Reading Philosophy

I know enough about evolution to know that it is has by no means bean proven to be true, its a theory suported with insufficiant evidence

That is clearly not that case otherwise you would not be spouting oft refuted fallacies and also claiming that is insufficient evidence when evolutionary theory is supported by many field of science.

but as for humans being notheing but meat machines
of you i can believe that.

Is that a veiled insult?

And as for free will. That is some thing we all have and only people who are afraid to take responsibility for thire actions would deny that they have free will

There are pleanty of people who would deny we have free-will for a variety of reasons none of which are related to how much one wants to accept responsibility for one's actions.

One of which would be that we are clearly bounded in what we can do and influence - we can will certain things all we want but lack the ability to implement that will.

And as for free will. That is some thing we all have and only people who are afraid to take responsibility for thire actions would deny that they have free will

I'm not so sure of that. After all, 'free will' is a decision we make based on previous input. When you see a red traffic light and stop, your free will has just been influenced. When a nerd walks by a store and sees a Linux-based kick-ass mobile phone in Star Trek design, he wants to own it because previous input tells him it's cool. Were you raised in a country where red means "go", or the nerd had grown up as an oil rig worker instead of a nerd, your decisions would have been different. These are rather basic examples, but the idea can easily be applied to any situation.

Of course one could also apply that idea if you, say, slaughter 20 virgins. "There is no such thing as free will, he had no choice but do it."
But then again, (the prospect of) punishment can influence your decision. If slaughtering virgins was a perfectly legal pastime and accepted by society, I'm sure the man/woman ratio on this planet would be extremely in men's favour. Thus, I think that even though there is no absolutely free will, we should act as if there were, because for all practical reasons it appears to be.

Consider yourself hugged.

First, lets not turn this into a flame thread. Obviously, this can be a sensitive issue on both sides of the coin. Nobody wants to think that computers are merely simplified versions of humans. However, lets approach this in a logical manner, and it will remain logical. Keep emotions out of your argument.

I think the issue of free will is a moot one. For every decision, it is not possible to say it was out of an act of free will as opposed to 'fate.' And seeing how there is no evidence to enlighten this argument, I don't see how arguing this will get anywhere. And in addition, how does free will tie in to computers versus humans?

Lightyear has made some interesting counterexamples, and cyborg has made some interesting points.

However, lets address some issues as to why a machine cannot be living:

Soul -
Firstly, we cannot even prove such a thing exists. And if we assume a human has one, then we could just as easily assume a machine has one (if I am wrong here, give me a counterexample). Therefore, the soul debate has to remain in the realm of the possible, but unprovable.

Flesh vs steel -
The argument is "flesh is alive, and steel is not." It's a valid statement. Lets break it down. Flesh, being composed of cells, are alive. This cannot be said of steel and machine parts, which are not alive, right? Yet, what composes a cell? Are the components of a cell living themselves, or are they a 'machine part' to serve the cell? Even if you could argue that say the mitochondria is living, could you then argue that the pieces which compose a mitochondria are living as well?

At a certain point, you must admit that all living things are pieced together with not living parts. Is a machine not composed of non living parts? So it fits the criteria for being a living thing in this regard (like a cell), does it not?

Organic tissue -
Okay, if we didn't mean that the tissue is composed of 'living' material, then the other side is that it is or is not 'organic' material. Lets define organic. Organic is any material composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and sometimes helium. Obviously the same cannot be said for a machine, and that would be accurate. However, you have to consider what you're saying is that you are limiting life to only be things built using specific elements of the periodic table. What reasoning is there for this? Perhaps that *has* been the trend up until this point, but that's not reason enough to say all future life must continue this pattern, does it?

Emotions
Probably one of the strongest points that can counter the argument of living machines. However, it is difficult to define emotions. There is no model for emotions which can predict what happens next. While that may be what makes emotions emotions, it also makes it very difficult to say that we have it and machines do not. As far as we know, there exists a theory somewhere out in the realm of the unexplained on how emotions work in their entirety. And at that point, if it is proven, we can say with 100% accuracy if humans have it and if machines have it. Though, I'm guessing that our model of emotions would never be accurate, because an 'accurate' model might suggest machines can have emotion, and we could never accept that as a possibility.

So oddly enough, as instinctual as it is to categorically deny the possibility of machines being alive, there is no solid evidence to distinguish the two. For that matter, there is no evidence to distinguish machine and clay or humans and clay as 'living' or 'not living.'

So either we need a better working theory on something that is "alive" or we admit, as in the Bible, that we were shaped out of clay.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

This post was edited by Hawkeye on Apr 19, 2006.