...you raise an excellent point. Free will can be adequately explained by the existence of the soul; some form of stuff, of whatever nature, that is not deterministic and can somehow make decisions, and which is a part of every human being.
But then, what is the soul? If it is physical—some arrangement of quarks or something—then can it really be entirely limited to humanity? What of the chimpanzee? On the flip side, is that the missing piece preventing the creation of artificial intelligence?
If is is not physical, then what sort of stuff is it? Where does it come from, where does it go (or does it dissipate and evaporate on death)? If it dissipates, then what are the products of that dissipation, do they hang around, undetected but building up somehow, or are they somehow recycled into new people? Is there a limit to the amount of soulstuff that exists on the Earth, and does that create a hard limit on the possible population of said Earth? What happens if Earth’s population exceeds that limit? And if such soulstuff does exist, then is that reason to update in favour of the possibility of existence of some much larger intelligence?
Because if there was a giant brain of physical matter hovering around Earth, we’d see it. If there was a giant brain of some undetectable non-matter stuff hovering around, then the fact that we can’t see it doesn’t mean a thing, one way or another.
It’s still significantly less likely to be there than not, but rather more likely than if intelligence needs a brain-like matter substrate to work on.
...you raise an excellent point. Free will can be adequately explained by the existence of the soul; some form of stuff, of whatever nature, that is not deterministic and can somehow make decisions, and which is a part of every human being.
But then, what is the soul? If it is physical—some arrangement of quarks or something—then can it really be entirely limited to humanity? What of the chimpanzee? On the flip side, is that the missing piece preventing the creation of artificial intelligence?
If is is not physical, then what sort of stuff is it? Where does it come from, where does it go (or does it dissipate and evaporate on death)? If it dissipates, then what are the products of that dissipation, do they hang around, undetected but building up somehow, or are they somehow recycled into new people? Is there a limit to the amount of soulstuff that exists on the Earth, and does that create a hard limit on the possible population of said Earth? What happens if Earth’s population exceeds that limit? And if such soulstuff does exist, then is that reason to update in favour of the possibility of existence of some much larger intelligence?
Why exactly?
Because if there was a giant brain of physical matter hovering around Earth, we’d see it. If there was a giant brain of some undetectable non-matter stuff hovering around, then the fact that we can’t see it doesn’t mean a thing, one way or another.
It’s still significantly less likely to be there than not, but rather more likely than if intelligence needs a brain-like matter substrate to work on.