[net.philosophy] Installment four of soul-icism

hutch (03/02/83)

Just in case you thought I might have fallen into the cracks in the
floor since my last massive missive, I will give vent to further of
the misplaced and miscategorized meanderings that I have been leaking
onto this net under the covering excuse that they are philosophically
relevant.

Last time, as you may remember if you haven't enned me out by now,
I discovered that there is an inherent limitation to using physical
senses and processes which can be ascribed to strictly physical
mechanism, that prevents us from asserting yea or nay about the
presence or absence of souls, spirits, awareness, and such.

I did manage to make a relatively weaker proposition that supported
the underlying notion of complexity and aliveness implying degrees
of awareness.  The proposition was that since there are motivations
which can be readily observed and classified in live things, and that
we can verify that there seem (empirically) to be feedback senses that
tell live things that they have satisfied the motivation.  I noted that
the specifics of motivations seems to grow more complex as the organism
grows more complex.  This collection of motivations and feedback senses
seems to comprise most of the awareness that I postulated earlier.

I then wandered into a quandary about mechanistic systems and organismic
systems and the similarities between them.

I propose the following definition:

	a SPIRIT is a system comprised of a set of motivations and
	the feedback senses associated with those motivations.  These
	are not necessarily the only parts of such a system.  No
	attempt is made here to say anything about the interface
	between the spirit and the physical system which it is
	in a sort of symbiotic relation with.  Further, no assertion
	is made about the existance of the spirit separate from a
	physical system, nor about the nature of the interface.

Note that there are several implications to this definition:

	First, since we cannot precisely define "life" due to the
	problems of gray-scaling, we cannot state that any given
	physical artifact or system is not possessed of a spirit.
	(Note that I said possessed OF, not BY.  This is not a
	 treatise on elementary daemonistry.)
	This requires the allowance that animism is correct in
	its assertion that all things are alive, but not in its
	assertion that all things can understand or be understood.
	The latter is an oversimplification caused by the fact
	that humans are complex enough to ascribe more complexity
	to a phenomenon than is required.

	Second, we probably have already created tools that fit the
	casual definitions of alive.  These are very limited life
	forms, but they do fit the definition.

	Third, that we can begin to classify such spirits by analysis
	of their basic components.

Well, I should get back to work.  Please let me know if you have any
problems with the definitions or conclusions I have reached so far.

Questionably yours,

Steve Hutchison
... decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!dadla!hutch