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kilobug comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96 - Less Wrong
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Death, with a capital D, the one represented by Dementors, the one defeated by True Patronus means "destruction of a consciousness" in my understanding. It's why animals are unaffected by Dementors, why the Patronus charms are animals, ... so ending Death with a capital D would make prevent the destruction of a consciousness, but wouldn't prevent death (with a small d) of bacteria, plants, and most animals.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the thrust of your argument, but surely this wouldn't work in a reductionist universe like the one Harry believes he's living in, since there consciousness isn't a thing so much as a shorthand for certain electrical events in the brain? In other words, while humans differ from animals in having self-awareness, it is not the case that there is a thing called "consciousness" that humans have and animals don't. (cf. Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness)
Just because something is defined on a higher layer of abstraction doesn't mean that there is "no such thing", any more than there is "no such thing as an apple" just because physics doesn't draw object boundaries. Humans draw object boundaries, and in the HPVerse, magic listens to humans. I think the strongest thing you can say is "There is no such thing in reductionist physics as a consciousness", which is not the same as "consciousness doesn't exist" even in our universe, and doubly so in Harry's where magic gives concepts direct relevance.
I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying "reductionism prevents consciousness from existing". I'm saying that:
If consciousness in the Potterverse is the same sort of thing as consciousness in our universe (i.e. a way of describing electrical signals in the brain, and not a magical ineffable substance like a soul)
and
the differences between humans and animals in the Potterverse are same or similar to those in our universe
then
it is impossible for humans in the Potterverse to have consciousness while animals lack it
and
it is impossible to end death for humans but not animals using consciousness as the criterion for distinguishing between the two.
My original reference to reductionism was just to eliminate the possibility of Potterverse consciousness being a magical ineffable substance (in which case this argument would not apply).
I think this comes down to a sloppy definition of consciousness, where what parent possibly meant was self awareness plus symbolic comprehension of death.
Which is clearly pertinent due to how Patronus works. Good catch.
The way I see Harry defeating death is more in the shape of casting a spell similar to Merlin's Interdict, a global enchantment, that saves the data that makes someone this person whenever a consciousness is terminated, and respawn it in a functional body. Such kind of global spell definitely can rely on high-level concepts such as "consciousness" or "self-awareness", exactly like the Interdict of Merlin relies on similar high-level concepts.
And where to draw the line for animals an implementation details, that is relevant in what Harry "should" do, but not in the core idea.
It also seems that magic already contains similar distinction in the AK spell, which doesn't seem to affect animals in MOR, and in the way only humans can create ghosts.
Maybe someone (the Peverell brothers) already did something like this, just incompletely. The data is saved... but not respawned; just collected somewhere. This may be what is referred to as "souls".
Of course, humans being what they are, even if some wizards notice the souls, they don't start thinking about reincarnating them.
I suspect that something like this already exists, and is involved in ghosts, portraits, and the Ressurrection Stone, but does not recreate consciousness.
Quirrell explicitly states in this first class that it will kill anything with a brain.
What gave you the impression that AK didn't affect animals?
Doesn't QM go on for a while about how it allows a wizard to kill any threat other than a dementor?
As said in a later comment, Moody's explanation that AK directly strikes at souls.
Don't remember it. Could you give a source?
From chapter 86 :
For Moody to believe that, it means either "animals have a soul" is a frequent belief among wizards, but then we would have had hints of it earlier, or it doesn't kill animals. That's how I interpreted it at least.
The killing curse works on animals in HPMOR. In Chapter 16, Quirrel tells the class that "The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable, and works every single time on anything with a brain."
The view that "animals have souls" isn't particularly esoteric -- Aristotle asserted this, as did Thomas Aquinas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Aristotle). So I don't think we should have expected it to be explicitly mentioned.
Both Aristotle and Thomas think of animal souls (and plant souls!) as qualitatively inferior to human souls, but they do claim they exist.
Now I have the image of someone wearing "armor" made of live animals of some sort in order to absorb Killing Curses.
There's a new Dark Wizard in town, boys and girls... and he's COVERED IN BEES!
You jest, but it seems -- depending on whether one believes that AK works on animals or not -- that you have just come up with a way to block the unblockable curse. That's some serious lateral thinking, right there.
Creating arbitrary animals that are barely alive, don't need food, water, air, or movement, and made of easily workable material which is also good as armor seems like a good place to start, and also within the bounds of magic. This isn't as absurd as it seems. Essentially living armor plates. You'd want them to be thin so you could have multiple layers, and to fall off when they die, and various similar things. Or maybe on a different scale, like scale or lamellar armor.
Oogely Boogely? Summoning a desk and transfiguring it into a pig? Petrifying numerous terminally ill people, transfiguring them into something small and stable (aka the ringmione hypothesis), and using a finite to turn them into a shield? Filling a mokeskin pouch with chilled snakes? (Imagines Voldemort constantly casting AK at Harry, who constantly shouts snake and pulls something out of his pouch). Or maybe even Serpensortia, if the conjured snake counts for purposes of AK (it can be finited, after all). Or one could just summon a cloud of spiders ("The Amazing Spider-Mage! Not to be confused with Spider-Muggle!)
In canon, Faux-Moody demonstrated AK on a spider. Are spiders still vulnerable to AK in MoR?
Oh god.
What if you used nanotech to make your skin be made out of patches with very small brains...
The Killing Curse only works if you want the other person to die, so it wouldn't affect the bees.
If wizards believed animals had souls :
They would have had a different reaction in chapter 48 when Harry became a vegetarian after learning about parselmouth.
It would have been hinted in a way or another in the Prentending to be Wise arc, or otherwise in all the debate between Harry and other wizards about if soul exists.
In chapter 47 Draco wouldn't have be saying so seriously that muggles don't have souls.
That's not very strong evidence, I admit. But taken those 3 pieces of evidence, combined with the lack of any evidence pointing in the wide belief that animals have souls, it seems reasonable to assume the common belief among wizards is that animals don't have souls.
So it seems Quirrel and Moody are contradicting each other on how the Killing Curse actually works.
More likely still is that people really don't think on the matter much and so don't have well formed or necessarily consistent views of souls.
I believe that animals have brains, different from human brains mostly only in intelligence. and am not a vegetarian. Wizards probably think of muggles as having souls, and have been known in cannon to hunt them for sport. Slave masters definitely though of their slaves as having souls.
Why do you think this?
Touche. Draco is still an 11 year old put on the spot, so this is weak evidence.
Sure, but you can understand vegetarian, and a fair deal of humans are vegetarian. There isn't the slightest evidence of any wizard being vegetarian. If wizards actually believed animals had souls, not just brain, there would be more, not less, vegetarian wizards than vegetarian muggles.
Only a few wizards hunt muggle for the fun, the blood purist who actually believe that muggle don't have souls.
That's not really obvious. The Valladolid controversy is a clear example of the issue being actually disputed. And then again, the Hermiones opposed slavery. The Hermiones in HPMOR aren't vegetarian.
Hmm.. looks like the evidence I cited wasn't as strong as I thought.
What I mostly mean to suggest is that having a soul does not necessarily make a thing morally significant.
What if they believed everything had (some kind of) a soul, including (but not necessarily limited) to plants? The reactions would be interpreted differently. After all, magic beliefs and animistic beliefs were often associated in our history, and wizards actually have things like that crazy violent willow and the sorting hat. They also have examples of magical creatures, including for example centaurs who both have human-like sentience and are magic users (or at least capable of prophecy).
Perhaps Draco has just misspoken, or spoken without thinking. After all, racist beliefs are traditionally not very internall consistent. Maybe the actual claim is only wizard souls go to heaven, or something like that.
Demisouls? Alternatively, AK is only seeking and wall-penetrating against sapients but still instant death against animals (and therefore still useful since animals might be immune to stunning spells and durable enough to withstand physics spells.)
The animal and vegetative souls can die, and lack various functional properties. There's a reason some of us would prefer to abandon the word.