Jeremy Nelissen
Reference Information
Title: On Plants, from The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation
Summary
The author discusses the physical characteristics of plants, presenting details about how they are composed, how they create more plants, how they grow, etcetera. Other, invisible characteristics are brought into question by asking whether or not plants have souls. This is presented by comparing animals to plants, assuming that it is well-known that animals do have souls. Parts of the plant are related to parts of the animal, as well as some parts of humans such as hair. The author points out "powers" of the plant, including earth, wind, and fire to describe the composition and movement of plants. The paper points out the particular needs of a plant that must be suitable for proper growth: seed, position, and water and air supply, further likening the relation to animals. While the author points out many similar characteristics of plants and animals, he concludes that plants do not contain a whole soul, but may have a partial one.
Discussion
I find the question of whether or not plants have souls to be interesting, since most people would not stare at a tree and wonder what its desires may be. Plants, while factually alive, are generally regarded to be non-thinking. However, we could use this paper's method of describing plants to describe computers, which presents an even stranger question of whether computers have souls or not. I could list the components of a computer system and how it "learns" by gaining new programs and data, and then liken the system to an animal. Like a plant or animal, a computer needs a power supply, and needs to "sleep", or at least reboot occasionally. However, while some may debate if a plant has a soul, most people would agree that computers do not have souls, since they are man-made and only do what they're told. We can, however, debate over whether or not a computer system could be intelligent by likening the system to animals similar to how this paper relates plants to animals.
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I find your comparison interesting, but I do have a question for you: it seems you think a computer might be said to have the intelligence of an animal (maybe equivalent to a trained service animal?) but do you think that the intelligence of a machine could ever be comparable to that of a human?
ReplyDeleteI actually jokingly started listing out the components of a computer a la "On Plants," and then really started to think about the parallels between humans and computer a la you. I think you hit the nail on the head with the assertion that man-made objects do not have souls, though. Incidentally, that's the same argument I use against strong AI.
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