Aristotle defines the soul as the purpose for a living being's existence. By this standard Aristotle stated that plants existed to grow and reproduce, animals added the ability to sense and move, and humans additionally can reason. Keeping these ideas in mind I will comment on the discussion questioning whether computers have souls. If it can be determined that computers do indeed possess souls then, the power to create souls is clearly within the realm of humanity, a fact that could have significant impact on modern philosophy and ethics.
As stated above I will be using Aristotle's thoughts on what a soul is but the question remains of what defines a computer. It can easily be seen that the term computer has changed meanings through the centuries evolving from ancient calculators to machines that are responsible for life critical functions. I will use a more general definition of computers as their current iteration with processing power, dedicated resources, programmable instructions, and almost any hardware peripherals imaginable, e.g. robots.
If we loosely think about Aristotle’s definition of a soul and apply it to a modern day factory that produces computers on an assembly line, we see that all “requirements” are met for having all levels of a soul. The assembly line’s purpose is to reproduce computers, the robots are capable of sensing and moving, and throughout the process defective units are determined and disposed of (reasoning), thus satisfying everything Aristotle mentions to some effect. The difference here is that all of these requirements were met because humans created the assembly line and instructed all of its capabilities. From here, a whole new line of questioning arises and at least 2 viewpoints can be seen.
The first viewpoint thinks of humans as nothing more than advanced computers that have evolved over time into very complex machines that still to this day take input, process it, and produce a result in the form of movement, speech, etc. This viewpoint has no problem accepting computers as possessing infant souls much like humans began. This is further supported by the idea that if humans can create souls maybe something else did likewise to get life as we know it. The second viewpoint holds plant, animal, and human life in a different regard completely than computers and is unable to accept that humans are capable of creating souls ruling the conversation moot.
Overall, I think the conversation is just getting started on this topic and questions of ethics will begin appearing in the future development of technology as we venture into the unknown.
