The great philosopher and polymath of ancient Greece Aristotle talks in his book “De Anima” [On the soul] about the soul and existence of living things. He is very accurate in distinguishing the living things from the non-living things. And that is an important definition to debate the moral status of robots. But one thing after the other.
In Book II Chapter One of De Anima, he says, substance has three meanings: Matter, form and what it’s composed of. All matter has the potential to be something, but no element has the potential to be everything. To give you a scientific example that Aristotle did not bring up, of course, we humans are composed of carbon. Carbon has the potential to form humans. The form is the finalisation of a human, and the composition is the living human being, stressing living here. Because Aristotle makes a significant distinguishment between a living thing and something that has the potential to live. It’s like an eye that has the potential to see, but only once we open the eye, we actually see.
The human is the actualisation of potentia, matter is potentia, form is completion and the composition is the completed thing, the human being.
Now that was a little complicated, was it? Don’t worry, the hard part is over. Because in the next lines of Book II Chapter I, Aristotle says stuff that is quite intuitive to us.
Aristotle says substance is either made out of natural things like wood or stone or technical things. From these natural things, some things live and some don’t. The living things, according to Aristotle, have the following traits:
1.) They grow.
2.) They die.
3.) They subsist on their own (through metabolism for instance).
Living things have a soul but contrary to his teacher Platon, Aristotle didn’t believe the soul was an external thing that enters and leaves the body like a ghost. The soul is the process. And soul and body are not distinguishable. Soul-body relates in the same way as sight-eye does. You can’t define sight without defining eye and the other way round. According to Aristotle, you can’t define soul without body and reverse because the soul is the actualisation of a living human, that subsists, grows and dies. With death, the process ends, and the soul dies, too.
Living things would also characterize themselves by trying to maintain their natural shape. Humans heal after they cut themselves. The skin has a natural mechanism to grow back.
Well, what about the robots?
I believe most people intuitively think like Aristotle and thus every living being that does not possess the three traits to grow, die and subsist feel like a perversion of life like Frankenstein, Sauron or Dracula who all live and yet somehow do not live because they don’t die, grow or…well I am not sure about the eating part, Dracula drinks blood, but he has no metabolism so that is out for him too.
So even if a robot was sentient, would it be alive? Apparently not because AI does not grow, die (in natural terms) or…well, again, I am not sure about the eating part. Most scientists believe a being is sentient, if it has own interests and can have positive and negative memories. For example, if you throw your smartphone against a wall, you are probably angry or stupid but your smartphone doesn’t give a damn. But if you throw a dog against a wall, you are a jerk and the dog probably minds.
By reproducing human thought patterns through neural networks, AI could develop its own interests and perhaps learn the ability to evaluate certain Input. I do not believe AI would ever feel like us or animals, but it might be a different sort of sentience. The matter is silicium that has the potential to be a living thing, a living robot. The form is the non-living robot like LaMDA. But only the living robot would have a soul, according to Aristotle’s philosophy. But it still wouldn’t grow or die or subsist (man help me with that, I am not sure about that).
What I am asking is: Will humans ever accept a new form of living? Or will that thought always belong to the dystopian movies and comics?
Thank you for reading this article! Share, like and comment to recognize the effort and be good!
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Soul
