Edvin - So. is what you're asking if AI should be treated as real (human) life. Or if veichles with some sort of human "soul" inhabiting them should be treated as human beings?

Vasska - But other than that i don't think anything that we can manufacture (except from clones) can even be considered human for it will always lack a lot of things

I think we should be focusing on the quality of our lives. The lives that we live today can be of such higher quality that we might even evolve to the Ubermensch

If something is intellegent, what makes it artificially so. I would not classify these engine as artificial intellegence. When I think of AI, I think of a computer program that is programmed in such a way that it can randomly act in a predetermined manner depending on input. However, these engines are more like humans.

I like how you put 'soul' in quotes. When I've done presentations to High School students about Plato's virtue ethics, I had to mention how he divides the 'soul' into three parts. Now, before I turned everyone who was not 'of faith', as I will put it, I had to say: "If you don't believe that we have a soul, think of the soul as a person character, or personality, it is what makes the person who they are".

Now, if an engine thinks, acts, and 'feels' (emotionally and physically) as we do, what makes them less human than us? Do they still have a 'soul' like we do?

Of course we can't. This question is more like a thought experiment, but I wouldn't call it that because it is not that well thought out. It is more like a thought game, just for fun.

Asking questions like I asked is focusing on the quality of my life. It gives me great pleasure to do philosophy, even if it is with meaningless questions.

Now, if you are talking that we should focus our technology towards the qaulity of our lives rather than creating machines that think as we do, sure your right, but that is not the point of my post. It is just a fun game to play that enhances my pleasure (and I would hope others)

As for the Ubermensch, I don't think man will ever be able to perform the feat of creating intrinsic, objective value. Yes, on a personal level we create value in our own lives, but that value stems from the percieved value that I have experienced others as having. Turning into ourselves to find value in the world outside of us is an idea that discounts experience. I cannot create my own value, because no matter how hard I try, those values will always be influenced by my conditioning.

Nothing personal or anything but you consistently wrote intelligence wrong.

but not human for they still lack many characteristics.

Plato's definition about the soul sure is interesting and I will read more about it as soon as possible.

Sorry, I hate misspellings. I used to type my posts in word then copy them over, but there are always formatting issues and it leads to a lot of extra work, so I stopped doing that. Again, I apologize.

Can you please expound on which characteristics make you human.

I don't think that is Plato's definition of the soul, it is just what I say because I don't want to turn people off when I speak about the soul.

I would suggest reading Plato's Phaedo. He talks a lot about the soul in that book, and it is reletively short. Also, you can look to the first 3 books of the Republic.

I will try to find time to make a post about Plato's soul in the Plato section. (no guarantees, it has been a while since I've focused on such matters)

Characteristics from humans for me is basically everything that defines human behavior from emotions to body language to how we move, think and do everything.

To buy the complete works in one book is probably cheaper.

Would you consider Isaac Asimov's robots human (If you have not read his book, maybe you have seen the movie "I, Robot")

Make sure they are good translations. I like the Benjamin Jowett translations myself. Barnes and noble has a 'Great Dialogues' book that is only missing a few and 'The Republic' which is a seperate book. (they are the 'Barnes and Noble Classics' edition) Together they cost roughly $18. The are regular book sizes, which I prefer. For the dialogues they are missing, you can always pick them up individually. Just a thought.