Ryan Kerbow:
http://ryankerbow.blogspot.com/2011/01/reading-3-on-computers.html
Vince Kocks:
Reference Information:
Title: On Plants
Author: Aristotle
Venue: Edited by Jonathan Barnes
Summary:
Aristotle begins with a question of whether or not plants have souls. To come to a conclusion he compares plants to humans and animals which are believed to have souls. He covers a wide range of topics such as sleep, food, sex, and much more. He concludes that plants most likely have partial souls rather than souls like the ones animals and humans have.
Discussion:
I found this to be a very interesting read. It is easy to see similarities between how Aristotle reasoned whether plants have souls and people today might reason whether machines are intelligent. While I do understand that knowledge for knowledge's sake is important, I don't quite see the point in either of these arguments. Neither plants nor computers will change based on if we label them as having souls or being intelligent. Therefore, we are not arguing about what they can do as much as we are the definition of a word.
This is probably being too broad, but then what is the point of philosophy in general? The plants and computers themselves won't change, but our view of them could based on this discussion. Discussing whether or not a soul exists does not affect the existence of a soul, but the ideas resulting from talking about it could open up new ways of thought.
ReplyDeleteTalking about these kinds of things probably won't change the world as a whole, but they can be entertaining to discuss.