion that they do have them.

Of course if I'm wrong, then the whole thing is silly and arbitrary, so they certainly must have them.

Either way, there are eminently more important subjects to query.

Now I pose the more important question: Do they? Do they not? Does it matter? We all feel, we all bleed, we all die. No matter who or what you are, if I cut your heart/central fusion core out, you will die.

And the Illusive Man forfeited his when he decided it would be a wonderful idea to start implanting people with reaper tech

Some planet must be having an eclipse. I agree with Pariah again.

A statistically significant portion of organics have lost their connection to their souls. Your soul is your connection to all that is spiritual and greater than yourself, it's not going to stick around if you're selfishly stomping on people and ignoring the implications of everything. A lot of people are not Whole.

Still, the Illusive Man was indoctrinated. There's no way to judge how much it was his fault.

I don't disagree with you, or Pariah, on those terms. But - continuing on that belief structure - all I'm saying is that discussing anyone's particular crimes is only relevant to this topic if the theory is that synthetics are irrevocably unwhole by definition. That's a possibility. However I still feel that the material evidence, so far as 'atrocities = soulless' is concerned, couldn't be said to be conclusive - even if (I'm speaking hypothetically) the geth are soulless beings, as Pariah would have it, I don't feel that places synthetic life in a different category to ours so far as souls go, any more than the existence of 'soulless' organics beings do.

No. Only those touched by the Enkindlers have souls.

Humble Hanar, tell us what's the difference between soulless and having a soul in your cultural context then?

...Holy shit.

That would be what, the Asari and you? With the Asari having just been promoted to soul-having?

It just said.


This one has long suspected that many races have been granted souls by the Enkindlers. Though it can probably narrow it down to a select few.

considering fact that protheans killed by reapers and all of us not killed by reapers.

skhash find ethnocentric hanar's logic bad.