Self
Does a self-driving car have a self?
Is there a ‘ghost’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’, or even God driving the car? Or is
the car driven by a clever bite of software (i.e. a set of rules as algorithm). A more interesting to the denizens of
the 21st century is: Does a self-driving human have a self? Is
there a ‘ghost’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ driving the human? This is the question which the Buddha asked 2500 years ago.
(Some few) 21st century humans will ask, ever more
insistently: is the human driven by a clever bite of biological software
(viz. initially the genes, later the brain as neurological navigation system*), and, indeed, by software that is fundamentally
blind? If you still believe that the self-driving
human (or any other biological system) has a self (alternately fantasised as
a ‘ghost’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’) driving it, unless the latter are understood
as clever bits of software (i.e. algorithms), now is the time to get real! What does ‘self-driving’ mean? It
means self-regulating (to wit, auto-adapting) towards survival. What does survival mean? It means self-reenergising
by receiving and transmitting differential data, contact providing the sense
of realness and (fusion) energy. What does self-regulating mean? Responding
(meaning adapting after the fact) automatically to impact (or instruction) by
differential data coming from outside or inside. If ‘soul’ (i.e. (ancient Greek) psyche, the word is of seriously dodgy
provenance and beyond translation, save perhaps as ‘auto-pilot’) and/or
‘spirit’ (Latin, meaning: breath (i.e. interpreted as ‘the breath of God’),
also Greek pneuma (≈ breath), later Latin animus, i.e. the animating function),
both user friendly and comforting (hence placebo)
icons, are understood as synonyms for ‘self’**, then obviously the
(self-driving, meaning self-regulating) human has neither ‘spirit’ nor
‘soul’. Few humans, pigmies in the Congo or
Christian pagans apart, will attribute a ‘soul’ or a ‘spirit’ (as ‘ghost in
the machine’) to a self-driving car or a plane on auto-pilot. One thing is sure, turning the
reflexive epithet ‘self’ into a noun, hence a ‘thing’ (i.e. an ‘as if’
given), is naďve, primitive, indeed atavistic self-deception (admirably
demonstrated in the wild metaphysical speculations of both Plato and the
Upanishads starting approx. 600 BC). Which begs the (very
ancient) question: If
there is no (goal oriented) driver/soul, whither the journey? Or, can a driverless/soulless
merely survival rules determined journey be meaningful, fulfilling and joy
inspiring? *… a
Biological Navigation System, short: a Bio-Nav. **…
Rather than of continuous (albeit discrete) self-ing
(i.e. identifying, thereby differentiating). (Transient) Processes (i.e.
verbs, such as ‘self-ing’ or ‘spirit-ing’) are undecided, incomplete and uncertain.
Reification (and which happens by slicing or stopping, and which turns a verb
into a noun) decides (and so quantises) processes (and by extension verbs)
and so makes the decided process quanta (called bits or units) complete and
certain so that they can be applied wholly (i.e. at c, so as to create a c2
realness affect). In short, actual/real survival (i.e. as a real identity)
happens step (quantum collision) by step (quantum collision). |