What is a Soulless Automaton?

[bananas]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111225214445AANCMtS

What is a Soulless Automaton?

I was watching the first season of
Glee, and New Directions was
performing "Funk" and Jesse from
Vocal Adrenaline was saying how they
had never performed a Funk number
and another member from Vocal
Adrenaline had said "That's because
were Soulless Automatons."

Thanks in advance, and Happy New
Year!

Asked by Megan - 3 days ago -
Resolved Question
[hr]
Best Answer

An Automaton is basically a Robot.
As for the Glee character he was using
it as a trope, a poetic turn of phrase.

Funk is a genre of music that is meant
to be sung in a playful and carefree
manner. This is evident when you
listen to such Funk groups as "Morris
Day and the Time" and "Parliament".

Having never seen Glee I can't say as
to "New Directions" music style, but
by the sound of what this character is
saying, at least in his eyes his group is
soul- less.

Answer by wolfmano - 3 days ago

It's another term for zombies:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

Zombies in philosophy are
imaginary creatures used to
illuminate problems about
consciousness and its relation to
the physical world. Unlike those
in films or witchraft, they are
exactly like us in all physical
respects but without conscious
experiences: by definition there is
‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie.
Yet zombies behave just like us,
and some even spend a lot of time
discussing consciousness.
...

[skepticscott]

1. And this is in Religion

why, exactly?

[tama]

2. Soul?

Related to questions about soul, mind, possibility of rebirth/reincarnation, materialistic beliefs, etc. Supporters of quantum mind hypothesis have used the 'zombie'-argument against e.g. eliminative materialists like Churchlands. Also, AFAIK this group is closest to what DU has on general philosophy.

[LAGC]

5. We really ought to have a Philosophy group.

Call it "Mental Masturbation."

[tama]

6. The American

general anti-philosophical attitude is interesting cultural phenomenon.

[bananas]

7. It goes with the anti-science attitude.

and yes, it is an interesting cultural phenomenon.

[LAGC]

8. You're one to speak about anti-science views.

[AlbertCat]

4. And this is in Religion why, exactly?

Because "Glee" is a religion now?

Just guessing....

[Jim__]

3. An oldie but goodie:

What is it like to be a bat?

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Perhaps that is why current
discussions of the problem give it little attention or get it obviously wrong. The recent wave of
reductionist euphoria has produced several analyses of mental phenomena and mental concepts designed
to explain the possibility of some variety of materialism, psychophysical identification, or reduction.1 But the problems dealt with are those common to this type of reduction and other types, and what makes the
mind-body problem unique, and unlike the water-H2O problem or the Turing machine-IBM machine
problem or the lightning-electrical discharge problem or the gene-DNA problem or the oak
tree-hydrocarbon problem, is ignored.

Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these
unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain. But
philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms
suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different. This has led to the acceptance of implausible accounts of the mental largely because they would permit familiar kinds of reduction. I shall try to explain why the usual examples do not help us to understand the relation between mind and
body—why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what an explanation of the physical nature of a
mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less
interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most important and characteristic feature of
conscious mental phenomena is very poorly understood. Most reductionist theories do not even try to
explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is
applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution, if it
exists, lies in the distant intellectual future.

Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we
cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what
provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than
man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar
systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has
conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. There
may be further implications about the form of the experience; there may even (though I doubt it) be
implications about the behavior of the organism. But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental
states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism—something it is like for the
organism.

We may call this the subjective character of experience. It is not captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all of them are logically compatible with its absence. It is not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional states, or intentional states, since these could be ascribed to robots or automata that behaved like people though they experienced nothing.2 It is not analyzable in terms of the causal role of experiences in relation to typical human behavior—for similar reasons.3 I do not deny that conscious mental states and events cause behavior, nor that they may be given functional characterizations. I deny only that this kind of thing exhausts their analysis. Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed. It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character. For there is no reason to suppose that a reduction which seems plausible when no attempt is made to account for consciousness can be extended to include consciousness. With out some idea, therefore, of what the subjective character of experience is, we cannot know what is required of physicalist theory.

more ... ( http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf )

[MarkCharles]

9. A soulless automaton is a Libertarian, or a Republican...

I'm not sure which, maybe both.

[LeftishBrit]

10. A right-winger.

[Odin2005]

11. A strawman created by people who want to believe in the "incorporeal soul" nonsense.

It is also used by "biocentrists" who think sapient AI is impossible.

Ditto with the "Philosopher's Zombie", another idea that assumes the thing it claims to prove.