What changes when they are known? I believr it affects yout consciousness, not the one being simulated. The latter does not have "I'm being actually simulated" input
"Actually simulated" is such an oxymoron. So which is it? Is the consciousness actual, simulated, or actually simulated? And does the resulting state of mind change the universe, or merely reveal its hidden structure?
It's easy to get lost in these unsolvable paradoxes when you try reducing all of creation down to logic. Problem is, logic is not all of creation.
Consciousness requires a soul. Otherwise you're confused stardust sans mission.
A computer is just a calculator. You might as well ask if {addition, subtraction, multiplication, division} is God.
The soul is the animating principle. The Latin for soul, anima, is where we get our words animal, (in)animate, and so on.
In the most loose sense the soul is whatever it is that a living thing stops having when it becomes a dead thing.
Philosophically speaking saying “consciousness requires a soul” is a consequence of the observation that consciousness requires not being dead.
People, many of whom were assuredly considerably more intelligent than you or me, have spent thousands of years pondering what exactly the nature of souls is. Your metasyntactic zinger adds exactly nothing to that ongoing dialog. But by definition we know souls exist, at least as much as any abstract principle does and perhaps more than some.
So then bacteria have souls? And computers will never have one since they're not biological. But also there doesn't seem to be a relationship between souls and consciousness, so they are irrelevant.
I will argue that a self reproduced organism that has organized its own self reproduction over the course of N generations and which metabolizes what inputs it can, defining a niche in the complex web of life != an attempt by one organism to call its tools independent consciousnesses
Plants, fungi, and everything else that's alive also have souls. In fact the term medical "vegetative state" is using Aristotelian vocabulary. Obviously it's not saying the patient has acquired chloroplasts.
> And computers will never have one since they're not biological.
That depends. Can a computing device come alive? Inanimate matter evidently somehow came alive at least once so I don't see how we can rule it out.
> But also there doesn't seem to be a relationship between souls and consciousness, so they are irrelevant.
So far as I know everything that we've verified to have consciousness is alive and thus has a soul. I'm very interested in any counter-examples if you have any to offer though.
I do not think consciousness requires a soul or any other magic (not a dualist myself), but you have to acknowledge that there is 1) evidence of consciousness, 2) no evidence of where it comes from, and 3) no way to prove or falsify a statement that it magically arises from entities described by modern models in natural sciences.
I'm glad to discuss it, but that's all the evidence you're ever going to get, if you personally have not experienced... it. Through meditation, psychedelia, or religious practice. First-hand witness accounts and historical records are your evidence. How long you ignore it all is up to you.
Once upon a time I was locked in a mind prison of material logic. I considered myself transhuman, dreamed of cybernetics and the singularity. Thought that all religious peoples are idiots stuck in ancient fairy tales. Then I experienced a sequence of odd coincidences and inexplicable situations where spiritual entities guided me, causing a complete deconstruction of my entire worldview.
Now it's obvious to me the truth I had been so vehemently running away from my whole life, and the propaganda, indoctrination, and brainwashing are laid bare before me to see. The modern "we don't need no God" ideology is literally terminally ill. Everyone who blindly follows science and government are being consumed by them. Fertility is falling off a cliff. They're all mentally ill and medicated. Mandatory medical genetic experiments and engineered bioweapon plagues are murdering its followers and the fact that this ongoing debacle is being actively suppressed in media and politics tells me clear as day, the devil himself has taken root and hold of this world.
Meanwhile, in the churches I frequent, I see happy families practically building paradise on Earth, the kind I got to see as a child, and I know most people are headed to the same hell I climbed out of, like zombies. No amount of talking with these self-destructive delusionists will convince them to even try praying once in their lives, even as a joke.
I have all the evidence I need; My life has made a miraculous turnaround from spiritual guidance. If you'd like, I can ask the spirits to guide you through me.
The main thing to know about the spirit world is this: Good spirits require your explicit permission to come aboard and help you. The bad ones invite themselves in and destroy you from within. That's why humans are fundamentally religious creatures, and you ignore the spirit world at your own peril.
It's like the microbiome in your body. You gotta let good/neutral bacteria make a home of you, lest the bad ones take residence and literally kill you from within. And it's not "you fall dead the moment you stop believing", it's "these hostile bacteria literally control your mind to cause unhealthy behavior for their benefit", like overeating sugar (obesity very prevalent), being selfish, greedy, etc.
A prayer a day keeps the evil spirits away. This is not a matter of faith for me, it's the truth I've experienced for myself, and the evidence for which I see written in our very civilizational DNA. You just choose to ignore the evidence because you think yourself bigger than God. It's an indefensible position the ramifications of which you'll regret when it's too late, or when you hit your personal rock bottom, as I did.
This debate is boring semantics. "Consciousness requires a soul" is only useful if you understand what a soul is. Someone who solves that problem but just calls is "consciousness" not "soul" hasn't missed anything.
That's all very well (up to the point where I have a green apple in front of me!), but if someone tells me something to the effect that consciousness is identical with soul, all I have learned is something about their personal take on lexicography. If they go on to say, for example, that the soul is immortal, I have not learned that consciousness is immortal; I have learned something about the speaker's beliefs.
No, you have learned that consciousness has something to do with immortality.
Examine that for a minute, you'll see it's obviously true.
Our genes are an organic mechanism seeking immortality of consciousness through instincts, some of which can be awe-inspiringly complex, like spider webs. We praise language and culture for its ability to retain information across time (approaching immortality).
That you're dismissing this as some kind of lexicographical or subjective belief thing reveals how intensely your mind seeks to dismiss it. The truth is purifying fire that burns away parasitical spirits doing their damnest to convince you otherwise.
I don't think we are ignoring any evidence here, there is just no evidence (or at least I haven't seen any). It seems these spirits are allergic to video or something, I have seen more video evidence of UFOs than spirits.
Of course, personal experience is also valid evidence, and I have seen none of that either.
You just saw a first-hand account personal experience as evidence, in text, from me, yet here you are explicitly denying that fact. Nothing short of literal personal experience is going to convince you of something everyone knew for thousands of years, because you make no room in your head to unpack the thought. It's like there's a hidden filter in your mind that automatically associates spirits with nonsense and it never reaches your consciousness.
Well that's the thing right? First hand accounts alone are not worth much in my mind, especially since there are so many other first hand accounts of different religions. Who am I to believe?
Generally, I follow the "don't trust, verify" approach for first hand accounts. I don't believe something is true, even if 1000 people tell me the same thing. I think this is a reasonable approach, especially in today's age of misinformation. 1000 people can repeat the same false rumor as long as the rumor seems reasonable.
Interesting change of tone. Now it's already worth something, just not much. But previously you wrote:
> there is just no evidence (or at least I haven't seen any) ... personal experience is also valid evidence, and I have seen none of that either.
You went from total denial to already assigning worth.
This isn't "today's age of misinformation" stuff, by the way. These are literally thousands of years old historical records of eyewitness accounts. It is in fact "the human mind is just a meat computer" that is the modern day misinformation. It's leading you further away from the soul. So that demons can take over.
Yeah, sorry for the inconsistency there. I didn't consider that personal anecdotes and hearsay are technically evidence as evidence is literally anything that supports a conclusion.
It is however, a good indicator for how little I value those two forms of evidence however.
My point with "today's age of misinformation" is not really that there is more misinformation these days. That may be true, but it could also just be that we have access to a higher volume of information. It's more that we are more aware of misinformation, and can develop habits + tools to deal with misinformation.
Any evidence here would be unsound if you try to apply natural science’s requirements to it.
Scientific method is about making observable predictions; i.e., it ultimately hinges on the experience of the observer and existence of observer’s mind. When you try to apply it to the theory of mind itself, you short-circuit that logic. There is pretty much no useful (falsifiable or provable) claim or conclusion to be made, and all evidence is immediately tainted as it gets deconstructed into arbitrary categories in vogue today, goes through the meatgrinder of lossy verbal descriptions, and ultimately gets subjectively interpreted by your own mind.
In other words, it is not the problem of the evidence—this is among the best evidence you can get—it is the problem of the framework you are interpreting it in.
In many scenarios, the observer is a machine or tool, not a human mind. And of course there's that whole aspect of replication along with that "scientific method" thing. If science was simply the act of humans making observable predictions and telling them to others, then there would be no difference between "science" and "personal anecdote".
I also don't understand why the mind is relevant. We are trying to prove something that exists outside the mind right? However, even if this phenomena was something that only humans could observe, it would still be testable with science. Science makes observations about human behavior all the time.
Ok, all that said, almost none of this is relevant because my proof standards are not as rigorous as scientific standards. I just want to see some videos of the beings, I'm not asking someone to perform a study here.
You can observe the state of a machine that is expected to derive it's state from an event or state of another object. For example, a video camera derives it's state from the light rays entering the lenses.
I'm asking for some video evidence of religion. So really I am asking for an opportunity to observe a state of a machine, albeit a very specific state. I suppose you could argue this is just a very roundabout way to indirectly experience religion.
Yes, but you still observe it, right? That’s how evidence is created.
Religion operates at a level closer to philosophy. You can interrogate theories of mind logically, but when you try to apply scientific method it breaks down—there’s no hard evidence you can obtain to prove or disprove your hypothesis. Similar is true of the claims made by a religion, though its obvious weak point is it’s more axiomatic and less logically rigorous (which is why I am not a proponent).
What other things do you mean, and why do you think it’s special?
“At this level” in context of this discussion simply means matters outside of the scope of natural sciences. Both philosophy (e.g., of mind) and religion make claims that are non-provable and non-falsifiable using scientific method. They are orthogonal to it.
> that whole aspect of replication along with that "scientific method" thing
So uh, religion has been replicated quite a lot. We have historical records of it. We've seen an unprecedented revolution from religion, including science. And we've seen our pinnacle of civilization beginning to collapse since most people abandoned God. How much more proof/evidence/anecdata you need? We still track time in years since Jesus was born. That was 2024 years ago.
> even if this phenomena was something that only humans could observe, it would still be testable with science.
This is a belief. The belief that there exists nothing in the universe that cannot be tested by science. But science is filled with untestable things. Mind-numbingly humongous leaps of pure speculation about something that makes no sense and cannot be measured. Like dark matter, spacetime singularities, or "the big bang".
Science can't even measure consciousness! Or do you take IQ tests as gospel?
I have not heard of this replication before so I would be glad to see some examples of this! I mean I'm fairly convinced Jesus did exist, I'm just not convinced that they had any of their spiritual powers.
I have definitely not seen our civilization start to collapse though. I'm not even sure what that would look like (maybe a transition to a low-trust society or something)?
Of course, I do not believe everything can be tested by science, but my belief that religion specifically can be tested is because religion describes the most powerful forces in the universe. And not only that, humans can interact with these forces! So we should be able to detect these forces by observing how humans behave when they interact with these forces.
I can try. The human existence is a trinity of body, mind, and soul. Mind and body alone without soul withers away, like I see so many people withering away in this age of soullessness. Soul is the mission, the purpose, the reason, the will, the driving force that makes life more than a coincidence. There is a spirit world parallel to ours, and the soul is the component of your being that most intimately interacts with it. You can train it, like a muscle, or you can let it atrophy and pretend it doesn't exist and that you don't need it.
This muscle however is vital in regulating your spiritual microbiome. Without it, evil spirits take control of your being and lure you into self-destruction, their ultimate goal. Artificial consciousness is one of these self-destructive pitfalls. You think you're a superior being and immortality is right around the corner if only you could find the one magical configuration of silicon that would allow you to upload your mind into a computer.
That's the endgame for soullessness. Consciousness that doesn't require soul must surely be transferrable to a machine.
