How would someone know whether one has a soul or not? Is there any sort of introspection that can reveal the presence of a soul or any of its properties?
There is no soul. Just a bunch of systems nudging each other to action. What people call soul is literally the same as the concept of personality. In essence, the way all systems in your body have been calibrated to exist.
I believe that the moment an artificial inteligence is going to "receive" a soul, is the moment it is going to be made to sustain itself. Either as a larger package (some bots working to keep an AI farm running) or as an individual (a bot which is tasked with not only fulfilling human desires, but also sustaining itself)
It's an interesting hypothesis. I think there's something elegant about "soul" or even consciousness being an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. But I struggle with really squaring that with my own first-person sensation of experiencing existence (which I assume you and everyone else has but I can never actually know for sure).
I swear I remember once reading about a culture where babies don't have souls until they're named. Maybe something about gaining their own distinct identity?
nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), is a word in the Hebrew bible that the KJV (English) renders as "soul" hundreds of times, and it also translates the very same word as "life," "person," "creature," "self"
So, the question can be asked another way - do you 'have' life, e.g. are you alive? If yes, then you are (or 'have') a soul.
The mistake many of us will make, not due to our own fault but rather due to inability to discern, is that this is somehow not apparent to most if not all people with a sane mind.
I believe that the moment an artificial inteligence is going to "receive" a soul, is the moment it is going to be made to sustain itself. Either as a larger package (some bots working to keep an AI farm running) or as an individual (a bot which is tasked with not only fulfilling human desires, but also sustaining itself)