Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

[Corvus]

We are all familiar with the story, though it's likely most of us have never read the book. Yet the novel poses some deep questions many of us may have forgotten in the commercialisation of the story. As we all know, the story is about a creation of science, a monster sown together from the parts of dead bodies and brought back to life through the power of electricity - an impossible situation prevented by the law of biogenesis. Regardless, this raises such questions as,

"Do we have souls?"

"What is a soul?"

"In which part of the body does the soul reside?"

"Would Frankenstein's monster have a soul? Would a machine? What if the machine was a replica of a man?"

There are others, but these are the ones I wish to focus on.

[otseng]

How do you measure how much guilt somebody's feeling, or whether or not they're making a 'choice'? And blushing when caught doing something wrong? Is measuring the blood flow in somebody's face really going to be an effective way of determining the existence of a soul?

Things like free will and conscience, and I think consciousness itself, are not things I can imagine being accurately and definitively measurable.

Here is my definition of a soul:

"The part of us that is not physical. It is responsible for such things as the conscience, intuition, personality, free will, and (complex) emotions."

So, by (my) definition, of course the soul cannot be definitively measured. That is why it would have to indirectly be tested for.

And it's not inconceivable that a computer program might be designed that can analyse certain situations and determine the rightness or wrongness of various outcomes.

I doubt such a program can ever be written, but it doesn't matter. The question is, can a biological entity be constructed to judge what is right or wrong?

[The Hungry Atheist]

There could be a part of us that isn't physical, and it certainly instinctively feels like there should be something "outside" of my physical body which provides things like free will, but I'm still not sure how such a thing could really be measured at all. It seems that it can't be directly observed, but can we even determine it's presence or otherwise indirectly, with any certainty? Your adapted Turing test doesn't seem viable as yet - I've met a number of people who haven't seemed fully human, and I'm not sure any definite set of results could ever be determined.

What kind of tests would have to be performed where we could definitely say that a particular result indicates a particular condition (either the definite presence or absence of a soul/conscience/free will/whatever) ? The suggested blush test can hardly be considered definitive - not everyone will react in such a way when experiencing guilt, we can't be sure when people are experiencing guilt anyway, and some people's skin tone is such that blushing is difficult to measure anyway. Are there any indirect results at all which can be observed that would actually give a genuine indication one way or the other?

[Corvus]

There could be a part of us that isn't physical, and it certainly instinctively feels like there should be something "outside" of my physical body which provides things like free will, but I'm still not sure how such a thing could really be measured at all.

This is something I don't feel. When I was in high school we studied neural networks and inference engines, the practice of which give us the term "fuzzy logic". These are the closest we get to how the brain works. I feel the brain is a complex machine with vast number of connections and nodes. This gives the appearance of free will, but it's rarely really free. There is never any such thing as an effect without a cause.

I am a materialist. I believe that science could, far in the future, progress enough to make an artificial replica of a human brain, complete with blushing, though I don't believe we would want to. By that time we might be able to create an infallible machine which would never have the occasion to blush.

[TQWcS]

here is a good site about the soul.... http://xoomer.virgilio.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

[nikolayevich]

here is a good site about the soul.... xoomer.virgilio.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

Please do not follow this link as it appears to be a spam site, which is not permitted.

TQWcS, If you have a relevant link to include as part of your post, please do so with an explanation as to what the site is and how it relates. Do not post spam.

[TQWcS]

The site i posted was a legitimate site. It is proffesor Marco Biagini's
attempt to explain the soul by using physics. I don't know if you consider that spam or not if so then i won't post it again.

TQ

[nikolayevich]

My apologies. My browser endlessly loads html frames when following the link and the actual content never loads, so it seemed something was fishy. Corvus tells me it loads for him, so I take it my browser just doesn't like it.

I would not consider it spam if it loads to content about the conversation. Please let us hear [your] opinions too though, not just those of a particular site. We'd like to hear what conclusions you personally have come to.

[Dilettante]

"Do we have souls?"

As long as we are alive, I would say we probably do, although I am not sure. In my native language one of the words for soul (anima) is derived from a Latin word meaning "breath", "vital principle" or "life". We distinguish between "inanimate" and "living" beings.

"What is a soul?"

Perhaps what makes us alive. It's my guess, I don't really know. Nobody has been able to isolate a soul.

"In which part of the body does the soul reside?"

My guess is that soul (whatever it is) must animate the whole body and is probably not localized in a specific area.

"Would Frankenstein's monster have a soul? Would a machine? What if the machine was a replica of a man?"

Good question. In the classic James Whale movie the monster seems to have feelings, etc. But his soul, if any, was probably not as developed as a human soul (perhaps only an "animal soul").
A machine could have a soul, yes. We are such machines. But a robot or a computer couldn't. They're not living beings. The Turing test really proves nothing.

[MagusYanam]

"Do we have souls?"

Well, we are sapient, self-aware beings. We have personalities, we have predilections, we have the capacity to reason. And yet we do not know what it is about us that makes us capable of reason, or what physical or chemical structures comprise our personality. It seems to me that we are not just mere matter, but something more.

"What is a soul?"

soul:

1: the immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of an individual life
2a: the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings or the universe b capitalised, Christian Science: GOD 1b
3: a person's total self
4a: an active or essential part b: a moving spirit: LEADER
5a: the moral and emotional nature of human beings b: the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment c: spiritual or moral force: FERVOUR
6: PERSON
7: EXEMPLIFICATION, PERSONIFICATION <she is the ~ of integrity>
8a: a strong positive feeling (as of intense sensitivity and emotional fervour) conveyed especially by black American performers b: NEGRITUDE c: SOUL MUSIC d: SOUL FOOD e: SOUL BROTHER

Well, take your pick. I personally favour definitions 2a and 5a, since my understanding of the word 'soul' encompasses more than just the emotional nature of humankind but also that in humankind which separates it from the other creatures, yet does not imply something substantial or material.

"In which part of the body does the soul reside?"

Since I like the definition of 'soul' that implies an insubstantial nature, I would likely not even hold with the implicit assumption that the soul resides in the body. I think it is possible that our souls can reside and linger wherever we leave our impression for good or ill, or where impressions are made on us. After all, it is said that a person's soul can live on in this world through his or her legacy long after s / he is dead. In the Civil War, didn't the Union troops sing this song: 'John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave, but his soul is marching on'?

"Would Frankenstein's monster have a soul? Would a machine? What if the machine was a replica of a man?"

In Mary Shelley's book, we find that Frankenstein's monster does develop a moral nature, when he is studying the family in the woods, listening to the history of the world, Paradise Lost et cetera. By the time he confronts Frankenstein in the Swiss Alps he is also patently self-aware. Perhaps when AI becomes advanced enough, machines might also have moral natures, emotions and self-awareness, and thus souls. (Imagine Cmdr. Data from Star Trek or Robo from Chrono Trigger - Lucca would definitely say that Robo had a soul.) The more provocative question I might think might be whether the soul of Frankenstein's monster developed as he was studying the family in the woods or whether it came with the first spark that endowed him with life (since by his own account he was not fully self-aware as he wandered out into the woods).