Raw LLM Responses

rmsgrey You make some fair points, and I must admit, you seem to have a higher threshold/tolerance for religious b.s. than I do. My own perspective comes from religious pressures applied by Catholic school and a controlling mom, so I am a bit militant in my rejection of their nonsense. Then again, I have met very few people who share my optimistic nihilism, so I don't expect you to share that viewpoint/militant response. You are right to point out that this is philosophy, and my expectations of hard proof were a bit unrealistic in that context. Of course he can mention souls without having to address that they are not needed and lack any evidence. I guess the application to a hypothetical robot tricked my brain into applying scientific rigors to philosophy, which I realize is unrealistic- philosophy often covers things not yet explained by science, and does not apply the scientific method to achieve results. That said, my understanding of souls is that they encompass who we are- how we think, how we feel, and how we behave. Others may have differing concepts, but that is how the Catholic church explained it- with the mind/body duality. I personally hate this concept, because it seems to me that there is no disconnect- you are your body, just as your mind is part of your body. Look at it this way- after a brain trauma, and the resulting personality change that I mentioned, the person's soul (assuming for a second it is real) would still be responsible and would still be punished for any action/thought that person made/had after the injury. If it was a matter of the "receiver" being broken, but the voice on the other end didn't change, then that person's soul should no longer be responsible for their thoughts/actions after the injury (a thought which Catholics, at least, would reject). Let me flush out my argument against the soul idea in this context. Someone who treated people well and was kind before the injury may now be violently angry and dimwitted. If they now commit murder/rape, their soul would still suffer the consequences. If the soul was a separate entity existing outside the body, then they should remain the same person, regardless of the brain injury- their soul is not part of their body, so damage to the body shouldn't change that soul. That is why they are still responsible for their "sins"; their soul (who they are) has changed with the injury, which means the damage to the receiver also damaged the voice on the other end. If the damage was only to the receiver, and not to the voice on the other end, then those purposing the existence of a soul should allow for that damaged receiver, and not hold the injured person responsible for their violent actions after the injury (because the receiver was damaged, and presumably the voice on the other end isn't responsible for how their garbled message is received). It seems to me that the soul is a construct we used to fool ourselves out of a persistent fear of mortality; some cannot handle the fact that we all die, that death is the end, and the universe doesn't give a damn/is devoid of meaning/purpose, so they deluded themselves into thinking that they are something more than their physical bodies, and that this part of them will live on beyond death.