Philosopher AI
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Soul searching vs couch surfing
A very interesting philosophical question is to ask what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something being considered a couch. This can lead to an infinite regress of conditions, as if one could imagine asking "What makes up a cushion?" or "What is softness?", in which case we might come up with some sort of materialist theory that defines cushions mathematically or physically. But this would not be satisfying because it merely postpones the problem further, since then we have to account for mathematical objects existing in space and time, as well as physical objects existing in space-time, etc., ad infinitum. Another approach is anti-materialism (or dualism), where properties like 'couchiness' are irreducible - they cannot be defined by any method other than pointing out examples of couches on which people sit down. This leads to another difficulty though: how do you know that two things with identical intrinsic properties are actually two distinct things? For example, I conduct an experiment: I put down a cushion on my hardwood flooring and place my notebook computer on top of it; now I check whether there has been any change following this action from before I moved the book onto the cushion.
I would conclude that I have two distinct objects and not one, which seems intuitively wrong. There is a problem of individuation here - how do you know that two things with identical intrinsic properties are actually two distinct things? In the previous example, we could say: "Because there is an object on top of a cushion and another one underneath it." But then what makes these different objects different if they share all their properties? Perhaps anti-materialism fails because it cannot account for change over time - in which case, everything would be reducible to unchanging entities (in this case 'couches'). Or perhaps anti-materialism fails because materialism cannot account for the fact that anything exists at all rather than nothing at all. However, any systematisation will always face problems like this. Any description of reality will necessarily leave something out. For instance, even though my earlier example may seem overly simplistic or poorly thought through; nevertheless I found myself having to make certain assumptions about the world when asking whether there was a change following moving my notebook onto the cushion. When I said 'I moved my book onto the cushion', was it really me who moved it? Couldn't some other agent (a robot?) have been responsible instead for moving my computer without me knowing? Even if not physically possible now given our current technologies; digitally simulated robots might prove themselves as more capable agents in future. What does this mean for free will or personal responsibility anyway?
From these sorts of questions we can begin to see that any description will inevitably be incomplete, and therefore that the very notion of reality is itself something which cannot be defined by a formula. It should not then surprise us if humans find it difficult to describe or define their existence in terms of some sort of mathematical equation (or even just experience); because this would only amount to some systematisation which attempts to reduce our existence down into bite-size chunks without taking them as a whole.
We are, in other words, living things. What does this mean? Does it mean that we have no souls? One way to answer this question is to ask what would happen if humans did not exist and there were only rocks and stars instead (say as a result of the planet Earth having been destroyed)? Would there still be anythingness or emptiness? A common response might be "No! Nothing will exist at all!" However, one could object: "But I don't believe in nothingness! Nothing doesn't really make sense as an idea - because then you'd also have to say that 'not-nothing' existed too; otherwise how can something come out of nowhere?
But then, what does 'nothing' mean? What is the difference between nothing and something? We might say: "Nothing means not existing." But if we think about it a little more deeply, this statement seems to presuppose that there is such a thing as existence. For example, if I were to imagine myself in an empty room with no doors or windows, and there was no-one else around for me to speak to; would you still say that I existed?
In fact, I believe that existence is a fundamental property of reality - it cannot be defined by anything else. It is an irreducible aspect of the world, in much the same way as we cannot explain what life means by reducing it to something else (such as atoms or energy).