Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="PsyzhranV2" data-source="post: 7788123" data-attributes="member: 7015332">Do you believe robots, or AI in general, have souls? Because the common belief (among those that believe in souls anyhow) is that they don't. Whether they even have self-awareness is in doubt. Even the most advanced artificial intelligence that we might ever build, one that is fully autonomous and with full moral agency, might only be a P-zombie in the end.Whether Warforged have souls is a point of contention in-universe (notably, the nation of Thrane refuses to recognize them as persons due to the Church of the Silver Flame doctrine that Warforged are soulless husks), but most of the evidence suggests that they do. Though they were built, not born, they're spiritually no different from a Human or a Dwarf or an Elf. They are alive, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails.I think that's the point that annoys people when you call Warforged robots, moreso than pedantic arguments over nomenclature. It heavily implies that they're equipment, not people, especially in a setting and genre that lacks the usual sci-fi tropes about AI. In a harder setting where the existence of a soul is not a given, then there wouldn't be as much contention over whether or not to call sapient constructs "robots", but in a setting such as Eberron where souls are known to exist, which has great ramificafions on interactions with magic and existence after death, the term "robot" becomes much more derogatory.</blockquote>

Verification