humanismAside from the difference of being carbon based organisms which are complex and made of trillions of cells, are you a machine? Suppose the answer to this question is considered to be a hypothesis. Can we test it scientifically?
I would like to get some ideas from you guys, as this question inevitably questions faith and has an undertone of atheism.
If this existence is a purely physical existence, then I don’t see how we could be anything else. If we are comprised of purely physical components, then it stands to reason that a sufficiently complex machine could accurately mimic/be functionally identical to a human. And functionally identical would be sufficient, because there is no metaphysical “ideal” of humanity to get in the way.
The only way that this would not be the case is if there was some kind of secret sauce (e.g. an immortal soul, which is why this is a theistic question) that a purely physical construct could not possess.
Semantically speaking the human organism, or any other organic developed organism, could be reduced to fit or compared to the description of a robot or machine.
This would only function by analogy however, because machines, generally conceived are (human) synthesized and not naturally occurring. Short of an allowance for some god making the machines, the analogy would break upon introduction of actually manufactured machines. If we were forced a supernaturalist hand, one objection might be that there is a ghost in the machine.
First consider the message on the six or seven pages starting here: (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/meta/getalife/index.html)
The general theme concerns evolution vs. creationism rather than the question “Are humans machines?” For the sake of this argument allow me to rephrase the question as “Are humans a type of machine?” If we limit the notion of ‘machine’ to be only objects constructed from manufactured, inanimate materials, then we can immediately state that humans are NOT machines. However, if we expand our notion of ‘machine’ to be any object that can convert some input into some other output, then we must admit that humans ARE machines.
Now the next point that I suspect was being thought about but not explicitly written: “If humans ARE machines, then who or what created us?” or to rephrase “Does an object that can be considered to be a machine require a designer or creator?” For this point I’ll refer back to the earlier link at infidels.org, and point out in particular the description about John Conway’s game of Life. With a simple set of rules that govern that small universe, automatons evolve that are indistinguishable from ‘machines’ (using the definition that machines are any object that converts some input into some other output.) These machines did not have a designer, nor did they have a creator (other than the physical laws of their universe), and yet they exist.
So, to conclude: Yes, we are machines.
[To have some fun playing around with Conway’s game of Life, try out this site: http://www.conwaylife.com/]
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