Spooky action at a distance

[Husar]

Well, if a soul is just some electromagnetic relations stuff, then, am I killing my computer every evening?
Or the other way around, why is killing bad when all you do is shut down a physical process?

[English assassin]

Well, if a soul is just some electromagnetic relations stuff, then, am I killing my computer every evening?

Only if you think that a bag of coal, some water, and bit of sulphur etc is the same as a human being. How things are organised matters as much/more than what they are made of.

Or the other way around, why is killing bad when all you do is shut down a physical process?

This is the "nothing but" logical fallacy coupled with a dodgy inference. If a soul/consciousness arises out of physical processes it does not follow that it is "nothing but" a physical process. And just because it is OK to shut down some physical processes it does not follow that it is OK to shut them all down.

Living things seem to prefer to continue to exist, and mostly to try to avoid being killed. It seems reasonable to respect that preference unless there is adequate reason not to (ie dinner. Not that that isn a reason to kill people of course.)

[macsen rufus]

Well, that's a toughy, isn't it?

My first response is to go all Voltaire on you and demand you define your terms! WHAT is a soul?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I do realise I'm asking you to do what a few millenia of theologians have still not convincingly managed to do

The glib response is that I no more believe a teleport machine will steal your soul than a camera will ... but it really does all come down to the question of what a soul is, and how it gets there. I think we already see a few different perspectives in this thread.

I would go a step simpler than Louis even, and refer the question to cloning and identical twins, rather than nanotech. At what point is a human being "ensouled" in the normal run of things? Is it an innate part of human nature, a "spark of the divine" and hence irreducible and indivisible? Or is it an emergent property deriving from consciousness? I know some will argue that a human is ensouled at the point of conception - which makes you wonder if twins have only half a soul.

Or maybe souls are just a fiction, thereby bypassing the entire controversy?

[drone]

If the "soul" is dependent on electromagnetics, I would assume Heisenberg's principle will prevent successful transportation. Research dollars would be better spent on Romulan Ale.

[KafirChobee]

If the "soul" is dependent on electromagnetics, I would assume Heisenberg's principle will prevent successful transportation. Research dollars would be better spent on Romulan Ale.

Agree.

Defining what a soul is, is the same as defining what is, is.