GURPS Transhuman Space variant: Souls are empircally proven to exist

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I would expect it to have a major impact on the Civil Rights movement for AIs and wotnot - revising the "Am I not a Man and a brother?" argument could be a bit tricky if there is this clear, measurable difference between natural and artificial life ... and it would be interesting to see how it applied to clones (and then, when does a bioroid built from a human DNA template stop being a modified clone?). If you uplift an animal to sapience, does it gain a soul? How sapient does it need to be? Do non-sapient humans still have souls? What about a full body cyborg with a wetware processor cloned up (and/or partially transplanted) from a human CNS? How much "orginal human" do you need?

Good points! Thank you

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Keiko

Since this seems like a pretty radical departure from the canon setting I thought it might be best to post it in the general GURPS forum instead of the THS forum.

What do you think the effects could be in the setting if the soul was proven empirically and objectively to exist and could be detected with relatively cheap equipment and testing. Soul defined as a factor or an energy unique to that being that endures after physical death. The exact nature of souls has yet to be determined or what they carry over from the being in question but they definitely exist and more so some beings do not have them. Its a biological phenomena that seems tied to intellect and sapience. AIs and Ghosts (regardless of the shell that houses them) do not have them.

Mainly, I'm interested in social and culture impact of the discovery.

I see at least one broken logic issue here. If you don't understand exactly what they are, how do you know they have anything at all to do with sapience? Some barely detectable object exists in big biological brains. So? Big biological brains have big neck blood vessels too, but nobody thinks that's closely linked to sapience.

The other issue is perhaps more a religious problem. If you can detect them, they have physical properties, and by definition a detector interacts with (and alters) them. People will immediately start prodding them to see how they change, trapping them, trying to tear them to smaller bits, exhausting them to see what happens (the energy to cause something in the detector to change has to come from *somewhere* and the energy content can't be very high) and so on.

And too if you can detect them you have some idea what they are made of, so somebody is going to set out to make some. And if you do understand them enough to be sure they have something to do with sapience and they can be generated by physical processes in a biological brain, TS level technology, which can after all *manufacture* organic brains is going to succeed pretty quickly.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I see at least one broken logic issue here. If you don't understand exactly what they are, how do you know they have anything at all to do with sapience? Some barely detectable object exists in big biological brains. So? Big biological brains have big neck blood vessels too, but nobody thinks that's closely linked to sapience.

It a previously unknown occurrence that only occurs in sapient biological minds regardless of their origin and form that can be determined to exist after biological death of the subject in question. "Souls" is as convenient a label as anything. Call it Essence, Life Force (though not all living things posess them), maybe?

The other issue is perhaps more a religious problem. If you can detect them, they have physical properties, and by definition a detector interacts with (and alters) them. People will immediately start prodding them to see how they change, trapping them, trying to tear them to smaller bits, exhausting them to see what happens (the energy to cause something in the detector to change has to come from *somewhere* and the energy content can't be very high) and so on.

I'd expect people to try. They may or may not succeed. But that kind of experimentation could very well prompt religion motivated objection. Good suggestion.

And too if you can detect them you have some idea what they are made of, so somebody is going to set out to make some.

They are detectable but their nature is almost entirely unknown. More might be learned later but its a completely new subject now.

TS level technology, which can after all *manufacture* organic brains is going to succeed pretty quickly.

That's a good seed for a scenario, particularly taking the potential religious and ethical objections into account. Thanks

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Keiko

It a previously unknown occurrence that only occurs in sapient biological minds regardless of their origin and form that can be determined to exist after biological death of the subject in question. "Souls" is as convenient a label as anything. Call it Essence, Life Force (though not all living things posess them), maybe?

All of those are loading huge (though totally different) baggage onto your little phenomenon without any sort of basis. 'Soul' or 'Essence' implies that the thing encapsulates something important about the being, which you clearly don't have any evidence for. 'Life Force'...honestly I can't think of any usage of 'Life Force' that isn't about outright magic in no uncertain terms.

Calling this any of those things would be like calling vacuum energy the 'Mana Field'.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Keiko

It a previously unknown occurrence that only occurs in sapient biological minds regardless of their origin and form that can be determined to exist after biological death of the subject in question. "Souls" is as convenient a label as anything. Call it Essence, Life Force (though not all living things posess them), maybe?

Why call it "soul" if it has so little in common with what the word traditionally is understood to mean?

Bill Stoddard

[Gedrin]

I'm not sure how you get to the point where "souls are proven to exist". It requires a consensus on what a soul is. You're more likely to get a "detectable phenomenon connected with certain categories of sapience". Of course, many charlatans have claimed this sort of machinery before.

That said, I don't see any reason why an AI couldn't have a soul (in the only campaign I run with AI, they do...not that anyone can prove it). You might have a situation where certain AI's do, and some don't, with the difference being hard to see aside from the "soul detector". Similarly, some humans might be "hollow".


Traditionally, souls are a portion of a being that connects them to a "higher plane". (That's as generic as I can make such a statement.) Far more interesting, and of greater impact, is the impact, or lack thereof, of that other state transmitted through the soul. Soul detection is the first step to soul measuring and you're well on your way to all sorts of nifty spiritual inquiry.

Essentially, soul detection would begin the beginnings of science of the divine. Direct scientific inquiry against measurable phenomena and their interaction between our normal experience and those higher realms. You might be able to measure which actions damage the soul or its connection to those realms (Sin Detection), and which strengthen the bond.

Frankly, it could be a renaissance, with all the turmoil contained within, for theology. The ability to bring the tools of science to bear on philosophical problems always leads to new and better understandings of the subject matter. You'll get a lot of flack from discredited ideas, but not all that will come from religious sources. The ability to prove what helps and harms the soul will likely conflict just as much with cherished secular ideas. I could see a "Baptists and Bootleggers" alliance against the science between religious sects unwilling to adapt and secular groups who are told "no, that really is bad for you spiritually, here's the printout".

But again, there's a big jump between, "Huh, some types of sapience makes this meter jump," and "The soul is something we agree on and believe we can measure." Even if the soul exhibits a relationship with another plane (or at least an existence beyond our conventional understanding of the material), and there appears to be information transmitted in some way via soul, that doesn't mean people will care about it. Some will choose to ignore that aspect of their selves. Others will choose to believe it's just noise. Still others will decide that they resent the interference in their being.

Soul detection and measuring would be a tremendous boon to those who took advantage of it to clarify religious life, enhance their connection to the (for lack of better language) divine, and guide their behavior using information provided from measuring harm/benefit to their soul, and other people will skip church.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

I'm not sure how you get to the point where "souls are proven to exist". It requires a consensus on what a soul is. You're more likely to get a "detectable phenomenon connected with certain categories of sapience". Of course, many charlatans have claimed this sort of machinery before.

Like I said earlier "souls" is convenient label for them as they match some of the qualities attributed to a soul. It made for an easier thread title than: GURPS transhuman Space variant: Unknown phenomena attached to sapient life proved to exist". :)

That said, I don't see any reason why an AI couldn't have a soul

It's a setting rule. Only living things have a "souls"

[Gedrin]

Fair enough, but the people of the setting still need to know what they're detecting.

Is it a finite energy field of previously unknown type and configuration?

Is it a conduit between a particular sapient and some other thing/place/person?

The attributes, beyond being present pre and post mortem, are important (though that's a big one...it indicates the soul doesn't depart post mortem. You've got a giant theological eruption right there!). Hair is present before and after death, but it's not a soul. It makes a big difference if it appears to be a field that expresses "quantum entanglement like communication" with an unknown location/place/entity, or just a field that is more like a magnetic field, just in a previously undetectable wave/medium/macguffin.

Remember, if we're talking about scientific detection of the soul, we need to think about what scientists will see. "Soul" isn't their first answer. There's a phenomenon that exhibits only in certain types of biological sapience (uplifts?). It is present pre and post mortem (OOH! When does it appear? Your local "right to life" group want's to know). It interacts with the mind/being/flesh/quarks/space rays... of it's sapient in certain ways. It does/doesn't appear to be affected by things we currently can/can't detect...

The answers to these questions really help to determine how people will react to the development of soul detectors. "Quantum Teleporter" is a good example of what I mean. News hype about transporters when it's just another odd subatomic phenomenon. Soul Detector could be received the same way, hype followed by scientists rolling their eyes at newsies, depending on what the phenomenon actually is.

[Glimmerman]

If string theories about multiverses (and reincarnation) are true, then

The Soul: You can buy Racial Memory (p. 78) and Special Rapport (p. 88) aka soul mate.

Soulless: Unique (p. 160).

Discovery of soul could lead to Social Regard (p. 86) and Social Stigma: Minority Group (p. 155) as soulless Digital Minds recognize conflict between instincts and intellect.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Keiko

It a previously unknown occurrence that only occurs in sapient biological minds regardless of their origin and form that can be determined to exist after biological death of the subject in question. "Souls" is as convenient a label as anything. Call it Essence, Life Force (though not all living things posess them), maybe?

Another issue, what does it mean to survive death? Lots of brain structures survive death, it takes a while for dead brains to rot. And nobody thinks the fact shells long survive the death of the organism that built them is anything particularly amazing.

Partly this is an issue of what is this made of. If it's atoms, TS level technology can do a lot of stuff to it quite fast. If it's not - and this seems to be pretty much required for what you want it to do, note the common alternative of "energy" doesn't actually make physical sense - the properties of that new form of matter, and other places it occurs, are going to be the subject of intense scientific investigation that could lead to almost anything. Discovering a new kind of matter is actually a lot more interesting than discovering brains happen to gather some and use it to build something that for all you know *is* a protective shell out of it.