On Computers

To accurately argue about the existence of souls or lack thereof in Computers one needs to first and foremost define the existence of a soul. Considering the fact that I'm an engineer and not a philosopher, I'll take the most obvious explanation available to me: if it can feel emotion, it has a soul. While this may be fiercely argued upon, I feel its the safest assumption to make if such a conversation is to reach a productive end. Continuing from this assumption one can safely answer Aristotle's question regarding plants: Do they have souls? They most certainly do not. While Plants may respond to stimuli (heat, lack thereof, moisture, etc) it is similar to a mechanical system and and truly nothing like emotion. From what little biology I have taken in my life I have learnt that emotion is caused by rather complex chemical reactions. Plants have chemical reactions, but these are limited to capturing sunlight and making glucose. As far as I have heard, no one's ever come across a plant that had any chemical reactions happening that would imply the existence of emotion.

Moving away from plants, on to computers. Do computers have soul? Just like plants no, they do not. It doesn't matter how powerful and well programmed AI one makes, all its actions are pre-determined. Even the probabilistic actions are pre-determined. AI out there that tries to mimic human action and human thought, can come awfully close, and even when there exists AI that can make the same irrational choices as humans, it still won't have a soul for the simple reason that it feels no emotion. Humans can be taught and conditioned; however they cannot be programmed with the precision of computers. Any teaching or conditioning done to a person is at the mercy of that persons emotional stability. All it takes is a few chemicals to mix in the wrong order, and the next thing you know, all that teaching and conditioning goes out the window.

If one was to argue that emotion could be built into computers some how, it would still be arguable that computers lack a soul. What separates humans from computers is the simple fact that we don't need to be taught to have emotions. A sufficiently talented programmer with the proper tools can program anything. But can a programmed piece of hardware have a soul comparable to that of a human? I don't think it can. It feels sad not because it legitimately understands what sadness is about. It feels sad because it has an algorithm that says its time to feel sad. The lack of built in emotion is what keeps computers from having souls. If one day I turn my laptop on and it suddenly starts complaining about the fact that it feels used by me, then I will willingly accept that computers have souls, because my computer just came to life on its own accord without anyone's help and became self aware. It felt used, without me having to program it to feel used. Until such time, as far as I am concerned computers and plants are both for use without guilt, they lack emotion, therefore they lack souls.