Android consciousness and morality dilemma.

Android consciousness and morality dilemma.

I was watching a re-run of star trek next generation, and the episode was where the question was raised in court concerning Data’s consciousness, if it couldn’t be established then he’d be taken apart [even though he probably couldn’t be put together again] and many more versions of him made.

Ethical point also concerns the use of such an army of androids to perform all the grunt work that humans don’t like to do, essentially the androids would be something akin to slaves.

Note that Data has a ‘positronic’ neural network, I’d say that either artificially constructed biological neural networks , or non biological ones would confer the same consciousness as animals and humans in degrees.

Weather that’s true or not; what happens if we asked Data to prove he was conscious or had a soul and he came back with an answer which proved he did! This then shows that he shouldn’t be treated as a slave, he should have all the rights which humans confer upon themselves.

What happens if he then turns and asks the very same of us? We wont be able to answer that question in any other way than; we know we are conscious’ or something vague like that, yet the androids wont know if that’s true, as we wont be able to prove it. Would they then ~ in ethical terms, be able to make us do all the grunt work, and make us into slaves?

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Started watching Battlestar Galactica earlier this month, or maybe last month. I always liked how the issue of artificial intelligence was appraoched in Star Trek, in Battlestar it’s a more central theme.

I watched the re-run of galactica too, I didn’t like it originally but I liked caprica and that got me into it.

I think there’s a bit of a problem with downloadable ‘consciousness’, surely only the data can be down/up-loaded. So it would be a load of surrogate consciousnesses being loaded up with new information sets, for me that proposes all manner of problems.

are we defined by the info inputted from the senses? Perhaps, but the experiencer is subjective to information sets, it’s a bit like if we were placed in an entirely different world. that wouldn’t change the experiencer, but it would change what it receives.

That’s like the movie, The Sixth Day. In it the antagonists, after being killed, were cloned then downloaded with the memories of the original. And for all practical purposes, the person would have seemed to be resurrected.

But I’m not so sure about that. It seems to me, as perceiving things, or that which emerges out of nothing to become something, we are a particular point in space in time. And it would seem to me that the process described above would be a disruption of that. Therefore, if the same process were to be used on you, it wouldn’t be a resurrection since your particular perceiving thing, the one reading this post right now, would be disrupted. All there would be is another you walking around the world while you, for all practical purposes, would be dead.

Now the interesting thing about is that when I brought this up to Vol, he of course claimed that it would still be you. This is because, as a materialist, he is committed to that answer. He has to stick to the notion that the same physical constitution constitutes you. Otherwise, he would have to admit that there is something more to the individual than their physical make-up.

The question is that if you change the scenario and say that you are cloned, and the clone is given your memories up to the present, while you are still alive, then how does it work? You can’t say it is you because it occupies a different position in space and time. You can’t say it is just you taking up your life again.

We experience this all the time when dreaming, quet, or when we’re drunk. The filters through which we’re projecting through have changed and so does our response to things; but we’re still the same point in space in time, the same perceiving thing.

^^ indeed, esp when on LSD when one can easily think they are a different person or animal even. same as hypnosis i’d expect.

I think the experiencer aspect of consciousness [you] is receiving new informations in its minds eye all the time, even memories ~ when you remember them your neurons are re-presenting the same data, but its always in the present. In that sense new informations would be like being transported to a different world or universe even, you would stil be you but with new information that’s all.

However, assumedly the info in your memory has been changed in these scenario’s, so you would be using artificial comparatives to determine what those new informations are, as compared to what you already know. The frame of reference would be of an alt-personality.
The experiencer remains the same though.

that’s the same as if you walked into a machine and came out the other side as say a younger version of you, then something goes wrong and the old you pops out the former side of the machine and says; hello me! Fact is that old you is the original is you, the copy is someone else who thinks he is you. He wouldn’t know it but you would, and your knowledge is factual, his is artificial.

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Well, with all due respect, “artificial” is a little judgmental. The main point is that it wouldn’t be you. At the same time, I may be reading something into it that you didn’t mean. You may have meant “artificial” as compared to the “real” you.

I may have gotten off track here. Perhaps I need to take some time out and study the analytic a little more.

You see how much mere semantics can mess people up here?

I take your point, but yes I meant it in the latter sense, admittedly he could be as ‘real’ as you are, but remains as not you.
I don’t think brains and consciousnesses can be manipulated to the extent of replacing all informations, it would most likely cause all manner of psychological problems, neuronal damage, duel consciousness in the one brain and even death [where one consciousness is replaced by another and so leaves].

Yes indeed, the semantics play with our ideas of things, its all boxes and contents being moved around to me. :slight_smile:

As Lacan pointed out

(and I think this especially true here):

language is like an attorney representing the individual to the language (or attorney) of the other.

We’re always individuals going through the world collecting certain agreements about what certain words mean. And quite often, when we’re dealing with others that have collected different agreements, there tends to be confusion.

Like Voltaire said: if you want to talk to me, define your terms.

Well yes, but as yet I havent seen any confusion, when we play the scenarios through the truth [sorry, its a swearword I know] becomes self evident.

There is one, anything that changes the ones becomes two, one of the two are the one and the other is the impostor.

We wouldn’t get an army of Data’s, each would change just as we do to our situations etc, clones would become distinct in personality, the mind is plastic or it is not a mind.

“truth” isn’t so much a swearword as a useless one given how many people have bandied it about, sometimes to dangerous effect, without actually having it.

It ends up being an ambition more than anything.

When Gary Kasparov beat Deep Blue in 1996, did he gloat about it? If not, could he have?
When Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in 1997, did it gloat about it? If, not, could it have?

Is gloating ever the right thing to do in a chess match? How would either man or machine or machine-man determine this?

When taken to absolute degrees, sure, but if one can simply distinguish one thing from another, then we have to do that, no?

If deep blue gloated about it, then it would be nothing more than a simulation of that. When computers gain plasticity then there may be something there to gloat about.
More than anything to me this shows the limits of logical and mechanistic intellect, we have yet to show how being human is more than that, yet it is. Perhaps art and poetry is a better definition than IQ, in that it shows the more fluid nature of human plasticity, we are not a machine, we are something that moves between one machine and another without being defined by either!

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I’ve lately committed to studying Rorty and the pragmatic take on Truth for the next couple of weeks, so I could go quite a ways on the issue. But I don’t want to hijack your string and misdirect it, so I’ll only make a couple of points on this and let it get back to the original subject.

First of all, I, in my pragmatic zeal, may have been a little harsh, and even sanctimonious, using the term “useless” in that it would have been better to say “useless for my purposes”. It may have even veered into hypocrisy given that I had just chastised someone else for using similar terminology concerning a point I had made.

It just seems to me that the notion of Truth can become like a holy grail that can incite the imagination and ambition to such an extent that the pursuer can become so fixed on the goal that they fail to recognize the value of process. It can become more about the goal and whatever the ambitious ego might demand of it: fame, adoration, power, etc… And this, along with the inherent frustration of finding “the Truth”, can lead to shortcuts in which the individual deludes their self into believing they have it and perpetuate the delusion by further convincing themselves that the only reason others aren’t buying it is that they’re just stubborn or dumb. But more importantly, they tend to, in their fixation, neglect the truly productive activity of justification and process. And given their focus on the end, the rewards, and on their supposed end product, they will tend to engage in activities that can serve as obstacles to those who are sincerely focused on process and justification.

It’s a little like the title of Rorty’s book of interviews, Take care of Freedom, and Freedom will Take Care of the Truth. I’ve ordered the book and have yet to read it; but given what I do know about Rorty, I’m assuming that it is about focusing on the democratic and pluralistic aspect of discourse, of allowing everyone to have their ideas (as hard as that is to do sometimes), of using whatever tools may be at our disposal (whether it be logic, reason, the scientific method, seriousness or playfulness, or, in the case of me and Ambig, the nihilistic perspective -or just plain observation) without using them as weapons to beat the other down, and let it all come out in the wash, to simply allow the natural selection of ideas to take care of the issue of what idea is superior. Unfortunately, for reasons described above, notions of “the Truth” can often be a little less than democratic and pluralistic. The Truth, inherently, cannot simply live and let live.

Anyway, back to the bots. I unfortunately have to sign on to the KTS chatroom so that Satyrs lapdogs don’t come on here and accuse me of chickening out. I wonder if I should bring Mary Jane with me. Just one tap to unleash the creative forces.

And while I’m waiting on Satyr: Pragmatism is nothing if not democratic and pluralistic. We all gotta find our flow. Therefore, if one chooses to seek out the truth, I say more power to them. It takes all kinds and it’s all fuel for the fire. But my limit gets reached when they come back trying to cram it down my throat.

Anyway, back to the bots.

PS: love ya, man!

I agree, but truth for me is in the particular, this brick is a brick kinda thing. There is no attempt at goal oriented truth as an ideal position, it seems clear to me that ‘truth’ is in an instance or particular of a thing, and equally that everything changes and that truth is then false.

Perhaps another thread as you say.

I like the sound of that.

Truth for me has many eyes looking in different directions, there may be an overall idea of the vision but none of the eyes can see it. In other words, we can look at things from many perspectives, but none of them nor all of them tell us what’s really out there ~ if they did it would become specific, and hence just another eye/perspective.

Love you too man :smiley:

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Here, once again, is a kind of define-your-terms type situation. I agree with what you’re saying. But I tend to make a distinction between facts and truth. I’ll go more into this when I get back from “the library”.

And that “love ya, man!” is just a facetious sign off when I’m about to leave the board and am feeling good about what has happened here. I think it has something to do with what I call “writer’s krank”. However, just as preemptive advice, should I ever say it and not leave the board, or repeat it once or several times, just tell me, “forget it d63, you’re not getting my last Bud Lite.” That should get rid of me or, at least, get me to shut up. That said, thanks for returning the sentiment.

First I’ll make a few points about our digression; then I will attempt to bring it back to the point you started with.

Here, once again, is a kind of define-your-terms type situation. I agree with what you’re saying. But I tend to make a distinction between facts and truth. I’ll go more into this when I get back from “the library”.
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The reason I do this is because I have divided it into three tools of reasoning: facts, data, and truths. Facts are those, as you call them, particulars that don’t offer their selves up to interpretation. 1+1=2, I think, establishes the bar of fact status. Your “a brick is a brick” example comes close as well. Data is an accumulation of facts that, because it is as interesting for what it fails to include as what it does, must offer itself up for interpretation. For example: during the Truman/Dewey campaign for president, they took a poll on the telephone that showed Dewey winning by a landslide. We, of course, know that Truman won. And what they found out after was that the reason the prediction was inaccurate was because they took it over the phone. At that time, only the well to do, which tended to vote republican, had phones. Therefore, it could not account for the number of poorer, working class Americans that voted Truman in. Furthermore, this is why you have to hesitate before being overly intimidated by hired guns who will attempt to undermine you by engaging you in a data war. As far as truths, I tend to submit to Rorty’s description as being an intellectual construct that seems sufficiently justified. Evolution is a good example of this in that the bulk of facts and data, we have for it, compels us to accept it as a truth. However, as I have often pointed out, there is no way of knowing there isn’t some being with horns and cloven hooves planting all this evidence to throw us off track. It doesn’t seem likely. But we can’t totally dismiss it. But I think this notion of truth doesn’t depart that far from what you are saying.

Also, you can see a kind of method and process in it that it appears to work from facts to data to truths. That said, allow me to take this back to the bots:

First of all, Rorty covers a similar issue as the OP in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , chapter 2, Persons without Minds, in which he describes an alien race, the antipodeans, that describe their experiences in neurological terms. The most prominent one was pain which they described as being a stimulation of their C-fibers. The question brought up, given the language they used to describe their sensations and the human-like response they gave when experiencing their C-fibers being stimulated, was one of whether they were actually experiencing the “raw feel” of pain or something else –that is if they were feeling anything at all. The point was, as I take it, the complexity of the relationship between consciousness and the experiences that constitute it. Furthermore, I think it kind of amplifies the confusion and misdirection that can arise due to the language we use to describe consciousness.

The issue also comes up in an episode of Philosophy Talk when they are talking about a scene the movie Terminator 2 in which the android, Arnold, is pulling fragments of shrapnel out of his arm. The kid asks if he feels pain. The android responds that he receives data that registers as pain or a physical violation of his physical being.

But in both cases, the question of whether the subject is experiencing pain as a “raw feel”, as we do, is never actually answered.

This will certainly be a self contradiction on my part, so I encourage you to trust your instincts and not take it as an undermining of your point. But don’t we have to be a little careful about separating the idea of data and consciousness? That is since consciousness can be looked at as a cumulative effect of data?

One of the arguments against Vol’s Psychic Materialism, that’s been swirling around in my stream of consciousness, has been this idea that the internet, due to the cumulative effect of all the minds contributing to it, might take on the emergent property of a conscious thing that begins to act above and beyond the programming (and hardware) from which it emerged. Now what would we consider this consciousness to be but the cumulative effect of software or, should we say, data?

I would tend to vote on the side of Data. But sentiment would play as much a part in that as anything.

We deal with a similar issue with cows and pigs since, as far as I’m concerned, they are conscious things that we kill and eat. This, of course, will be controversial. But I would still argue that they have that something emerging out of nothing, a perceiving thing, that underlies consciousness for us. The only difference between us, taking Hofstadter’s lead, is that the symbolic systems they project through aren’t as developed or evolved as ours.

Anyway, off to the Tobacco Hut to buy some more beer. Then I’ll be able to carry out my diabolical plan to take over the world.