MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (05/30/84)
About essences. Here is a section from
a book I am finishing about The Society of Mind.
THE SOUL
"And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light." (T. S. Eliot)
My friends keep asking me if a machine could have a soul? And I keep
asking them if a soul can learn. I think it is important to
understand this retort, in order to recognize that there may be
unconscious malice in such questions.
The common concept of a soul says that the essence of a human mind
lies in some entirely featureless point-like spark of invisible
light.
I see this as a symptom of the most dire anti-self respect. That
image of a nothing, cowering behind a light too bright to see, denies
that there is any value or significance in struggle for
accomplishment. This sentiment of human worthlessness conceals itself
behind that concept of an essence of the self. Here's how it works.
We all know how a superficial crust of trash can unexpectedly
conceal some precious gift, like treasure buried in the dirt,
or ordinary oyster hiding pearl.
But minds are just the opposite. We start as ordinary embryonic
animals, which then each build those complicated things called
minds -- whose merit lies entirely within their own coherency.
The brain-cells, raw, of which they're made are, by themselves,
as valueless as separate daubs of paint.
That's why that soul idea is just as upside-down as seeking
beauty in the canvas after scraping off Da Vinci's smears. To
seek our essence only misdirects our search for worth -- since
that is found, for mind, not in some priceless, compact core, but
in its subsequently vast, constructed crust.
The very allegation of an essence is degrading to humanity. It cedes
no merit to our aspirations to improve, but only to that absence of no
substance, which was there all along, but eternally detached from all
change of sense and content, divorced both from society of mind and
from society of man; in short, from everything we learn.
What good can come from such a thought, or lesson we can teach
ourselves? Why, none at all -- except, perhaps, that it is futile to
think that changes don't exist, or that we are already worse or
better than we are.
--- Marvin Minsky