330 réponses à ce sujet

[jasonontko]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

I tend to question whether or not a soul exists for anything at all.

Yes the soul is an artificial construct IMO, much like the geth, how ironic.

[jasonontko]

FoxMcKalen wrote...

jasonontko wrote...

...and there are those like myself that think that it is very unlikely God exists. That is why alot of people think of the Geth as living.

Not really. I'm Christian, yet I consider the geth to be alive. Merely a different form of life, created by different means, evolving in different ways.

I don't believe a "soul" is required for something to be alive. Clearly, neither do a lot of people I've known. Most people where I live seem to think that animals don't have souls, yet I'd love to meet someone who seriously claims that animals aren't living things because of it. It would give me a just cause to call someone an idiot.

The sentence was refering to the whole post perhaps should have made it a paragraph.

[Tinnic]

Well here's a question. Is EDI a person? She's intelligent and passes the test of being sentient. If Geth are "people" then EDI is a "person". Indeed, Legion makes a comment related to EDI being something akin to a slave because of the restrictions placed on her. That also raises another interesting point. Legion is clearly an individual with his own obsessions and quarks. But the other Geth are more a "hive mind" sort of deal. Can the collective repository of the data and reasoning skills really be considered a race of its own?



As for the Soul argument that has been brought up. Let us remember that there are two types of souls. The religious type that denotes a part of us that transcends death and lives on forever and the philosophical kind. You actually have to be religious to believe in the first kind of soul and it was the first kind of soul the first sentient Geths were asking about in Legions recordings, having seen that term in the religious text of the Quariens. The Quarien who told the Geth "No" was correct in that instant. In a religious sense, the Geth do not have souls.



At this point, what becomes important is do the Geth have souls in the philosophical sense. The concept of the soul is philosophy is very different from those in religions. Under philosophy having a soul denotes having a dimension beyond mere existence. Mordin makes a comment on the soul in reference to the collectors. I can't remember the exact quote but he says something along the lines that the collectors have no art, no history, no soul. What Mordin was saying was that the collectors simply exist and this Mordin says, is motivation for him to destroy the collectors and put an end to the mockery of the Protheans they had become. A race that did have art, history, a soul.



The Geth we know have history. We know that they have been trying to learn about organic life. To learn about their creators and understand why their creators became afraid of them and tried to destroy them. Do they have art? We don't know. Can they have art? We don't know. But it does seem that the Geth might indeed have souls in the philosophical sense as they are not content just to exist and in this way they are more "alive" then the collectors who were biological constructs and even the Keepers of the Citedals, another biological construct. If that makes sense...

[MikeFL25]

I'm a Paragon mostly, so I generally save the Geth. I think they are "intelligent" and "aware" and therefore can have an impact on galactic events...hopefully for the better this time.



However, I do not think the Geth are alive. To quote a text-book definition of "life", it must be made up of cells that can maintain homeostasis and metabolize. It must also be able to genetically reproduce. Okay, enough with the book stuff now.



The way I see it, Geth are not "individuals". They are a hive-mind. One "single geth" is not intelligent, it is a software program that calculates different things, and it is limited. When you pool the resources of hundreds or thousands of Geth, they can imitate life by expanding the level of their awareness. Its like a giant database. You can search through it, make queries, and ask it to make a decision based on relevant data, but its not alive.



Anyway, that's how I chose to look at it.

[Pauravi]

badjezus007 wrote...

People evolved. Ok. Geth did not evolve.  They were created by people.

Having evolved naturally is not a requirement for being "alive".

They don't have feelings, a nervous system etc..

What is a nervous system except a way to relay electrical pulses?  Irrelevant.  You also can't prove that they are incapable of developing feelings.  Indeed, the Geth already understand feelings, and Legion even shows rudimentary signs of having them himself.

Geth can be programmed to do things (like we saw when u could rewrite the heritics).

People can be programmed to do things, too.  Look up "operant conditioning", or "classical conditioning".  A brain is a way to network and store information.

Tinnic wrote...

People? No. Sentient beings? Yes.

What is the distinction you're making between the two?

ReconTeam wrote...

I don't consider any computer network I work on to be a living being. So why should I consider Geth to be alive. They are far more advanced but they are still a bunch of networked computers lacking any real free-will. As much as one can try to simulate intelligent life, I believe there is always a line, a divide.

Your brain is a bunch of networked neurons.  The difference between a computer network and your brain or  a Geth is simply one of degrees of complexity.  Can you quantify what that divide is?  Or why you believe that?  Or is it just an idea that you're invested in regardless of evidence?

Srslydude01 wrote...
The soul is really hard to rationalize. It is separate from the body. It kind of represents one's free will I guess you could say. One's brain chemistry such as the sex drive and the way nicotine affects you if you smoke actually can affect the decisions that people make. Also genetics affects how the soul will react to certain stimuli. Like if you are afraid of heights, its not the soul that is afraid of heights but the body so it affects what you do.

Except that all of this is pure conjecture.  You're just saying "The soul is _____", but you're not offering any reason why the soul must exist.  You're simply assering that it is there.

The reason it is hard to rationalize is because fact of the matter is that there is absolutely nothing that could be attributed to a soul than could not equally be simply attributed to brain structure and chemistry.

It is as simple as this... you have a piece of data to explain:  Prozac makes people happy.
Now you have two theories to explain it:
1) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes you happy.
2) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes your soul make you happy.

Both of these theories explain the data.  However, one of them contains an element that is completely undetectable, doesn't offer a better explanation, and doesn't offer any additional predictions that we could use to test its correctness.  Theory #2 is therefore eliminated on the grounds of parsimony.  Occam's Razor wins again.

Modifié par Pauravi, 09 mars 2010 - 04:24 .

[jasonontko]

MikeFL25 wrote...

I'm a Paragon mostly, so I generally save the Geth. I think they are "intelligent" and "aware" and therefore can have an impact on galactic events...hopefully for the better this time.

However, I do not think the Geth are alive. To quote a text-book definition of "life", it must be made up of cells that can maintain homeostasis and metabolize. It must also be able to genetically reproduce. Okay, enough with the book stuff now.

The way I see it, Geth are not "individuals". They are a hive-mind. One "single geth" is not intelligent, it is a software program that calculates different things, and it is limited. When you pool the resources of hundreds or thousands of Geth, they can imitate life by expanding the level of their awareness. Its like a giant database. You can search through it, make queries, and ask it to make a decision based on relevant data, but its not alive.

Anyway, that's how I chose to look at it.

Define things as you or even a majoirty like.  The Geth are aware in the same way we are aware.  I consider awarness a form of living.  But its all semantics.

[jasonontko]

Pauravi wrote...

badjezus007 wrote...

People evolved. Ok. Geth did not evolve.  They were created by people.

Having evolved naturally is not a requirement for being "alive".

They don't have feelings, a nervous system etc..

What is a nervous system except a way to relay electrical pulses?  Irrelevant.  You also can't prove that they are incapable of developing feelings.  Indeed, the Geth already understand feelings, and Legion even shows rudimentary signs of having them himself.

Geth can be programmed to do things (like we saw when u could rewrite the heritics).

People can be programmed to do things, too.  Look up "operant conditioning", or "classical conditioning".  A brain is a way to network and store information.

Tinnic wrote...

People? No. Sentient beings? Yes.

What is the distinction you're making between the two?

ReconTeam wrote...

I don't consider any computer network I work on to be a living being. So why should I consider Geth to be alive. They are far more advanced but they are still a bunch of networked computers lacking any real free-will. As much as one can try to simulate intelligent life, I believe there is always a line, a divide.

Your brain is a bunch of networked neurons.  The difference between a computer network and your brain or  a Geth is simply one of degrees of complexity.  Can you quantify what that divide is?  Or why you believe that?  Or is it just an idea that you're invested in regardless of evidence?

Srslydude01 wrote...
The soul is really hard to rationalize. It is separate from the body. It kind of represents one's free will I guess you could say. One's brain chemistry such as the sex drive and the way nicotine affects you if you smoke actually can affect the decisions that people make. Also genetics affects how the soul will react to certain stimuli. Like if you are afraid of heights, its not the soul that is afraid of heights but the body so it affects what you do.

Except that all of this is pure conjecture.  You're just saying "The soul is _____", but you're not offering any reason why the soul must exist.  You're simply assering that it is there.

The reason it is hard to rationalize is because fact of the matter is that there is absolutely nothing that could be attributed to a soul than could not equally be simply attributed to brain structure and chemistry.

It is as simple as this... you have a piece of data to explain:  Prozac makes people happy.
Now you have two theories to explain it:
1) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes you happy.
2) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes your soul make you happy.

Both of these theories explain the data.  However, one of them contains an element that is completely undetectable, doesn't offer a better explanation, and doesn't offer any additional predictions that we could use to test its correctness.  Theory #2 is therefore eliminated on the grounds of parsimony.  Occam's Razor wins again.

I agree with this.

[Karstedt]

I have a soul. It's on the underside of my foot. It's always getting trampled and ground into the pavement. It often hurts. I think that has something to do with Harbinger.

[MikeFL25]

jasonontko wrote...

MikeFL25 wrote...

I'm a Paragon mostly, so I generally save the Geth. I think they are "intelligent" and "aware" and therefore can have an impact on galactic events...hopefully for the better this time.

However, I do not think the Geth are alive. To quote a text-book definition of "life", it must be made up of cells that can maintain homeostasis and metabolize. It must also be able to genetically reproduce. Okay, enough with the book stuff now.

The way I see it, Geth are not "individuals". They are a hive-mind. One "single geth" is not intelligent, it is a software program that calculates different things, and it is limited. When you pool the resources of hundreds or thousands of Geth, they can imitate life by expanding the level of their awareness. Its like a giant database. You can search through it, make queries, and ask it to make a decision based on relevant data, but its not alive.

Anyway, that's how I chose to look at it.

Define things as you or even a majoirty like.  The Geth are aware in the same way we are aware.  I consider awarness a form of living.  But its all semantics.

Hey, I'm not saying I'm right.  I'm just saying how I view this topic. 

I agree that awareness is a big part of being alive, but I guess I also think being organic/biological or whatever is the other component.  Just like I wouldn't consider EDI alive even though technically she is a true AI.

[jasonontko]

Tinnic wrote...

Well here's a question. Is EDI a person? She's intelligent and passes the test of being sentient. If Geth are "people" then EDI is a "person". Indeed, Legion makes a comment related to EDI being something akin to a slave because of the restrictions placed on her. That also raises another interesting point. Legion is clearly an individual with his own obsessions and quarks. But the other Geth are more a "hive mind" sort of deal. Can the collective repository of the data and reasoning skills really be considered a race of its own?

As for the Soul argument that has been brought up. Let us remember that there are two types of souls. The religious type that denotes a part of us that transcends death and lives on forever and the philosophical kind. You actually have to be religious to believe in the first kind of soul and it was the first kind of soul the first sentient Geths were asking about in Legions recordings, having seen that term in the religious text of the Quariens. The Quarien who told the Geth "No" was correct in that instant. In a religious sense, the Geth do not have souls.

At this point, what becomes important is do the Geth have souls in the philosophical sense. The concept of the soul is philosophy is very different from those in religions. Under philosophy having a soul denotes having a dimension beyond mere existence. Mordin makes a comment on the soul in reference to the collectors. I can't remember the exact quote but he says something along the lines that the collectors have no art, no history, no soul. What Mordin was saying was that the collectors simply exist and this Mordin says, is motivation for him to destroy the collectors and put an end to the mockery of the Protheans they had become. A race that did have art, history, a soul.

The Geth we know have history. We know that they have been trying to learn about organic life. To learn about their creators and understand why their creators became afraid of them and tried to destroy them. Do they have art? We don't know. Can they have art? We don't know. But it does seem that the Geth might indeed have souls in the philosophical sense as they are not content just to exist and in this way they are more "alive" then the collectors who were biological constructs and even the Keepers of the Citedals, another biological construct. If that makes sense...

Having dimension beyond existance is not a secular "soul" argument, its stating that there are concepts greater than our self-interests.  However I would argue that everything leads back to self interests.

Modifié par jasonontko, 09 mars 2010 - 04:34 .

[phimseto]

Artificial intelligence is not sentience. The story of the Geth is the hubris of sentient beings in thinking they could play at being God, not sentient creatures struggling to be free. The Geth are idiot machines turned monstrous because they are attempting to mimic, emulate, and achieve something beyond their reach. Whether 100 Geth or 1 trillion, they are ultimately just a program trying to calculate the finite number of digits in Pi.

Modifié par phimseto, 09 mars 2010 - 04:35 .

[Pauravi]

MikeFL25 wrote...

The way I see it, Geth are not "individuals". They are a hive-mind. One "single geth" is not intelligent, it is a software program that calculates different things, and it is limited. When you pool the resources of hundreds or thousands of Geth, they can imitate life by expanding the level of their awareness. Its like a giant database. You can search through it, make queries, and ask it to make a decision based on relevant data, but its not alive.

Anyway, that's how I chose to look at it.

But you could make that argument about a human brain.
An individual neuron is not capable of very much.  However, when you put it in a network with millions or billion of other neurons, it becomes more than the sum of its parts.  It becomes capable of processing information in ways a single neuron, or even a dozen neurons can't do.  Each neuron holds a piece of the puzzle, and whenever you make a decision, millions of neurons "build consensus" and come up with a coherent thought.

In that way, the Geth race isn't really a "hive mind" so much as they are a model of a giant human brain.  The only difference is that they are spread out, and so their information processing is slower and less complete.  The individual Geth are like cells.  While it is true that the Geth are not individuals -- at least, not the ones connected to the network -- killing a significant number of them would be like the whole of the Geth suffering a brain injury.  Even killing one of them, if they aren't connected to the network, is something akin to erasing someone's memory.

The Geth are certainly a novel type of intelligence, but it doesn't mean that they aren't "living", or that the Geth as a whole cannot be considered a true sapient race.

[MikeFL25]

True. Even still, I don't think that intelligence = living. Something can be alive, but not have intelligence like sapient beings have (plants, fungus, etc.). So I guess I figure the same thing can work in reverse. I think the Geth are intelligent for sure, just not alive.



Again, I'm not saying I am right, I'm just saying what I think about this.

[Tinnic]

Pauravi wrote...

Tinnic wrote...

People? No. Sentient beings? Yes.

What is the distinction you're making between the two?

Well Geth are not a collection of individuals per say. As displayed by Legion's inability (in the beginning) to understand the concept of individuality. So they can't be "people" because that denotes a collection of individuals. They are all "Geth", more or less one entity. What that also means is that, with the sole exception of Legion, destroying a mobile platform of the Geth is not the same as destroying a person: a Human, an Asari, a Turian etc, etc. Which is why Legion is so non-plushed about destroying the heretics. Legion also says that most Geth mobile platforms are "diminished" when they are not all hooked up to each other. Again demonstrating that they are all cells of one sentient entity. Legion of course is a notable exception, having been made with the purpose of communicating with non-Geths and so is not the same as other mobile platforms.

That's my distinction really. Geth are sentient but they aren't a collection of individuals. So they aren't really "people". Even the term "person" doesn't really feel right. But they are sentient and my Paragon Shepard for one would never say something horrible like "they are just machines" and would love to have an option to tell off people who refer to Legion as such when in company of Shepard with something like "Legion's my friend not my trophy/personal AI slave/whatever else".

[Inquisitor Recon]

Pauravi wrote...
Your brain is a bunch of networked neurons.  The difference between a computer network and your brain or  a Geth is simply one of degrees of complexity.  Can you quantify what that divide is?  Or why you believe that?  Or is it just an idea that you're invested in regardless of evidence?

Regardless of evidence? Obviously you would fit in fine with the Geth judging from your behavior but brain chemestry does not equate to evidence in your favor and against my view that there is something more than lines of code in a brain that makes us human. Ignoring the entire philosophical and theological issues surrounding life doesn't make your stance correct. If I am invested in anything it is that we shouldn't try to behave like computers.

[jasonontko]

phimseto wrote...

Artificial intelligence is not sentience. The story of the Geth is the hubris of sentient beings in thinking they could play at being God, not sentient creatures struggling to be free. The Geth are idiot machines turned monstrous because they are attempting to mimic, emulate, and achieve something beyond their reach. Whether 100 Geth or 1 trillion, they are ultimately just a program trying to calculate the finite number of digits in Pi.

Really, here is a thought experiment for you.  If you created a universe with the exact same intialization state as this unverse had apon its creation, would everything be the same or different?  I would say it would be the same all the way to the decesion you made on what to eat at dinner.  All your decesions are the result of your gentics and expereinces, you would have lived your entire life the exact same way you did before.  This realtes to the argument in that, if the universe is deterministic then it can be programed,  it would just be the largest program ever created. 

[GuardianAngel470]

MikeFL25 wrote...

I'm a Paragon mostly, so I generally save the Geth. I think they are "intelligent" and "aware" and therefore can have an impact on galactic events...hopefully for the better this time.

However, I do not think the Geth are alive. To quote a text-book definition of "life", it must be made up of cells that can maintain homeostasis and metabolize. It must also be able to genetically reproduce. Okay, enough with the book stuff now.

The way I see it, Geth are not "individuals". They are a hive-mind. One "single geth" is not intelligent, it is a software program that calculates different things, and it is limited. When you pool the resources of hundreds or thousands of Geth, they can imitate life by expanding the level of their awareness. Its like a giant database. You can search through it, make queries, and ask it to make a decision based on relevant data, but its not alive.

Anyway, that's how I chose to look at it.

The real discussion I've seen here and on my thread is are they alive physically, to which the answer is no, or are they alive philosophically, to which the answer is yes, most definitely. It comes down to how you define living.  Do you define it as organic decomposition of nutrients in order to facilitate regrowth, ie make new cells, or do you define it in the sense of acting out behavior and patterns day by day.  If you feel the former is the true definition of the word living then the geth aren't alive. If you believe the latter then they are alive, they are living lives.

[Pauravi]

Randy_Mac wrote...

Except that all of this is pure conjecture.  You're just saying "The soul is _____", but you're not offering any reason why the soul must exist.  You're simply assering that it is there.

The reason it is hard to rationalize is because fact of the matter is that there is absolutely nothing that could be attributed to a soul than could not equally be simply attributed to brain structure and chemistry.

It is as simple as this... you have a piece of data to explain:  Prozac makes people happy.
Now you have two theories to explain it:
1) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes you happy.
2) Prozac alters serotonin levels in your brain which makes your soul make you happy.

Both of these theories explain the data.  However, one of them contains an element that is completely undetectable, doesn't offer a better explanation, and doesn't offer any additional predictions that we could use to test its correctness.  Theory #2 is therefore eliminated on the grounds of parsimony.  Occam's Razor wins again.

Ahhh, experimental psychology terminology. Even though I'm a Christian, that makes me proud to be a psych major.

Haha, actually I was trying to outline the basics of scientific thinking in general.
Look for the simplest explaination that expains the data!  It works in every field of science

... unless you meant the prozac and serotonin talk, in which case yes, that was drawn from the abnormal psych class I took years ago

[AtreiyaN7]

Here's what counts: the geth are sentient beings, regardless of how they came into this world. As beings capable of intelligent thought, I consider them people. They also seem to be much more willing to make peace with their creators, which is pretty remarkable considering the quarians did try to wipe them out. The quarians on the other hand...yeah, they're not exactly of one mind on what to do right now.

Furthermore, humans aren't anything special just because they're carbon-based lifeforms. We have brain "circuitry" made up of neurons, axons, dendrites, firing synapses awash with neurochemicals. If you look at the geth, you could consider one "program" the equivalent of a neuron in a giant network as far as I'm concerned. Furthermore, the "soul" or its lack is meaningless. Can you prove that humans have a soul? Do you have a special soul detector or something? The only thing setting us apart from apes is our ability to speak and think on a higher level. The geth are clearly as intelligent as quarians, humans, asari, or any other race. They're more than just keyboards, because the last time I checked, keyboards don't respond to you when you speak to them or have goals for their species, etc. etc. like the geth.

Modifié par AtreiyaN7, 09 mars 2010 - 05:03 .

[jasonontko]

ReconTeam wrote...

Pauravi wrote...
Your brain is a bunch of networked neurons.  The difference between a computer network and your brain or  a Geth is simply one of degrees of complexity.  Can you quantify what that divide is?  Or why you believe that?  Or is it just an idea that you're invested in regardless of evidence?

Regardless of evidence? Obviously you would fit in fine with the Geth judging from your behavior but brain chemestry does not equate to evidence in your favor and against my view that there is something more than lines of code in a brain that makes us human. Ignoring the entire philosophical and theological issues surrounding life doesn't make your stance correct. If I am invested in anything it is that we shouldn't try to behave like computers.

 Maybe you behave like a very advance computer and you just dont know it.

[GuardianAngel470]

jasonontko wrote...

phimseto wrote...

Artificial intelligence is not sentience. The story of the Geth is the hubris of sentient beings in thinking they could play at being God, not sentient creatures struggling to be free. The Geth are idiot machines turned monstrous because they are attempting to mimic, emulate, and achieve something beyond their reach. Whether 100 Geth or 1 trillion, they are ultimately just a program trying to calculate the finite number of digits in Pi.

Really, here is a thought experiment for you.  If you created a universe with the exact same intialization state as this unverse had apon its creation, would everything be the same or different?  I would say it would be the same all the way to the decesion you made on what to eat at dinner.  All your decesions are the result of your gentics and expereinces, you would have lived your entire life the exact same way you did before.  This realtes to the argument in that, if the universe is deterministic then it can be programed,  it would just be the largest program ever created. 

Yes, it is true that given enough knowledge, omniscience, one can predict everything for all of time. This is how it is, then this is how it will be.  Because this is how it will be this will also be, and so on and so forth.

[Tinnic]

jasonontko wrote...

Tinnic wrote...

Well here's a question. Is EDI a person? She's intelligent and passes the test of being sentient. If Geth are "people" then EDI is a "person". Indeed, Legion makes a comment related to EDI being something akin to a slave because of the restrictions placed on her. That also raises another interesting point. Legion is clearly an individual with his own obsessions and quarks. But the other Geth are more a "hive mind" sort of deal. Can the collective repository of the data and reasoning skills really be considered a race of its own?

As for the Soul argument that has been brought up. Let us remember that there are two types of souls. The religious type that denotes a part of us that transcends death and lives on forever and the philosophical kind. You actually have to be religious to believe in the first kind of soul and it was the first kind of soul the first sentient Geths were asking about in Legions recordings, having seen that term in the religious text of the Quariens. The Quarien who told the Geth "No" was correct in that instant. In a religious sense, the Geth do not have souls.

At this point, what becomes important is do the Geth have souls in the philosophical sense. The concept of the soul is philosophy is very different from those in religions. Under philosophy having a soul denotes having a dimension beyond mere existence. Mordin makes a comment on the soul in reference to the collectors. I can't remember the exact quote but he says something along the lines that the collectors have no art, no history, no soul. What Mordin was saying was that the collectors simply exist and this Mordin says, is motivation for him to destroy the collectors and put an end to the mockery of the Protheans they had become. A race that did have art, history, a soul.

The Geth we know have history. We know that they have been trying to learn about organic life. To learn about their creators and understand why their creators became afraid of them and tried to destroy them. Do they have art? We don't know. Can they have art? We don't know. But it does seem that the Geth might indeed have souls in the philosophical sense as they are not content just to exist and in this way they are more "alive" then the collectors who were biological constructs and even the Keepers of the Citedals, another biological construct. If that makes sense...

Having dimension beyond existance is not a secular "soul" argument, its stating that there are concepts greater than our self-interests.  However I would argue that everything leads back to self interests.

When did I say anything about having a concept greater than our self-interest extactly? I wasn't aware having history, art and music and doing any of those activities implied that you have a concept greater then self-interest. What I said was that philosophy says that having a soul means that you think about things. You don't just eat, drink, sleep, searching for more things to eat, drink, place to sleep etc, etc. It means engaging in acts not entirely related to survivability or fulfilling basic needs. Making music, drawing art has nothing to do with having a concept greater then our own self-interest. Indeed, in most cases whose activities are undertaking to express ourselves. That's the point. Having a soul in the philosophical sense is to think about philosophy to wonder if you have a soul, if there is more to life then eating, drinking and reproducing. Doesn't mean there has to be more to life then those thing but the fact that you are thinking about it is what sets you apart from a machine, biological or synthetic, that does not.

[jasonontko]

Tinnic wrote...

jasonontko wrote...

Tinnic wrote...

Well here's a question. Is EDI a person? She's intelligent and passes the test of being sentient. If Geth are "people" then EDI is a "person". Indeed, Legion makes a comment related to EDI being something akin to a slave because of the restrictions placed on her. That also raises another interesting point. Legion is clearly an individual with his own obsessions and quarks. But the other Geth are more a "hive mind" sort of deal. Can the collective repository of the data and reasoning skills really be considered a race of its own?

As for the Soul argument that has been brought up. Let us remember that there are two types of souls. The religious type that denotes a part of us that transcends death and lives on forever and the philosophical kind. You actually have to be religious to believe in the first kind of soul and it was the first kind of soul the first sentient Geths were asking about in Legions recordings, having seen that term in the religious text of the Quariens. The Quarien who told the Geth "No" was correct in that instant. In a religious sense, the Geth do not have souls.

At this point, what becomes important is do the Geth have souls in the philosophical sense. The concept of the soul is philosophy is very different from those in religions. Under philosophy having a soul denotes having a dimension beyond mere existence. Mordin makes a comment on the soul in reference to the collectors. I can't remember the exact quote but he says something along the lines that the collectors have no art, no history, no soul. What Mordin was saying was that the collectors simply exist and this Mordin says, is motivation for him to destroy the collectors and put an end to the mockery of the Protheans they had become. A race that did have art, history, a soul.

The Geth we know have history. We know that they have been trying to learn about organic life. To learn about their creators and understand why their creators became afraid of them and tried to destroy them. Do they have art? We don't know. Can they have art? We don't know. But it does seem that the Geth might indeed have souls in the philosophical sense as they are not content just to exist and in this way they are more "alive" then the collectors who were biological constructs and even the Keepers of the Citedals, another biological construct. If that makes sense...

Having dimension beyond existance is not a secular "soul" argument, its stating that there are concepts greater than our self-interests.  However I would argue that everything leads back to self interests.

When did I say anything about having a concept greater than our self-interest extactly? I wasn't aware having history, art and music and doing any of those activities implied that you have a concept greater then self-interest. What I said was that philosophy says that having a soul means that you think about things. You don't just eat, drink, sleep, searching for more things to eat, drink, place to sleep etc, etc. It means engaging in acts not entirely related to survivability or fulfilling basic needs. Making music, drawing art has nothing to do with having a concept greater then our own self-interest. Indeed, in most cases whose activities are undertaking to express ourselves. That's the point. Having a soul in the philosophical sense is to think about philosophy to wonder if you have a soul, if there is more to life then eating, drinking and reproducing. Doesn't mean there has to be more to life then those thing but the fact that you are thinking about it is what sets you apart from a machine, biological or synthetic, that does not.

I dont say this as often as I like. That is an interesting point.

Modifié par jasonontko, 09 mars 2010 - 04:56 .