Blog #0: On Computers

Reference: Aristotle, On Plants, The Revised Oxford Translation, Edited by Jonathan Barnes, Vol. II

Author Bios: Aristotle was born in Stagira in north Greece, the son of Nichomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. He is said to have written 150 philosophical treatises. The 30 that survive touch on an enormous range of philosophical problems, from biology and physics to morals to aesthetics to politics.

Summary: In "On Plants", Aristotle** discusses and justifies how plants should be considered to have souls like animals and humans. He starts by stating how life in animals is clearly manifest whereas the same in plants is not clearly evident. He tries to build a relationship between science and emotions by trying to relate the process of photosynthesis and fruit bearing within plants to them asserting a sensation of pleasure and desire. He provides many similar comparisons between the physical structures of plants and animals and how they can be called similar.

Discussion: While reading "On Plants" I learned how Aristotle used abundant examples to back his statements about plants possessing a soul. Relating this idea to computers and pondering upon whether they have a soul or not is a different and unique thought process. Although the arguments and points described in the book are extremely detailed and descriptive, I think it is not a correct way to prove a point. However, even if we think about computers in that perspective, I believe computers do not have soul. Firstly there is a big difference between living things and machines. There are many properties that plants sustain that can bring them into consideration for probably possessing a soul (for e.g. the sunflower exhibits heliotropism) but computers are machines that contain knowledge that is inputted by the developers/users. If information from all the books and libraries were to be inputted and stored into a computer, and then if that computer was made to answer questions asked by humans; it doesn't mean that the computer has a brain and that it is answering questions by itself (assuming that its answer does make sense)! It simply means that there is a simple search mechanism being implemented and the results being displayed by a machine. This can no way be related to a computer possessing a soul.