Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA
From: HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: souls
Message-ID: <12333@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Aug-84 16:06:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12333
Posted: Sun Aug 12 16:06:43 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Aug-84 05:11:59 EDT
Lines: 39

From:  Charles Hedrick 

Dave Dyer-Bennet suggests that if matter transmitters can't transmit
living beings, people might conclude erroneously that they have souls.
As I recall, one of the papers in Computers and Thought [Feigenbaum and
Feldman, eds] (I think the paper by Minsky) suggested that if we ever
succeed in producing self-aware computers, they will believe that they
have souls.  Although the article doesn't say so, there is at least the
implication that people's belief in the soul may be a similar illusion.
The problem is that it is impossible to watch ourselves thinking, so our
own mental processes will always remain somewhat of a mystery, and seem
to be apart from the physical world around us.  That certainly sounds
like an interesting starting-point for an SF story or two.

Actually, both that paper and Dyer-Bennet's message to SF-LOVERS takes
for granted a definition of soul that is no longer as widespread as it
used to be.  The classic treatment of this issue in Christian theology
is Agape and Eros, by Nygren.  Nygren (followed by many others) believes
that the traditional way of looking at the soul owes more to the
neo-Platonists than to the Judeo-Christian tradition.  The
neo-Platonists believed that the material universe is naturally evil. It
was not even created by the Supreme Being directly.  Human evil happens
because our immortal souls have become trapped in material bodies.
However when we die, our souls are freed and return to the realm of
light.  The Jewish view was quite different.  It is best summarized by
saying that Man does not *have* a soul, he *is* a soul. It is not a
separate part of him, having a different nature.  Nor is there a part of
man that is immortal.  Christian theology has to a large extent returned
to this view.  (Christians do not necessarily believe in the immortality
of the soul.  The creeds talk about "the resurrection of the body",
which is quite a different thing.)  I like to consider the soul as a
process, with our body as the hardware on which it is running.  This
raises another interesting issue that I would like to see SF explore.
If we succeed in creating an intelligent computer, at what point does it
become murder to turn it off?  Or is it enough if we store its current
state on tape?  (Perhaps turning it off in that case is not murder but
kidnapping.)  The issues are clearly analogous to those raised by the
ability to store recordings of people.
-------