spoiler alert., question, the soul of a pica

so now that there are two pica's with Nimue's essence so to speak where is her soul now? I don't see how it can be in both so is it in either? I am not to happy about this development. as a person of faith myself I believed as the arch bishop that merlin had inherited her soul when Nimue awoke in her cave. now if there can be two of them I can't see how that can be. and so far Merlin has not questioned it either and I don't know why not.

so anybody else out there wondering how Mr. Weber is going to explain this?

mustangman wrote:so now that there are two pica's with Nimue's essence so to speak where is her soul now? I don't see how it can be in both so is it in either? I am not to happy about this development. as a person of faith myself I believed as the arch bishop that merlin had inherited her sould when Nimue awoke in her cave. now if there can be two of them I can't see how that can be. and so far Merlin has not questioned it either and I don't know why not.

so anybody else out there wondering how Mr. Weber is going to explain this?

I don't really see an issue here. Just what is it that constitutes a soul anyhow? I am not going to attempt an answer here beyond noting that the question has been debated since the dawn of time. There is no unified answer even within Christianity. For me, at least, the important thing is that Nimue is developing as her own person distinct from Merlin. Are there now two souls, each devolving from the memories/personality uploaded from the original Nimue Alban? Perhaps. For me it doesn't really matter.

Don

It seemed to matter to Merlin quite a bit in the first books. and it is a pretty important question to a lot of the characters in the books. so it is an important question to me. and while there may be differences in opinion out there about what is a soul I definitely have my own beliefs so I am wondering how it will be addressed in the books. I believe it is something that will have to be addressed by Mr. Weber and I am curious how he will handle it. your answer may be the way he goes with it. but regardless, like many seemingly small points in a story some readers find questions like this important, some find them of no importance. but I believe since a large part of the story is about religion, God, and ones relationship to God, I don't think it is a question Mr. Weber will leave unanswered.

mustangman wrote:so now that there are two pica's with Nimue's essence so to speak where is her soul now? I don't see how it can be in both so is it in either? I am not to happy about this development. as a person of faith myself I believed as the arch bishop that merlin had inherited her soul when Nimue awoke in her cave. now if there can be two of them I can't see how that can be. and so far Merlin has not questioned it either and I don't know why not.

so anybody else out there wondering how Mr. Weber is going to explain this?

O.K., first up - I'm an atheist, so don't be surprised if I say something that offends you. (SORRY!)

Next, I would say that PICA's normally don't have souls. Otherwise, think about the 10 day limit on PICA's - wouldn't that mean every time a Federation PICA was used, it was "murdered" at the end of the 10 day period?

Having said that, I would expect that MWW will rule that Merlin/Nimue do have a soul, based on two things: 1) his own religious beliefs; and 2) his desire to keep his fans happy...

Very likely the Federation already dealt with this problem as they routinely duplicated researchers virtually we are told. That the virtual selves were never bodily instantiated matters little as far as I can see. The multiple selves operated independently.

I suspect they would have come to a position that souls split and recombined as experiences and in particular the decisions made were split and recombined. Good and evil would split and recombine. An evil self is one you would not recombine with. Let that "soul" go its own way or be deleted or allow it to delete itself which also apparently happened.

This is probably at the base of Nimue #1's decision NOT to combine her "soul" into Nimue #2's. Some of their banter pretty much confirms this.

MWadwell wrote:

mustangman wrote:so now that there are two pica's with Nimue's essence so to speak where is her soul now? I don't see how it can be in both so is it in either? I am not to happy about this development. as a person of faith myself I believed as the arch bishop that merlin had inherited her soul when Nimue awoke in her cave. now if there can be two of them I can't see how that can be. and so far Merlin has not questioned it either and I don't know why not.

so anybody else out there wondering how Mr. Weber is going to explain this?

O.K., first up - I'm an atheist, so don't be surprised if I say something that offends you. (SORRY!)

Next, I would say that PICA's normally don't have souls. Otherwise, think about the 10 day limit on PICA's - wouldn't that mean every time a Federation PICA was used, it was "murdered" at the end of the 10 day period?

Having said that, I would expect that MWW will rule that Merlin/Nimue do have a soul, based on two things: 1) his own religious beliefs; and 2) his desire to keep his fans happy...

Actually since the flesh and blood Naume [? sp] is dead, I liked Stainner's [? sp.]argument that they both have the soul of that young woman. Both are Christians since the flesh and blood person was a Christian their personalities are also Christin.

This leads to the question do they share a soul or does each have their own now.

Poker

The soul question is always a gray area. What is a soul?



To be honest though, I do not view PICAs as having a soul. Neither do I view OWL as having a soul. They are a machine, an Artificial Intelligence. Granted, Merlin and Nimue are very very very good AIs, because they are carbon copies of a human. (who we will assume does have a soul) But in the end they are still AI's. The litmus test is you can make copies.

Hypothetically if they had the resources, to make 200 PICAS we could be mass producing Nimues, now are these AIs the actual possessor of Nimue the person who died a thousand years ago soul? No, they aren't, Nimue the original is in whatever afterlife there is. Merlin and this new Nimue are machines that have Nimue (the original)
memories.

The same thing applies to Nahrmahn. Nahrmahn is dead, we have an electronic entity with his memories, and emotions. They could have made a dozen copies of Nahrmahn when he was still alive, would that have made them HIM. No.


Now here is poking a hole in my own logic, if they took a copy of Nimue's memories and deposited them in a mass produced cloned body, entirely biological, do the clones have a soul? They would be able to procreate so... Whats the difference?

The answer is simple. If a being is a moral agent, then it has a soul. By definition a moral agent can either accept or reject God's plan. I believe that ability can only be granted by God through his gift of a soul. So it follows that to exercise the ability to make moral choices is to display the influence of a soul on an intelligence.

That's where I was going with the notion of "decisions made". Nimue #2 does not have the same stains on her soul, for good or ill, as Nimue #1.

If there is such a thing as a soul, and I'm pretty agnostic on that point, it has nothing whatever to do with the biological body which contains it for a while. Else every notion about outlasting the biological host is wrong.

PeterZ wrote:The answer is simple. If a being is a moral agent, then it has a soul. By definition a moral agent can either accept or reject God's plan. I believe that ability can only be granted by God through his gift of a soul. So it follows that to exercise the ability to make moral choices is to display the influence of a soul on an intelligence.

Direwolf18 wrote:The soul question is always a gray area. What is a soul?



To be honest though, I do not view PICAs as having a soul. Neither do I view OWL as having a soul. They are a machine, an Artificial Intelligence. Granted, Merlin and Nimue are very very very good AIs, because they are carbon copies of a human. (who we will assume does have a soul) But in the end they are still AI's. The litmus test is you can make copies.

Hypothetically if they had the resources, to make 200 PICAS we could be mass producing Nimues, now are these AIs the actual possessor of Nimue the person who died a thousand years ago soul? No, they aren't, Nimue the original is in whatever afterlife there is. Merlin and this new Nimue are machines that have Nimue (the original)
memories.

The same thing applies to Nahrmahn. Nahrmahn is dead, we have an electronic entity with his memories, and emotions. They could have made a dozen copies of Nahrmahn when he was still alive, would that have made them HIM. No.


Now here is poking a hole in my own logic, if they took a copy of Nimue's memories and deposited them in a mass produced cloned body, entirely biological, do the clones have a soul? They would be able to procreate so... Whats the difference?

Oh, wow! Good going you all, you are tracking onto the early Christian Orthodoxy and Heresy tree very nicely. Hmmm, What constitutes the nature of a soul was/is one of the biggies along with Jesus' divinity and its effect and presence in a human body (PICA?) and works its way into Trinitarianism where the Godhead is 3 in 1! Next is counting the number of Angels that can dance on the head of a pin and for Safehold, I am sure that we will quickly get to that timeless discussion of the afterlife destination of Langehorn believers in the absence of contrarian knowledge.

Should we call this Nimue's Chest or is Pandora still around? FYI: I think the Drake-Flint Belisarius Opus is excellent as a novice introduction into the world of 5th Century Christianity and its decided troubles. Highly recommended!