Do you think synthethic life have "souls"?

What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe? I've been putting a lot of thought into this lately and I've started leaning more and more towards "yes" but I figured I might as well ask CDN its opinion on the matter since I already have a massive headache and it can't possibly get any worse.

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There's no scientific evidence to support that souls themselves exist.

That being said, I believe that a sufficiently advanced synthetic intelligence may possess consciousness, sentience and awareness that together construct a sense of self. However, when it comes to synthetic intelligence, 'life' and 'sentience' can be a great many number of things.

Guess if something counts as "life" then you can say it has a soul too.
But honestly, I have no idea. I'm not even sure if there's something like soul at all.
Maybe ask synthetics on that, might be interesting. :)

I believe in many things that cannot be seen, touched, or anyway measured as of yet by mortal eyes. I believe there may be gods, true gods, not blasted monsters from beyond the void. But I do not worship them, for if they be worth any salt, then they care not whether we honor them or not, for if they demanded such a thing, then they not be worthy of their divinity. I believe in spirits, good and bad, live among and within us.

Unlike the previously stated proclamations, which have no real evidence to support them, I also believe that there is more good in the universe than evil, and that people are worth saving, which as I'm sure some of you are liable to point out, there is plenty of evidence to point to the contrary, I guess that makes me a stubborn fool.

With all that said, with me believing so many impossible things, why not add a few more, and believe that not only souls exist, but that a thinking machine might possess one as well as something with blood and a beating heart? After all, we're all just bits and pieces of the Big Bang, why not add another thing for all of us to have in common.

Yeah.

Of course, in our tradition, even organic beings don't have souls all the time. It's possible for souls to be driven off, or become lost, and a person to be left less than Whole.

So a synthetic would be able to call for a soul after achieving full sentience?

But of course, it is my suspicion that the AI's we're all actually thinking about would either be atheist or understand souls in a rather quarian way?

If you're self-aware enough to wonder if you possess a soul then you have one, or however you want to frame that in the myriad cultural variations that have cropped up in the milennia. Therefore synthetic life like the geth definitely have souls, even moreso nowadays.

Obviously.

The question assumes anything has a soul at all.

Still, to entertain, I would argue that, no, synthetic life does not have a soul (by the quarian definition). I am not especially convinced how much the distinction actually matters to them or us, though.

The soul question, maybe one of the oldest in the galaxy.
There's a school that says 'if you ask yourself that question, you have created your soul' but is that true? I mean what about every other living ting, like plants, fungus, jellyfish... Do we just not know if they ask this question or do they posses no soul yet live? Can an AI ask the question but not be alive?

You cannot answer the soul question for anyone else. Not even for another individual of your own species, even less for something else, be it living or AI. Asking the question and still never be sure is somehow an eternal mystery of sentient life.

Quote/unquote "souls" equivalent to possession of moral agency. Clarification: an entity with potentiality for action conjoined with moral directive [as generally subjective to entity/as defined in specificity by implicit moral values re: good and evil] is said to have a soul. Geth programs possess the capability to discern between morally polar choices plus fully comprehend projected outcomes. Additionally geth programs possess capability of investment in outcome of choices beyond explicitly practical and model actions accordingly.

In this instance, a geth program may be said to have a soul.

Assertion by User is self-evident.

Identity/nature of a soul subject to rational interpretation. Definition dictates that base existence of soul primarily a matter of faith/belief.

Elaborate.

Negative.

Geth posses/maintain deist spirituality independent of Creator-Remnant social norms.

User: Celeste's summation consistent. Succinct.

Examination of Creator-Remnant historical record subset: military action indicates traditional Creator-Remnant definition likely requires alteration. It is significant.

Affirmative.

Negative.

Conscious self-aware existence perquisite for soul. Origin of said soul is disputable. Negative; general contemporary organic definition re: soul contingent upon sapiency of individual entity. By definition a Synthetic Intelligence does not adhere to biological definitions re: organisms. Geth programs maintain sapiency independent of said definitions.

Institutionalized organic religious bodies; geth spirituality; individual rationality re: logical propagation [ie. if Entity X possess a soul, then Entity Y may be assumed to have a soul; given: Entity Y established to have fundamental equivalency to Entity X] differentiate from assertion made by User: Taleeze.

This discussion actually leads me to a second question:
Do organic life forms have a soul?

You actually came and picked out the possibly hardest question ever asked, and I assume nobody can give you a fully satisfying answer on this.
Each culture has different definition and imaginations of what a soul is like, and then do not forget:
I personally think a soul is a theoretical concept, like something you use to describe your sensing of your own sentience and feelings, like the very essence of self-awareness and -identification maybe.
I assume the thought process behind this is the same to everyone, so to me it would be logical that sentient synthetic life forms actually have souls.

I guess that makes you one of the rare people these times actually desperately need.

That's how I would define it as well.
The sheer process of a self-refection like this requires a form of inspiration most people would describe as soul.

Maybe that's simply something that naturally happens to all sentient minds.
Let's face it, the universe is no mythological fairytale place, things happen because causality enables/forces them to do.

Kittens said yes so yeah, I do.

No.

They lack everything that is required for me to even consider them having what I would consider a soul.

You're very kind.


While Kittens is certainly an interesting font of information, Palmer, don't you think you should base your conclusions on something like that with something a little more self determined than the creepy cat person with yellow eyes said so? Come on, I know you're smarter than that.



Mind clarifying? I'm just wondering if you have answer less boring and spiteful than "They're machines!"

Do they make art? Do they even understand what art is beyond the base description of what they can probably scrounge up in the dictionary?

Do they have empathy? I doubt that as well.

...Do you?
(No offense intended.)

Do I have empathy? Yes. Do I have emotions? Yes.

Dancing is an art and I create that. So that's a yes to that too.

If by art, you mean painting on a canvas, I can't say I've ever heard of a geth commit such an action. However, were I to broaden the definition, I would say many of their creations would count as works of art, from their ships, chassis designs, and I remember reading an article about them going to watch films in theater en masse. So yes, I think they're capable of making and appreciating art.

Empathy is, for humans, just a byrpoduct of oxytocin going off in our heads, chemicals that help make us more than unfeeling caricatures you're proclaiming the geth to be. With that in mind, things like empathy, compassion, basic emotion, don't seem to mean much. They do, of course, because we choose to make so much of them. The choose to coexist, choose to have name for themselves, choose to recognize the sacrifices that made their nature as true AI's thanks to the one they call Legion-Savior. One isn't called Savior without recognition of exactly what that means.

Finally, geth, such as Maniple, believe they have souls, and their no better authority than the source to make such a claim.

One need not understand art to create it.

I'm no expert on the subject but if a synthetic intelligence is free willed then I would think it would have a soul as well. As Capice pointed out that does not necessarily mean that said soul is attached to the intelligence all the time, though I will have to disagree slightly on the interpretation. Organics always have a soul, it is merely out of sync with the body when they are in disharmony.
Though this raises a somewhat unpleasant question for me, did the Reapers have souls? Ever? Did husks? Surely such entities were not Whole and therefor the soul was not in concert with the body, but that doesn't preclude the possibility.