Organo-centrism as Racism
by Francois Tremblay
Around the middle of the movie "AI: Artificial Intelligence", there is a scene that takes place at the "Flesh Fair" arena, where androids are destroyed in violent ways, cheered on by a crowd of hate-filled rednecks. Even if you are organo-centric, it would be hard not to be moved by this scene. And the analogy between that and the Coliseum, between AI slavery and human slavery, is obvious.
Of course, this presupposes the acceptance of rights for non-organic beings. The current prevalent view is against this notion. Most people, even Objectivists, are organo-centric: that is to say, believe that only organic beings can have rights. Organic human beings. This is usually justified on the grounds that "artificial beings cannot really think" or "be sentient".
It is hard for me to even understand this objection, just as it seems impossible to believe that many used to think that women, or black people, were inferior. It is true that computers today are not as intelligent as human beings: that much is obvious and does not require debate. However, computers already have the capacity to defeat a chess master at his own game. Hardly a feat that can be accomplished by any lower animal, or a normal human being.
To this, the objection is usually raised that computers are programmed to play chess. That is correct. Human beings are also programmed by millions of years of evolution to perceive, think, feel. Because man has made it, does not imply superiority, any more than evolution is superior to human processes. To posit that man cannot build anything that is his equal, is to limit man irrationally.
If a functional view is not accepted, then the only alternative is to posit that man is inherently superior by virtue of... what? If we retreat into religion, we can claim supremacy by virtue of the soul. But this is meaningless nonsense. There is no such thing as an acausal consciousness. It must be rejected out of hand.
What is man inherently superior? Because of his emotions? His sentience? His instincts? All these things can be programmed. His neurons? His gray squishy matter? What do those things have to do with intelligence? Would we be less intelligent if our brain was made of silicon, or wood, or silly putty? Only a functionalist view of cognition seems rational.
We do have free will. But this free will is inherently causal. And free will, and mental capacities in general, are not an on-off switch. Animals have a greater or lesser proportion of instinctual behavior, and individual humans have more or less capacity to focus, memory, intelligence, and so on and so forth. The proposition "man as a rational animal" may be true, but man is only distinguished insofar as it has a much greater mental capacity and therefore can use Reason, not because he has a soul that permits him to reason.
Decisional capacity is certainly a gradient. The more capacities we have, the more we can do with them. But virtually all computer programs, at least those that do something interesting, include decisional capacities. Depending on the context, a program will execute one routine or the other. This is no different than man's capacity for decision, except man's capacity is obviously greater. And as I have pointed out, the most powerful examples of computers can execute tasks that elude all but a tiny minority of human beings, although they can only do those tasks. As such, we must already accept that computers are life forms, albeit still not as advanced as human beings.
It may seem that these questions have little bearing on human life - however, the emerging fields of genetic engineering and computer science tell us otherwise. If we accept a functionalist view of cognition, and I am saying that we have no choice, then we must anticipate the time when computers will become an integral part of society as living beings. This point is called the "Singularity". At that point, the question of artificial rights will become a prominent ethical and political concern, and our current mindset of computers as property would be detrimental to the progress of society. Likewise, a lack of concern for the rights of genetically engineered beings would be equally detrimental, much like any form of slavery.
In the end, it all comes back to the delusion of specialness, a problem I talk a lot as it relates to rational spirituality. Are we going to erect organic life as a special, privileged form of life? Or are we going to examine rights-capacities objectively? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Discuss this Article (113 messages)
|
