Kitsune1527 wrote:
Minor off-topic note: Anyone can call themselves a science fiction fan. I do, quite often. But it seems I am a fan of a different strain of science fiction than the one that begat this "Vinge" of whom you speak.
Vernor Vinge, creator of the best space opera
novel ever, coiner of the term
Singularity (as it pertains to technological progress), and one of my top five favorite sci-fi authors. What can I say, I'm opinionated :) I'm curious, what kind of science fiction
do you like?
Quote:
On-topic: I won't argue the point over whether or not the actions themselves are free, but I will ask this: Do your actions seem controlled?
Another thing is: Maybe no action is free. Maybe every action IS predetermined. But perhaps the part that makes those actions free is not the action itself, but the WHY of the action.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I said.
*Looks back*
In a slightly more convoluted manner... (Yudkowsky's wordiness must be rubbing off on me...)
krylex wrote:
If an animal was concious, we would be able to effectivly communicate with it. Just as someone can be introduced into a foriegn culture and eventually learn their language, if an animal were truly sentient, we would be able to activly communicate, which is a great deal different from trained responses...
We
can communicate with animals. Yell at a dog, and it will react accordingly. And what about somone born deaf, blind, and dumb? They are not necessarily genetically any different than normal humans, and their basic brain structure is the same. Are you saying that they have no souls because they are unable to communicate? People's ablily to speak can be taken away by certain types of brain damage. If speech (and by your defninition, consciousness) is a function of the soul, why should damaging the physical brain affect it, when all of the speech organs are intact? Once more, what do you think the brain
does?