Hmm there are a few problems with that [although I initially agree]…
given the technology<… [by ‘alive’ I am referring to anything we consider as above and beyond the machine]
If you constructed a human being cell by cell is it alive?
If you constructed an organic android, is it alive?
If you had brain damage and some or half of your brain was replaced by an artificially created brain [cells/parts], would you still be alive?
What if they kept going I.e. replacing parts of your brain? Or if your whole brain and body were replaced cell by cell until you were an android ~ would you die at some point? So what is the difference between you and another android?
Agape
Hi and thanks, comedy is a branch of philosophy Imho.
Perhaps this depends on weather or not the ‘machines [we are not?] are more advanced intellectually than us? Not that intellect determines morality but it would have an effect.
I always found it funny how in star trek we humans and our allies were going around the universe making moral judgements on others, always making them out to be unenlightened. I suppose it wouldn’t make for much of a show if the enterprise met someone more moral and intellectually advanced. They would probably do some sneaky trick like cross a replicator with a transporter, you meet them on some planet, fight and kill the leader [like that duel episode of kirk vs. a monster] then another exactly the same is beamed down, bit of an ego killer that one.
Anyways you get the point that once they taught us their particular moral lesson, then there would be no reasons left to fight each other, hence a more advanced creature/android/robot would probably have no need to destroy humans.
No, that wasn’t your point at all. That’s the opposite of what you said.
According to your post, it’s childish to think that an android can have identity, motivation, feelings. What I said was that it’s not childish, it’s childish to assume that you are anything other than a machine. You, a biological machine, have an identity, motivation, feelings, so why cannot another machine have these things?
Are you saying that tools and artworks have got rights? or are you saying that ONLY if tools and artworks look human they have rights?
How about the Ginger-bread Man, or Tea-cake Man? Or Scone-Boy? Have they got rights? How silly do we need to get before we get the point?
I think there are a couple of factors at play here.
Appreciating something as being beautiful and not to be destroyed. Sentience not being a necessary factor in this.
Sentient beings which should not be destroyed based on moral grounds (universally agreed upon between moral beings).
Thing is though with some of the trash in the world I’d prefer see a piece of art being kept alive as it can provide more value to the world than some or the junk humans that litter this planet.
Noone should suffer but I think some should not live if they make too many transgressions. Then though we get the who decides; who watches the watchmen etc.
Another thing- is data moral? Also if he doesn’t have emotions why would he care if he died or not? What does he have to do? Same old curiosity algorithm?
“Data” is not there. There is no property that you can point to that is uniquely “Data”. “Data” is indistinguishable from any pile of objects. All the rest is YOUR imagination, not some real-time property.
I think the prerequisite for rights is in self determination, a car or e.g. a binary based robot cannot achieve that and so afford no need for rights. an object has to have the ability to make decisions and reprogram itself etc.
in what ways are you distinguishable from any pile of objects? while you’re listing those ways, see if the same logic, or similar logic, applies to data. i’ll bet you it does.
i’m not satisfied with that. if someone made an exact copy of, say, my mom, and put my mom next to the copy of my mom, i’m not convinced i’d be able to tell difference.
also, another reason i’m not satisfied with that is that Data would be able to say the same thing. if someone made an exact copy of him, he’d be able to say “that’s not me”
For sure you wouldn’t be able too, but if they made a copy of you and put you next to him?
True but only he would know that, the other data or the other you would be utterly convinced they were you ~ and in data’s case that could be purely mechanistic, the other data could be acting as if he is him. This is the difference between the perceived object of you and you the very thing of.
Imagine I am an alien from another galaxy, now to explain my completely different perspective I describe it thus; “we don’t have time and energy in the way you do, what we have is something which approximates these three fundamental attributes; there is a clayness, a shapeness and the hands which mould them. You press a formed mask into the clayness and it makes an imprint, then a moment later you press a mask with a slightly different expression upon the clayness, eventually you have something like a 3D movie an animated object moulded by another’s hands. Now for ‘life’ what you have is the same thing except it possesses its own set of hands, and so it manipulates itself”.
So what we have to define is if data is moulded by another hands [as like an object, rocks, planets etc] or if he is self determined and has his own hands that mould the clay.
my understanding is that your whole post can be summed up really quite quickly: you’re asking if data has free will. It’s that simple, no need for a convoluted analogy using made up words.
the question is irrelevant until you can prove that we have free will. if we don’t have free will, then data not having free will doesn’t make him any different from us anyway.
is that really you’re response? is that the kind of bull shit you’re going to pull? is that what you think is philosophy? pretending like you don’t know what we’re talking about?
Nothing reprograms itself. If we are the thing itself we are not affected or changed by what we are. And if we are not an itself but a pile of loose objects named data, then there is no itself in any case.
Well he could appear to have free will but still not actually have it, and our definitions could be wrong. …but yea I suppose free will would do if that cannot be manipulated or acted, or indeed if decision making is free will.
Rather than have yet another futile debate about free will I was attempting a more personal and holistic perspective. …the ‘you’ which isn’t present in its copy n all that.
This was fun until you started being rude and one dimensional.
