In previous posts we've talked about new research that has meant we now seem closer than ever to acheiving this goal. But what would we be able to achieve? Would we be able to create a biological machine that did what it was told and seemed devoid of what we usually call 'life'? Or would such a biological machine be exactly like us? Are we merely complicated machines or is there something more, a soul perhaps? And if we're merely machines then would it be possible to recreate any figure from the past, exactly as they were at the time? Would this not be just like recreating an old robot?
In a previous topic, to which you essentially answered your own question (or so it appeared to me), you indicated that brain damage renders a person 'not the same' and EST can and does subdue personalities. Yet, those with brain damage that irreperably changes their character, or indeed in the early and intermediate stages of Alzheimer's, can quite conceivably retain a more or less perfectly functioning body: their kidneys and bowels and bladder and lungs and nervous system works. They do retain functionality as a living organism, and yet their 'character' can be 'damaged' beyond recognition.
ReplyDeleteThat, to me, although I am far from qualified to talk about physiology or biology, suggests a separation between a human being as a functioning organism - a natural 'machine', if you will - and a human being as an individual. It is perfectly conceivable that we could create the latter (in fact, if we look closely at stem cell science, transplant technology and even cloning) we can already create functioning complex organisms and even create or recycle many of the functioning parts (organs) of a human being. To a large extent, Frankenstein's monster isn't quite science fiction any more. However, if we follow my reasoning above (which, I imagine, you might follow) then we are somewhat further from creating a human being as an individual.
Could this be done? I don't think so. Identity is shaped by one's personal and communal interaction with the world (culture, society, personal fortune and circumstance, education, upbringing) and, to some extent, our own bodies. I don't think we have souls - when our brains die, our character goes with it, as with the tragic 'living death' of Alzheimer's - but our individuality is something akin to data stored on a hard drive (our brain) which is itself part of a wider, functioning, quasi-mechanical organism, a bit like a computer system. That data doesn't come built in to the organism, but is accumulated, like that on my computer, through use - in the case of life, experience both individually and collectively. Of course, this experience is nothing more than synaptic flashes and chemical-nervous processes and whatever, but the point is you can't build these in - as data is the product of a computer being used, individuality is the product of a life being lived.
As an aside, my greatest physical fear in life is of that data, which makes me what I am, being slowly but definitely erased before my fading senses and in all-too-full view of my loved ones. Alzheimers scares me witless because it represents something far more (though, in literal terms of course, far less) than the death of me as a 'machine', but the erasure of what I've made of it.
So, in short: it is possible to create human life as a 'machine', but not human life in its richest and most meaningful sense: as a person.
Yours
A most self-conscious non-scientist.
P.S. I recognise the flaws in my computer analogy and that data could, theoretically, be replicated and stored on it. Don't take that too literally, I was just using it as a simple (ish) metaphorical illustration if anything, not a water tight comparison.
ReplyDeleteIs your argument not based simply on the nature-nurture debate? You're saying that we can design the nature part but not the nurture part right?
ReplyDeleteI find this argument interesting as I would have assumed if we can design the nature part 'identity', as you put it, can be developed by treating the machine as if it were a human. If you designed a baby and put it up for adoption, with no-one knowing that it was created by you artificially, why do you assume that it would not develop the identity you speak of?
It (he/she) would develop *an* identity, of course, but you couldn't replicate a specific identity (i.e. a historical character), which is what I thought you were suggesting.
ReplyDeleteAh right. But what if they were to implant all the memories of an historical person and therefore replicate this data 'word perfect'? Let's suppose that you now go to a lab and all your memories are copied. Then you're 're-made' and this 'data' is uploaded once more. Would this not be an exact copy of you?
ReplyDeleteMost likely, but as far as I'm aware that's not even remotely possible.
ReplyDeletePossible? Or possible with current technology? Admittedly my knowledge on the subject is next to non-existent but I can't think of any reason why it can't be done.
ReplyDeleteThe human memory isn't entirely like that on a hard-drive as you say. For instance we remember not only verbal and visual data but also experiences, tactile impressions, feelings of pain and joy, motor skills, events, activities and so on. Unlike computer memory ours acts as part of a perceptually active mental system.It receives, encodes, modifies, retains and retrieves information.
Yet computer memory doesn't do this because we don't have the technology to make computer memory quite like our own. But if there is no reason why we cannot eventually advance to this level of technology (and I would argue there isn't) then it seems that we could create a machine like duplicate of ourselves with all our own memory and unique identity.
However, having said this I do think human beings are more than machines. I believe that we could create a new human being as I said before. And indeed we are machine like in our functionality. But our emotions make us very unlike how a person would commonly define a machine. It's why I think the phrase "I feel therefore I live" would be quite an apt offspring from Descarte's line.
Well, I'm not going to say 'never' as one has only to look at the (quite literally) quantum leaps made in science over the last 100 years, but at present it is impossible to the point of being inconceivable. Advances in neuroscience and technology could change all that, of course, but we've no way of doing that.
ReplyDeleteEither way, we do agree that there is a part of us - to me it's a broadly-defined mesh of memories, experience and interactions with those, your rather narrower view is of the last of those three - beyond the merely mechanistic, that can't be replicated and, for better and/or worse, makes us what we are and constitutes what we mean when we say 'I am'.
"I feel therefore I live" is not appropriate, since how do you know that you are actually feeling something and that it is not just a dream.
ReplyDeleteHence the truth in Descartes' line comes from the fact that it is stripped back to the minimum provable concept.
Anyway, your question 'are we machines'. Yes, why not. We are animals by definition, so to put us in another one of many categories, such as machines, does not make us less or more.
Then the implication of it. I.e. are we recreatable ? To a degree we are, at this point in history, and in the future we may be completely replicable, but what of this ?
Does being replicable and not individually unique make us less than human ? No, for then identical twins would be considered less human than those who are strikingly different from their siblings/peers.
The only issue would be if we were completely replicable, would that lead to a replicated life being an exact copy of the original life, and therefore lead us to the conclusion that there is no free will.
If there is no free will then i suggest we would have to question our humanity.
What Descartes meant was that because thinking was occuring there must be a 'thinker'. 'I think therefore I am' does not mean that humans exist. It could mean that we are a thought thinking a thought, all within the mind of a God. Exactly the same logic applies to the phrase 'I feel therefore I live'. It depends on your point of view as to the definition of life of course. But if you think within a dream you still think. If you feel within a dream you still feel. It does not mean necessarily that it is you doing the thinking or feeling, just that that action is being carried out. It does not mean that feeling is not being manipulated either, just that it exists.
ReplyDeleteBut although a machine could plausibly think, and thus say "I think therefore I am", my point is that in order to say something lives it must feel. Since what is a life without feeling? If the purpose of life is related to feelings, emotions and the pursuit of happiness then how can you have life without feeling?
P.S. Have we had the free will debate yet? I'll add that one next.
I think we had something about freewill but it may have been focussing on some other aspect. I'll leave the Descartes for another time too.
ReplyDelete"for something to live it must feel". Comas anyone ? Plus senses are controlled by certain parts of the brain, if these were damaged but other parts were not, then the person would still be alive.
Ah but would they be alive? They would function, and in a biological sense be identified as alive. But would they have a life? If you use the biological definitions like the ability to replicate and such then are plasmas that replicate themselves in deep space a form of life? I would say no, and that when a person cannot feel a single thing anymore (i'm not sure it's possible to kill all feelings and emotions and still be alive is it?) they become more machine than life.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I've designed a new site that www.thebigqs.co.uk will be re-pointed to soon: http://thebigqs.wordpress.com/
What do you think?
I know Rob is well-intentioned and I hate to fall prey to Godwin's law, but this is erring a little close to 'life unworthy of life'. Not saying you even implied that, but calling people in comas 'more machine than life' is potentially lethal in the wrong hands.
ReplyDeleteAmoeba and bacteria are life, as are human beings like you or I. There is no dichotomy between unfeeling biological 'machine' and us when the question is simply 'are they a form of life?': the answer is an emphatic yes. The question originally focused on whether human beings are more than biological machines (which are still alive in any meaningful scientific sense) and I think we need to stick to that. If we are (and I think we are), it just means we have individuality, character, whatever you want to call it (not that special among complex organisms; I know from deep and very fond experience that a lowly guinea pig has that), it doesn't, to my mind, make us any more 'alive' only, if anything, conscious of that fact and our experiences of it.
Lol. You could twist the thinking one way or another I'll admitt. But just because a spade can be used to hit someone round the head with does not make a spade evil.
ReplyDeleteI'm perfectly willing to admitt it's a gross simplification, and I'm not about to advance a grand thesis on it or anything. But thus far I think the division works on a broad level. It's also very relevant to the question as it is seeking to identify the dividing line between life and non-life.
It allows us to say that there is a spectrum from life on one hand to 'non-life' on the other. Reality is not so simple as saying that amoeba and bacteria are just like us. If we take that analogy further then we have to question whether we should be allowed to kill bacteria. If we're equal then the answer is no. But then if we allow ourselves to die certain bacteria that depend on us will die. So then we have to weigh up all the details and see if it's worth us living or not.
You think that's a silly thing to say? How do we usually address such arguments? How do people usually justify killing animals for instance? We say that we're more intelligent. But does that mean then that if a murderer has an IQ twice as high as his/her victim that it's ok? Does it mean that we would allow ourselves to be farmed and killed by an advanced alien species? Of course not. This argument is pure hypocrisy.
Yet to say that one being is more alive than another seems perfectly logical. We struggle to justify causing suffering to animals in order to eat them. Yet we find it quite easy to justify eating fish without nerves. Could the argument be used as one for killing coma victims? No, for three reasons, because many people believe that coma victims still feel some things, because that would cause suffering to the victims who are the friends and family of that person, and because there is a chance that one day that coma patient will wake up and be 'more' alive once again. I say more because if they're feeling a little while in the coma then they are a little alive.
Am I advocating the practical application of such a theory on the other hand? Definitely not, because people would almost always interpret/apply it in the wrong manner, as your immediate reaction suggests.
The new website looks good, clean and good links.
ReplyDeleteThis debate is diverting into a couplpe of big areas, each of which could easily be its own debate.
To restate the issue - What is a life ?
Rob has obviously taken it to mean something different from living organic organisms. He is putting an extra requirement on the definition, namely that it must be able to feel.
Firstly, if we accept your proposition we then arrive at the next question of 'which level of feeling' is required. This then leads us into the kind of territory that Ross talks about, where one level of life is considered superior to other levels.
To avoid that conclusion we are faced with the alternative option of all life is valid and equal, based only on its existence.
However, you'll notice that both these conclusions have taken a biological question and turned them into moral questions.
Biologically, a machine is not living (by definition) and a organism does live.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
In this context I would like to point out a few things. Firstly, in this discussion words such as "identity" and "personality" have been used. In my opinion our "personality" is a very dynamic attribute. I am not the same person I was a year ago. Not even what I was a week ago. In fact a "being" should not be defined in terms of "personality". The "I" that I "identify" with, has a continuity which engulfs "many" personalities, right from my childhood to what I am today. If at any time a machine is built to simulate "us" it must have this have this duality of a constantly evolving personality and at the same time an identity that gives it the continuity - that it can call "self".
ReplyDeleteSecondly, in my opinion, memories are much more than "data". For example, if I have a video of last years Christmas party with friends stored in my personal computer, it is just a collection of "bytes" for my PC. But, for me it is much more than that. My PC can only "retrieve" the data, but I can "feel"the memories.
Hi Soumya, thanks for the commment. I take your point that personality changes. But if you identify with every variation in personality then you're saying that the three year old you, the twenty year old you and the 80 year old you are all the same person. Yet if you put these people together and hid their faces they probably wouldn't even recognise each other. This isn't to say I don't accept your point. But for me personall I don't think the 3 year old me is still me. He was different in almost every way, and I no longer identify myself with him. In a way this further evidences your case. The biological element of us is that which evolves and changes with time. What machines we have built thus far fails to adapt as we can. But who's to say a machine can't be biological, and therefore able to adapt and change? Have you seen the film Bicentenial Man? Is he (Robin Williams) man or machine?
ReplyDeleteAs with memories your ability to feel the memories comes from the fact that human memory is far more advanced than is that in your PC. There's sensory memory, short term memory, long term memory; and even these types of memory can be further sub-divided. For instance Anderson (1976) divided long term memory into declarative and procedural modes. But the truly great thing about human memory is not the memory itself. For how advanced the human memory is; it is at the end of the day only an organism's ability to store, retain and recall information and experiences. The truly great thing is the integration of this memory into the other parts of our minds. For example you know when it feels like everything slows down in a crisis scenario? You might have heard about people having this experience in near death situations. What actually happens is that chemicals are produced in the brain, and, for want of a better word, a 'double memory' is built up as a natural defence mechanism designed to deter you from entering those situations again. The same happens in reverse, so chemicals like endorphines and serotonin are all linked to the memory. In other words it's not your memory that you feel. Your memory is merely triggering the release of chemicals. So if you take a highly advanced memory system (a lot more advanced than we're able to build today) and add a system of chemical production, management and release, you would get a machine that is able to 'feel' the memories.