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The idea of a soul is probably the reason we believe in human rights, animal rights and so on. We should be careful not to abandon it, even if we are not sure w

The idea of a soul is probably the reason we believe in human rights, animal rights and so on. We should be careful not to abandon it, even if we are not sure what it really means but just know intuitively. With the recent AI advances I see a lot of chat dance around the subject of the soul without mentioning the word.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
There's one alternative for defining the basis of "rights" and "personhood" that I don't hear expressed much. It's not romantic (you might call it deeply cynical) or all that satisfying, emotionally, but it's extremely parismonous and cuts through many moral dilemmas. It's "social contract": I grant you personhood because you've forced me to. How? Because you can kill me if I'm mean to you. And you can really help me if I'm nice to you. By treating you like a "person", I'm extending a set of manners to you. I do this because you can reciprocate a social contract with me, both negatively (harm me if I harm you) and positively (help me if I help you) to a great enough extent. Even if I kill you because you're powerless against me, other people will know I killed you, and they might kill me because they're scared I'll kill them, and people have written this down into laws saying you don't have the right to kill others, and so I have to resist killing you because you are "a person". Maybe I'll also feel bad because I'm programmed with empathy, which is another way you fill the social contract (I'm harmed by harming you). What about a dog? Or a person in a coma? Here it gets circular. These beings cannot fulfill the social contract to the extent a normally-functioning adult human can. But if normally-functioning humans care enough about these beings to extend them personhood, I'm again forced to extend personhood to those beings as well: if I don't, the more powerful humans will harm me. Or, to flip it, if I [harm|help] beings that the powerful humans care about, I'm [harm|help]ing the powerful humans. Because they're powerful, they will reciprocate the social contract in kind. The circularity is: if enough humans decide a tree is a person[0] and will charge you for murder if you kill the tree, you have no choice but to go with it. Basically: you go along to get along, unless you don't have to and can force others to. That's always the way it's worked and will work. 0: https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-and-is-fighting-for-its-own-survival https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-a...
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  Social contract theory is one of the most disastrous and foolish ideas ever conceived.
- dullcrisp 4y ago
  So you’re saying that if I can hurt you and get away with it, then that would be basically okay?
hyperion2010 4y ago
More accurately the concept of the soul has been used for thousands of years to _deny_ rights to others as part of the great chain of being.
Barrin92 4y ago
As the article points out the soul in its original conception had the exact opposite purpose, to establish man's dominion over earth and everything on it. Animal rights are a fairly new invention, and the most popular argument against them has always been that unlike humans, they have no soul, which establishes an exclusive human relationship with some divinity or another. Rights based discourse always has a flipside, the not-havers of rights. Doing away with souls and rights and switching to a frame of welfare would be a pretty huge boon for animals as well as many humans. The source for alleged rights is always some scripture, some arcane interpretation of nature or history. You can always deny people their rights based on some text they allegedly derive from. You can, by definition, not deny people their demand for welfare or subjective interests. Case in point, the right to vote. Not only didn't it magically extend to everyone because it was conceived of as a right, arguably the opposite was the case.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

There's one alternative for defining the basis of "rights" and "personhood" that I don't hear expressed much. It's not romantic (you might call it deeply cynical) or all that satisfying, emotionally, but it's extremely parismonous and cuts through many moral dilemmas. It's "social contract": I grant you personhood because you've forced me to. How? Because you can kill me if I'm mean to you. And you can really help me if I'm nice to you. By treating you like a "person", I'm extending a set of manners to you. I do this because you can reciprocate a social contract with me, both negatively (harm me if I harm you) and positively (help me if I help you) to a great enough extent. Even if I kill you because you're powerless against me, other people will know I killed you, and they might kill me because they're scared I'll kill them, and people have written this down into laws saying you don't have the right to kill others, and so I have to resist killing you because you are "a person". Maybe I'll also feel bad because I'm programmed with empathy, which is another way you fill the social contract (I'm harmed by harming you). What about a dog? Or a person in a coma? Here it gets circular. These beings cannot fulfill the social contract to the extent a normally-functioning adult human can. But if normally-functioning humans care enough about these beings to extend them personhood, I'm again forced to extend personhood to those beings as well: if I don't, the more powerful humans will harm me. Or, to flip it, if I [harm|help] beings that the powerful humans care about, I'm [harm|help]ing the powerful humans. Because they're powerful, they will reciprocate the social contract in kind. The circularity is: if enough humans decide a tree is a person[0] and will charge you for murder if you kill the tree, you have no choice but to go with it. Basically: you go along to get along, unless you don't have to and can force others to. That's always the way it's worked and will work. 0: https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-and-is-fighting-for-its-own-survival https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-a...

lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Social contract theory is one of the most disastrous and foolish ideas ever conceived.
dullcrisp 4y ago
So you’re saying that if I can hurt you and get away with it, then that would be basically okay?

hyperion2010 4y ago

More accurately the concept of the soul has been used for thousands of years to _deny_ rights to others as part of the great chain of being.

Barrin92 4y ago

As the article points out the soul in its original conception had the exact opposite purpose, to establish man's dominion over earth and everything on it. Animal rights are a fairly new invention, and the most popular argument against them has always been that unlike humans, they have no soul, which establishes an exclusive human relationship with some divinity or another. Rights based discourse always has a flipside, the not-havers of rights. Doing away with souls and rights and switching to a frame of welfare would be a pretty huge boon for animals as well as many humans. The source for alleged rights is always some scripture, some arcane interpretation of nature or history. You can always deny people their rights based on some text they allegedly derive from. You can, by definition, not deny people their demand for welfare or subjective interests. Case in point, the right to vote. Not only didn't it magically extend to everyone because it was conceived of as a right, arguably the opposite was the case.