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FINALLY ! The animator of clay have heared us ! This screen have a lot of implication for me. Reading it, it clearly speak about a machine empire gaining individuality, does that mean machine empire can do a new special ascension where they become individual empire ? What about individuals machines then ?
Also so do you think we can expect psionic hive too ?
I think there are two distinct ideas at play. A psionic robot like you describe it, would be a homunculus. An artificial thing that can move and appear alive. This is the kind of thing Spiritualists don't like, because it's a machine pretending to be alive.
What I like to think is that the 'soul' is in the ether, the essence of the living being, and that this soul is then projected upon an inanimate puppet. That gives you a robot with a soul basically. Some kind of program to revive the dead, to allow them back in when their old body failed for some reason.
I'd prefer the latter actually, it would be more in tune with the established lore.
I posted about this yesterday. What's really interesting is it's not just robots, it's a robot hive mind. Both things that currently can't do psionics. Though I'm staying cautious and assuming for now this is origin locked rather than something any robot/gestalt empire can pick. If I'm wrong then happy days.
I'm relatively certain that the screenshot is based on a special origin. However that doesn't necessarily rule out a more general Gestalt Psionics path, since it could be the equivalent of the Shroud-Touched Coven origin.
On the other hand I feel like if Gestalt Psionics was going to be a general feature it would of been a marquee feature.
I think there are two distinct ideas at play. A psionic robot like you describe it, would be a homunculus. An artificial thing that can move and appear alive. This is the kind of thing Spiritualists don't like, because it's a machine pretending to be alive.
You mean like a golem? Or reanimated zombie? That's not much different from a homunculus, an artificial being without a real soul.
The red lore line for Spiritualists runs along the question of having or not having a soul, not if the being is sentient or not, or where it gets its power/energy from. Psionic empires are immune to Contingency sabotage, because the infiltrators - while sentinent - lack the "glow of life" according to the event text. You can also see the same arguments with how GC resolutions are named: "divinity of life", "tithe the soulless", and "silence the soulless". The soul is the spark of the divine, the divine enforcer destroys the soulless.
That's also probably the reason why Lithoids aren't seen as machines, because despite being made of inorganic material, they do seem to possess a soul and can unlock their psionic potential.
So, the question really is, does the thing has its own soul or not? If the soul of a psionic being is in it, it's alive. If not, and we're only talking about remote control, powering it externally with psionic energy, or building humanoid robots (aka homunculus) without a soul, then Spiritualists would categorize it as a machine I think.
You mean like a golem? Or reanimated zombie? That's not much different from a homunculus, an artificial being without a real soul.
The red lore line for Spiritualists runs along the question of having or not having a soul, not if the being is sentient or not, or where it gets its power/energy from. Psionic empires are immune to Contingency sabotage, because the infiltrators - while sentinent - lack the "glow of life" according to the event text. You can also see the same arguments with how GC resolutions are named: "divinity of life", "tithe the soulless", and "silence the soulless". The soul is the spark of the divine, the divine enforcer destroys the soulless.
That's also probably the reason why Lithoids aren't seen as machines, because despite being made of inorganic material, they do seem to possess a soul and can unlock their psionic potential.
So, the question really is, does the thing has its own soul or not? If the soul of a psionic being is in it, it's alive. If not, and we're only talking about remote control, powering it externally with psionic energy, or building humanoid robots (aka homunculus) without a soul, then Spiritualists would categorize it as a machine I think.
It's also fair to say that one man's soul is another's natural process. Same as how the shroud entities could be considered gods or they could be considered powerful, strange aliens.
It's also fair to say that one man's soul is another's natural process. Same as how the shroud entities could be considered gods or they could be considered powerful, strange aliens.
They are manifestations of the collective feelings of the Zroni. They are powerful, but they're certainly manmade and younger than the Zroni. The Shroud itself was formed by the Zroni (from the proto-Shroud they found), so it being what it is, that is certainly not carved in stone. It's like clay, a flexible thing that a strong enough will can form and bend.
In a way, they're not much different from cloned beings: artificially created sentient beings with a soul.
That's why I have such reservations against serving those entities. They're not supernatural gods, they're psionic Shroud-"robots", creations of a normal race of aliens within our galaxy. I don't bow down to a robot, however magical it might be.
A Gestalt Machine empire cannot become psionic simply due to how they process information. They are not like organic minds, even Hive Minds.
In an organic gestalt consciousness, every drone actually has some degree of individuality, the needs of the hive simply rank higher on their list of priorities. Machine drones do not have this, they are literal extensions of the machine mind, like a mouse to a PC, so to speak.
Now, I do think they should have ways to apply Psionic techs and way to interact with the warp (beyond the Crisis path, obviously) as these are fundamental parts of reality in the Stellaris universe and can be interacted with. They could easily substitute the idea of psionic consciousness with an artificial construct, or engineer some sort of bio-mechanical platform to interact with the Shroud (like a unique megastructure).
In an organic gestalt consciousness, every drone actually has some degree of individuality, the needs of the hive simply rank higher on their list of priorities. Machine drones do not have this, they are literal extensions of the machine mind, like a mouse to a PC, so to speak.
Stellaris "lore" to the extent it has it is very flexible. If you want to imagine your robots as being extensions you can, if you want to imagine them as being individual units that identify primarily by the group identity you can. Mechanically gestalt machines have deviancy the same as hives which can be understood as them being individuals capable of divergence, rather than appendages of a main brain. But if you wanted to imagine them as malfunctioning appendages that works too.
I think there are two distinct ideas at play. A psionic robot like you describe it, would be a homunculus. An artificial thing that can move and appear alive. This is the kind of thing Spiritualists don't like, because it's a machine pretending to be alive.
What I like to think is that the 'soul' is in the ether, the essence of the living being, and that this soul is then projected upon an inanimate puppet. That gives you a robot with a soul basically. Some kind of program to revive the dead, to allow them back in when their old body failed for some reason.
I'd prefer the latter actually, it would be more in tune with the established lore.
I would agree with the opposite definition here, to me an homonculus is an artificial human who, despite its artificial origin, have pretty much every moral and spiritual caracteristic of natural human, including a soul. And that is what I mean indeed by psionic robot, although the concept of soul is very vague in stellaris, for spiritualist it is closely tie to the shroud but for many other it is not.
You will find a lot of artificial character in the events and most of them do not consider themself nor appear to be soulless. It is often quite the opposite, seeign how vibrant with emotions and personnality they are. If you have all the characteristic of a soulfull being can you realy be considered soulless just beceause you lack presence into a misunderstood plane of existence ?
However I really REALY like the idea of automaton being infused with mystical power hence why I am very hyped by what I am reading here and hope I do not misinterpret it.
So I may share a definition of soul different from yours but I agree with your idea of robot gaining counsciousness or even soul through shroud stuff. If that make sense.
I posted about this yesterday. What's really interesting is it's not just robots, it's a robot hive mind. Both things that currently can't do psionics. Though I'm staying cautious and assuming for now this is origin locked rather than something any robot/gestalt empire can pick. If I'm wrong then happy days.
It is indeed what I have thought, thanks for pointing it out. It can clearly be an origin based on what we are seeing on the screenshot, where the empire is still in very early game. But either way I am hyped beceause as I said above machine inhabited by mystical energy and/or entity is a fantasy I yearned for since years.
They did not shared a lot about what will be in this dlc in reality. Make sense, it is too early for that. They said thay will add, origin civics and gouvernement types. So it can be an origin like it could be a new ascension path exclusive to gestalt machine or machine empire in general.
I would agree with the opposite definition here, to me an homonculus is an artificial human who, despite its artificial origin, have pretty much every moral and spiritual caracteristic of natural human, including a soul. And that is what I mean indeed by psionic robot, although the concept of soul is very vague in stellaris, for spiritualist it is closely tie to the shroud but for many other it is not.
You will find a lot of artificial character in the events and most of them do not consider themself nor appear to be soulless. It is often quite the opposite, seeign how vibrant with emotions and personnality they are. If you have all the characteristic of a soulfull being can you realy be considered soulless just beceause you lack presence into a misunderstood plane of existence ?
Well, I was referring to the game's lore and event texts, so it's not really my personal definition. I was trying to walk the fine line of ingame knowledge, to determine what could maybe constitute a psionic robot (aka soulless tool) versus a sentient living being with a soul, albeit contained within a non-biological frame. The soul is where the game draws the line between the living and robots.
The game leaves the question of what a soul is pretty much unanswered. Probably because they don't want to science-ify the concept. Which is fair enough. Not much to gain here from over-explaining things.
But on topic of science, in response to your post, emotions are just chemical reactions within a biological body. Personalities are the result of neuron connections, also chemical processes within the brain. "Vibrant with emotions and personality" isn't a good measure for "soul" as a concept imho. Otherwise I could ask you, do you think people without emotions have no soul? Do you think people with Alzheimer's, who lose their memory and personality, suddenly lose their soul? Rhetorical questions, the answer should be 'no' here.
Or to go the Synth angle here, is uploading your brain into a machine the same as a soul transfer? Is a chatbot a living being, if its programming is what gives it memories and a personality? Does copying it on a 2nd robot create a new person, or do you suddenly have two and more soul in several bodies?
You can program any machine to act as if it were alive, that doesn't make it a living being with a soul (again, the game doesn't exactly state what that is). But the game gives us the hint that psionics can differentiate between beings with a soul and those without one, and Synths are classified as soulless. Again, not my opinion, just stating what the game tells us.
Yet it seems that cloned people, or pops molded in vats, made from organic matter grown on farms, do have an individual soul. So they're not bio-robots, despite not being natural either. Would that qualify as psionic robot, because it was artificially made?
However I really REALY like the idea of automaton being infused with mystical power hence why I am very hyped by what I am reading here and hope I do not misinterpret it.
So I may share a definition of soul different from yours but I agree with your idea of robot gaining counsciousness or even soul through shroud stuff. If that make sense.
If I had to make a lore-faithful implementation of psionic robots, I'd go either with the souls of the dead inhabiting and animating non-organic bodies, thus bringing them to life. Or I'd go with telepaths controlling non-organic bodies. That would check the box of "robot" being a non-organic thing, but the psionic component would make it clear that there is life behind it, life/soul as it is defined by ingame psionic lore.
The difference to non-psionic robots is that the decision-making in and for those soulless things would ultimately lie with beings that have, according to lore, a soul, or the glow of life, or something to that effect.
The moment you have programming making the autonomous decisions, however sophisticated and complex that programming might be, you end up with a soulless robot.
Really interesting philosophical questions, I'd really love to hear/read your thoughts on those!
Well if they did not wanted us to talk about it they would have not put this image on the steam page in the first place.
That is how I see things at least.
Well if they did not wanted us to talk about it they would have not put this image on the steam page in the first place.
That is how I see things at least.
Well, I was referring to the game's lore and event texts, so it's not really my personal definition. I was trying to walk the fine line of ingame knowledge, to determine what could maybe constitute a psionic robot (aka soulless tool) versus a sentient living being with a soul, albeit contained within a non-biological frame. The soul is where the game draws the line between the living and robots.
The game leaves the question of what a soul is pretty much unanswered. Probably because they don't want to science-ify the concept. Which is fair enough. Not much to gain here from over-explaining things.
But on topic of science, in response to your post, emotions are just chemical reactions within a biological body. Personalities are the result of neuron connections, also chemical processes within the brain. "Vibrant with emotions and personality" isn't a good measure for "soul" as a concept imho. Otherwise I could ask you, do you think people without emotions have no soul? Do you think people with Alzheimer's, who lose their memory and personality, suddenly lose their soul? Rhetorical questions, the answer should be 'no' here.
Or to go the Synth angle here, is uploading your brain into a machine the same as a soul transfer? Is a chatbot a living being, if its programming is what gives it memories and a personality? Does copying it on a 2nd robot create a new person, or do you suddenly have two and more soul in several bodies?
You can program any machine to act as if it were alive, that doesn't make it a living being with a soul (again, the game doesn't exactly state what that is). But the game gives us the hint that psionics can differentiate between beings with a soul and those without one, and Synths are classified as soulless. Again, not my opinion, just stating what the game tells us.
Yet it seems that cloned people, or pops molded in vats, made from organic matter grown on farms, do have an individual soul. So they're not bio-robots, despite not being natural either. Would that qualify as psionic robot, because it was artificially made?
I think my first post was not very clear, I wrote it while in the transport, so I will try to give a more constructed answer here.
Yes, in game the definition of soul is shallow and nebulous and it is indeed probably the point. Stellaris is about all sci-fi tropes but it usualy avoid to get too much into the realy philosophical and metaphysical stuff. In the way I understand it, what most spiritualist call a soul is a divine spark in all living beign, which is very close to most religious definition of soul in real life. Animus, which is used to name soul is from where also come the verb animate and the word animal after all, in ancient times and philosophy there was no real difference between life and soul.
While some other ethic in stellairs see it more as a physical phenomena or even dismiss it as the materialist does, a lot of things in the game lore hint that you do not need a "psionic soul" in order to have the ability to feel and be consious. That is what I meant by "vibrant with personnality and emotions", it is the fact those being, despite not having a "soul" by your term, clearly show sign of existing beyond simple programmation. If you try at all cost to replicate something, at which point do you stop faking it and realy does it ? If a soulles being can do everything a soulfull being can do, what is the point of the soul then ?
As I wrote the previous paragraph I realised soul, not beign defined in the game lore, is often a point of confusion in stellaris when it come to machine and synth. Even in real life people are not clear of what they mean by soul. So since we are on the track for speculation here, I would like to propose my two defintions of soul as I understand it :
The first definiton is the spiritual definiton, a soul is what give you or IS the ability to feel, to be, to exist, to be consicous beceause you can reflect on what you are and what you feel. I do not speak only of emotion here, I speak about feeling anything in general. I do not care here what allow you to feel, what is important is, does you feel ? Does a YOU exist here and now ? In that perspective if a divine spark is what give you the ability to feel then a soulles machine could only emulate it, but never fully replicate it. Beceause it does not feel, it does not realy exist.
The second definiton is what I will call here the mystic one. Soul is a mystical force in all life, call it life force if you want. In that case a bacteria, the most simple living being we know, does have a soul. But there is no astral rift in which you'll make me beleive that a bacteria have the ability to feel and have something even remotely close to a counsciousness. So if a bacteria does have a soul but does not have the ability to feel this definition mean the soul and the ability to feel and be conscious are separate things. You can be a synthetic being, having no spark of divine in you, no soul, but you have the ability to feel and exist, beceause you equivalent of a brain can do pretty much every thing a human brain can.
(Edit here, I have remove a part that was unnecessary and make all my point too long)
Now let applie that to stellaris.
I will use the two defition of soul I have given here which are, I think, relevent in Stellaris. The game never told us explicitly what have a presence in the shroud and what does not. We know that prety much every non mechanical sapient being have one, but correct me if i am wrong but we do not know for plants and bacteria (plantoid and fugoid do no count since they clearly are in the sapient lifeform category). So if I follow the definition I gave :
Soul in the spiritual definition, would mean that in stellaris have a soul everything that clearly have the ability to feel, to be councious and to exist by themself. If this ability come from (or is link to) the shroud, or psionic stuff in general, an AI, being soulless, cannot feel. But as you can see in numerous event, advanced enough AI like some robot leader paragon or with numerous machine empire interaction, it appear to me they clearly feel and are sentient and sapient in general. If you follow the spiritualists ethic's line of thinking they would only emulate those feelings. But I admit stellaris make a good job at leaving this ambiguous some times. So you can be brought to think that at least some AI do not realy feel and are just emulating what a truly sentient being would do in that situation.
If you use the mystcial definition of soul, as a divine energy in all life form, then every natural lifeform in the galaxy have one. It is unclear, once again if stuff like bacteria have a presence into the shroud, if yes, it mean soul is clearly not the ability to feel, if no, it means soul is something you will have only by meeting some unknow conditions. Either way if you follow that defintion of soul, then you do not need a soul to feel, so you should not care to "have no soul" beceause as long as the current YOU is still around, you will still exist and feel by defintion (again, I agree that copy the YOU does not count as transfering it).
Conculsion:
To me the spiritual definition of soul is the correct one, so either robot and synth can truly feel and do not need the psionic or shroud stuff to be spiritualy alive, or they are not beceause you need a shroud or psionic soul to realy exist in stellaris. Both of those position are okay to me as long as you fully commit to one of them or admit you just don't know or are unsure. I consider myself of this third group by the way, even if I would tend to agree more with the soulfull synth/robot in most of the cases.
Sooo , thanks for reading all of that to anyone who did. I am sorry if I got a little carried away, I find this topic fascinating and this is one of the main reason why synthetic being with soul and spiritual presence hype me so much.
What a good read! It would be rude not to respond. Conditional soul and dignity?
Tying the soul to your state of mind has very ugly consequences. That irl discussion isn't new btw, just that instead of a soul, people were discussing it with regards to being human (as in human dignity originating from the concept of a soul). Eugenics, euthanasia, abortions, infanticide, geriatricide... you name it, it's on the table. Remove the notion of a soul, of a "divine otherworldly spark of life", reduce a living being to its functions, and you strip the human from his god-given dignitiy.
And yes, I deliberately use "god-given" here, because you need the divine (not necessarily a god) as a source of that dignity, to put it outside of human reach. It becomes untouchable, unavailable, unchangeable. If the soul, the human dignity, is something humans give themselves, then humans can also take it away. And worse, if dignity were to be bound to material conditions, we would be reduced to just our functions, and we'd be deep in an ethical system of utilitarism: good is only what benefits the group.
Killing useless elders, the genetically inferior, the sexual deviants like homosexuals, the lazy, the useless, wounded veterans, the stupid, the politically not aligned... not having the spark of divine as the source of your dignity, not having a soul unconditionally (=regardless of your bodily functions and your state of mind), is one of the darkest chapters in human history. It's like a hive mind would think, because the death of a drone doesn't snuff out the soul of the central mind, but in all other societies such an MO violates the rights of the individual and would be unacceptable.
Divine spark vs machine
If you ask me in which camp I am, and if that hasn't become clear by now, I'd say I place myself in the "divine spark" faction. Mechanical replication of chemical processes to simulate life, programming a robot to "feel", is for me a reduction of life to just the superficial mechanics. Having a soul makes a life divine, and vice versa.
A robot doesn't love me, if I set it to say "I love you" to me. A complex machine, like a starship, doesn't feel anger just because I use it to shoot at someone. Robots and machines are soulless constructs, tools, machines, and complex programming doesn't change that. But with a soul, even if in a vegetative state, a life still has the divine spark and is deserving of full dignity and rights.
Mass Effect did a pretty good job with the Geth: "Does this unit have a soul?" That pushes the sharp line I'm drawing here between living beings and machines. I have to admit, I do answer it with a "yes", because I'm ultimately wholesome and it doesn't cost me anything to extend my compassion here. But speaking in pure logic, I'd have to answer the question with a "No". They were built machines, a machine intelligence, and a software update gave them autonomy, and that suddenly constitutes a soul? A soul as a software update? That doesn't sound right.
Teleporter and soul-replication
Where the scif-i lines get blurry is with the old question with no answer: when you teleport, meaning the teleporter disassembles and reassembles you somewhere else, is it still you? Or is it a perfect copy of you, but still a different consciousness? Or do you even turn into a soulless biological husk devoid of a soul, a bio-robot? Or, to be more precise, can a teleporter even physically "catch" my soul and transfer it, meaning is it even material in some form? Or does it lose that soul in the process? And what of the infamous "evil twin" teleporter mistakes, do they create new souls when duplicating people?
While I cannot hope to even attempt to answer that question in our real world, I can answer it for myself in the world of Stellaris. There I think living beings have a soul, one that is immaterial, transcendental, and also able to transcend the physical realm and interact with other dimensions. And that soul can get separated from the body and isn't necessarily bound to it. It's not the body that is the person, but the divine soul.
The quest for immortality in Stellaris' ascensions
That, for me, is the chance to provide a solution to the problem of immortality (or rather lack thereof). You see, all ascension paths try to cheat the sad reality of fragile bodies being subject to death and decay. Synths upload their brains and make backups, Machine-Gestalt has a group consciousness and can go virtual existence, Bio goes a similar way as Synth, just that it tries to perfect the durability of biological matter instead of seeking refuge in inorganic metal.
So far, psionics were left out in this quest for life. A few select individuals could become Chosen, or a few leaders could get a Shroud boon for a few extra years. But there was nothing like the Zroni did, which is to enter the Shroud using psionic power and leave the physical realm behind. That was their ticket to a long life, using their soul to shed their body and become a psionic god in another dimension.
Synths and Machine Intelligence doesn't regard the soul as something that exists, and in their approach to immortality they only see the material and mechanical presence. It makes sense that for them life would be just the sum of chemical processes and mechanical functions, which could either be replicated or substituted.
Bio ascension doesn't regard the soul either, but goes full into the body as a (flawed) heap of chemical processes and mechanical functions. However, instead of replacing it with machine parts, that paths tries to perfect the biological material, breed out weaknesses. The soul is also not part of the equation, although having a soul in the eyes of Spiritualists does come as a side-effect of not shedding your organic body. But there is no doubt that bio ascension treats the biological body as a bio-robot, a vessel that can be improved, modified, and assembled in cloning vats.
Psionic immortality with regards to the soul
Coming back to the Zroni, they saw the physical realm as a limited plain of existence. Using the power of their mind, they entered another dimension, where their mind reigned supreme, where they could will immortality into existence. Currently, the game lacks any quest for immortality for psionic ascension, and that is something I hope the DLC will remedy.
Conculsion:
To me the spiritual definition of soul is the correct one, so either robot and synth can truly feel and do not need the psionic or shroud stuff to be spiritualy alive, or they are not beceause you need a shroud or psionic soul to realy exist in stellaris. Both of those position are okay to me as long as you fully commit to one of them or admit you just don't know or are unsure. I consider myself of this third group by the way, even if I would tend to agree more with the soulfull synth/robot in most of the cases.
I wouldn't actually mind different psionic approaches. One could see the soul as a port of the body, as only existing in a union, where the total is greater than the sum of all parts so to speak. Another branch could view the body as a hindrance, a burden weighing your immortal and divine soul (aka YOU) down, something that you ought to rid yourself of, if you ever want to hope to become immortal.
In both cases, the soul is what makes you you. If the body is a vessel for the soul, then the vessel becomes nothing more than a replaceable husk, and the dignity/soul depends on the person inhabiting it. And if that body happens to be not biological, but mechanical? That would be the very definition of a psionic robot, a living being inhabiting a metal body, the opposite of a machine relying only on its programming, or a "soul via software update".
It would tie in nicely with the other paths and their quest for immortality, just with an emphasis on the soul instead of the body, where a new body would only be a stepping stone for the soul. Instead of uploading your brain, you'd use the power of your mind to enter a mechanical body, which would serve as an anchor for your soul in the world. That would make the robot deserving of human dignity, give it the spark of life, the "glow", not because of its programming, but because it has an actual soul.
If you ask me in which camp I am, and if that hasn't become clear by now, I'd say I place myself in the "divine spark" faction. Mechanical replication of chemical processes to simulate life, programming a robot to "feel", is for me a reduction of life to just the superficial mechanics. Having a soul makes a life divine, and vice versa.
A robot doesn't love me, if I set it to say "I love you" to me. A complex machine, like a starship, doesn't feel anger just because I use it to shoot at someone. Robots and machines are soulless constructs, tools, machines, and complex programming doesn't change that. But with a soul, even if in a vegetative state, a life still has the divine spark and is deserving of full dignity and rights.
Mass Effect did a pretty good job with the Geth: "Does this unit have a soul?" That pushes the sharp line I'm drawing here between living beings and machines. I have to admit, I do answer it with a "yes", because I'm ultimately wholesome and it doesn't cost me anything to extend my compassion here. But speaking in pure logic, I'd have to answer the question with a "No". They were built machines, a machine intelligence, and a software update gave them autonomy, and that suddenly constitutes a soul? A soul as a software update? That doesn't sound right.
>> Your definition of soul
First, just to clarify things, if I understand your point of view correctly (correct me if I am mistaken), you agree more or less with my spiritual definition of soul, meaning soul is the YOU, the very fact to be. You gain the ability to feel from the fact you are because you have a soul. However what you think about the nature of the soul, for stellaris at least, is that the soul, this YOU, have a mystical nature, meaning soul is not just a physical phenomena for you, it is something outside the physical world, ethereal. Hence the fact that stellaris machines lack a presence in shroud is for you a proof they lack this mystical essence, hence soul. So they appear alive but they just emulate everything, they do not feel anything. That is... interesting, but I will get back on that later.
Either way, I think we both agree then that feeling, truly feel, is a sufficient condition to be consider soulfull, since you need a YOU, you need to be, in order to feel in the first place.
>> Does I have a body or am I a body ?
This is in my opinion one of the biggest existential question for humanity as a whole. From its answer can depend how you approach life in general, if you consider yourself as a body, then there is no place for mystical energy, soul is a physical phenomena. If you consider you just have a body, it mean soul and body are separable entities, even if a part of you is obviously tied to your body and will die with it, having a body mean a part of you can still exist beyond death. Also by definition, the essence of soul is immutable, you can have your memories, personality and mind changed, the YOU will still be YOU. I would like to quote one of my favorite games of the moment, Slay the Princess, here. (spoiler ahead for that game, if your interested in it and don't want to get spoiled, I will make a sumary after that).
In the "Fury" road (fury in the sens furious, nothing to do with a certain community here) of slay the princess, you meat up a desecrated and grossly deformed princess. Being like that because of your choices, which ended up you twisting her nature. She avenge herself by trying to make you feel the same thing as her. She twist your body in every possible way, destroying literally EVERY CELL of your body, destroying and rebuilding you thousands of times. Each time she ask you "ARE YOU STILL THERE ? ARE YOU STILL YOU ?" But obviously, in the end, you still exist, because in this game the main character, us, is far more that a body, we are still the same being in the end, despite everything she did to us.
To quote her more later in the game this version of the princess say "What is a person ? Is it their body ? Is it all of their body ? Rip the tendons, tear the flesh, peel skin, grind the bones, plug the eyes... In the end, do you still have the same person you started with ?"
In summary what I think, and I think can be applied to some degree to stellaris is that soul is probably more than the body. A lot of thing can happen to my body, I can loose limbs, organs and my brain can be damaged in a way that whole parts of my mind cease entirely to function or exist without it killing me. I would still BE, this I, will still exist. However I cannot say what will happen after I die, I could not say if the YOU is a result of physical phenomena or of something else. I will get back to stellaris soon, because the fact I cannot answer this question is the reason why I cannot surely answer the question of : Can Stellaris's Synthetic and most advanced AI be realy alive ? Does they have a soul ?
But first I would like to make some additional clarifications with that exemple you brought.
>> The example of Teleportation
I agree than we are more than a body, you gave a good exemple with teleportation :
Where the scif-i lines get blurry is with the old question with no answer: when you teleport, meaning the teleporter disassembles and reassembles you somewhere else, is it still you? Or is it a perfect copy of you, but still a different consciousness? Or do you even turn into a soulless biological husk devoid of a soul, a bio-robot? Or, to be more precise, can a teleporter even physically "catch" my soul and transfer it, meaning is it even material in some form? Or does it lose that soul in the process? And what of the infamous "evil twin" teleporter mistakes, do they create new souls when duplicating people?
While I cannot hope to even attempt to answer that question in our real world, I can answer it for myself in the world of Stellaris. There I think living beings have a soul, one that is immaterial, transcendental, and also able to transcend the physical realm and interact with other dimensions. And that soul can get separated from the body and isn't necessarily bound to it. It's not the body that is the person, but the divine soul.
So here is the thing, I would personally dare to answer that question, because to me it seem identical to cloning someone. I you are 'disassemble', your body clearly cease to exist for a moment, and what happen when your body cease to exist ? You die, end of the line. So the new body is a new YOU, it have its own soul if it have one, like a perfect clone if you like. It is functionally identical to you, but it is not the same being.
Now you could argue that if the soul is something that can exist separately to the body, then it can in this very specific case be transferred in the new body. It can be the case in stellaris then, if indeed spiritualist are right, and soul can be seen as a shroud presence, then soul could be, in some specific case, be transferred between two body, hence you would still be the same YOU after teleportation, because only your body ceased to exist, but your soul did not, it just very shortly existed outside a physical form for a moment if all what I am saying make sense.
Then I would like to offer the opposite perspective. Imagine I change the matter that make you without ever destroying you. I would use an unknow scifi technic to swap every atoms of your body by exactly the same isotope, one by one. Let say I can do this without even damage the molecular connections, so you would not even feel it, because your nerve would not send you any signal that something is going on because there is nothing to see here. Also let say I can do this fast enough so after 24 hours of exposition to this very efficient technic I swapped every atoms of your body. Now tell me, are you still the same you ? I would say a big yes ! And you would have not even feel it ! I may have changed all of the matter that make you, but in the process you never ceased to be you.
But if I have dissemble you entirely, stored how everything was just before, waited 24 hours, then used the same matter to reassemble you, like some form of teleportation does, would you still be you ? I think no, because it should be another YOU, like a clone does, since you have obviously died. So to me it is clear than in both case the soul is an instance that cannot be duplicate by definition. If you are a body, the instance disappear when you die, and if you are brought back from the dead, another one take its place. But if you have a body, then you may still exist after death, like the main character does in slay the princess, because your body is not all of you, only a part of it, so you can be transported into a new body then.
We could also speak of the Mauler twins in Invincible here, they are a good example of what I am saying. They know the soul is not transferred, that the clone is a different being, so they do everything to not know who the original is, because knowing it would cause an existential crisis to the clone that NEVER end well.
I am here just brining the possibility which answer the questions you said. But once again, the definitive answer depend of the nature of soul. So with your previous post and this one, I feel like we are both more or less on the same page of what the definition of soul is, so we can get back to the heart of the topic.
>> What is the nature of soul in stellaris ? Can a machine have one ?
In stellaris as we both said several times, it is ambiguous what is the nature of soul. You say, from what I understand, that every non psionic animated machine is necessarily soulless. As I said in my last conclusion I would not disagree nor agree with that point of view, because I cant decide what is the nature of soul in stellaris for me. But your raised good points that make me want to get more specific in this fully dedicated paragraph.
To me both of those view have their pro and con, this is a game with a fictive world with a lot of concept (sometimes not very compatible) going on. So I admit I prefer not answering clearly to this question, but I really like to raise the different possibilities and their implications.
First, let say you are right, and spiritualist are also right then, all stellaris machine are soulless with the exception of the shroud infused ones. It is interesting because it say that machine may not really 'be', but they can acquire soul thanks to the shroud and entity like the animator of clay. Cetana alternate ending is a good hint toward that. However what I deeply dislike here is that it make a lot of empire fully soulless. It, in a way, ruin fully the hype over synthetic ascension for me, although you could argue their technic of copy does not transfer the soul, if the newborn synth have a soul, then it is okay for me. Because I see it as no longer playing the previous species who indeed sadly died, but from their death a new life form was born, and this life form is the one I am now playing with. However if all synth are indeed soulless, and all of the social interactions they have is just meaningless emulation of society, then what is the point ? I just play a big mockery of an empire then ? I hope you see what I mean.
Now let say soul does indeed exist in stellaris but is not what spiritualist think it is. The soul can exist without shroud presence. It can mean some machine are indeed alive. Not all of course, robot and droid, for example, are just dummy which are, at best, capable of emulating poorly the sapient life. But most advanced AI seem to be able to do, on a behavior level at least, everything an organic can do. Yes I get the point that a very advanced emulation could give you, in theory, the perfect illusion of life. But honestly, if you build an artificial brain using advanced electrical component, and make it so this brain can do everything a natural brain can do, does it really matter if the brain is artificial or natural anymore ? As I said, when you try to mimic something to perfection, at which point you are no longer faking it and really does it ? If you try to fake life to a degree you give every possible quality and defect of a sapient organic to a machine, is there not a point at which it is no longer a machine and it is now a sentient, sapient and living being ? If no, then it should never perfectly imitate life, you should always have a way to see it is fake, no matter how realistic the emulation is, without even needing psionic power, because if you can do everything a soulfull being can at perfection, without needing a soul, what is the point of having a soul in the first place ?
>> Conclusion on the run (pun intended)
I would like to take the example of Blade Runner to finish. At the end of that amazing movie, the chief of the renegade replicant, Roy, save the life of the protagonist. During all the movie he is described as a ruthless killing machine, a renegade bot that will do everything in his power to prevent his programmed death. And indeed, at the end, when he is confronted a last time to his mortality, he does try to kill the protagonist at first, but at the last minute, when he have only a few dozen of second on the clock before his programmation kills him, he saves the protagonist life. There was no reason for him to do that, not a rationale one at least, he did it because he wanted to. Yes, I know blade runner's replicant are very organic, but the used material does not matter here, because the point of the movie is that replicant were made by scientists and engineers that fully understand how they work. Hell, they knew so much how they work than they knew they could rebel, hence why they programmed them to die in the first place. But because they gave to replicant the ability to do pretty much everything a human can do, the movie ask us if, at such point of imitation, is it really an imitation anymore ? The fact they are organic blend even more the barrier between what is imitation and what is not.
At the very end, when Roy share with the protagonist all his memories, and the regret of dying, losing all of this experience "like tears in the rain", does he really appear as soulless to you ? You could answer me it is once again, just according to his programmation, but, again, there is no point here to program the replicants that way. There is no way Roy just acted according to his programmation here, especially when this action is in full contradiction with previous ones. Although he does lose his physical potency before dying, and get mad from not being able to avoid his fate, he show no sign of reduced cognition, so his change of behavior must come from him realizing stuff at the verge of death and not from dysfunctional behavior.
So I think the same for some synthetic in stellaris, and perhaps machine intelligence since we can play them too. There are in this game clears exemples of soulless robot, but some synth and AI clearly show so much sing to exist beyond their programmation I find it difficult to categorize them as soulless because they lack a shroud presence. That feel... dismissive on all living things they do. I mean at this point I could also say some living being and even people are soulless too because I have no way of proving they really feel and are not just faking emotion too.
Thank you for your reply and for having read this too if you did. I too enjoy this discussion a lot. It is not every day you can have a metaphysical discussion about nature of soul and life on a game where you end up mass genocide 50% of the sentients anyway !
Although I must say my future answers if there is will be much shorter, *sigh* those posts are so long to write and I can't pass every evening on that even if I would like too. However I will still read fully answers if more are write.
