Hey Krimel, Krimel said to Ian: You are right I must be missing your point. If you are saying that "life" or "intelligence" can arise "naturally" out of printed circuits then I don't think we are even using the same language. When you say intelligence is not inherent in biological systems or that genes produce brains but not intelligence this just seems to be adding subtlety at the expense of intelligibility.
Matt: To intercede in a conversation I haven't been following closely at all, I think Ian's point is that the idea behind the natural/artificial distinction may be misplaced when talking about the idea of robots someday having minds/consciousness like humans. As a pragmatist, I think Ian's stance is that the mind/consciousness evolved naturally out of biological evolution, that cultural evolution is predicated on biological, that whatever the mind is, it is basically what happens when biological processes get really, really complex. For pragmatists, traveling up what used to be called the Great Chain of Being, or up Pirsig's static levels, is at root a continuum of complexity. I think the example that is in point is Asimov's story that got made into the Will Smith movie, I, Robot. At that level of robotic complexity, we--as viewers in addition to the characters--have trouble knowing whether we should treat them as "one of us," i.e. whether moral/legal categories apply to them and how. _This_ is the pertinent question--not how they came to be. The natural/artificial distinction becomes outmoded. Besides, I think Ian might also be playing at breaking down the distinction along the lines of, "When did our activities cease to be natural?" One can cry foul for common sense, but as a philosophical point, I have some sympathy because of our Enlightenment philosophical heritage, which treats "natural" as a moral category of approbation, and hence Will Smith's difficulty in treating robots morally (ya' know, feeling remorse for shooting them in the head and such). Matt _________________________________________________________________ Give to a good cause with every e-mail. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?souce=EML_WL_ GoodCause Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
