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It's amazing what you find when you're clearing out your cupboards, innit. I found this mini essay still intact on my hard disk from when I wrote it between 3 and 4 years ago. It's survived numerous file culls, formats, and file system rejiggles. Anyway, I reckon it's quite interesting, although it was pretty much paraphrasing a much larger essay written by some academic somewhere a long time ago.
:::::
Throughout the centuries, the term living has always been closely associated with the term biological. Due to the romantic/religious human assumption that nothing artificial could ever be considered alive, and a lack of counter examples to study, it has been a habit to consider the study of life intertwined with the study of biology. Now, with the advent of artificial life in computer technology, it is beginning to be recognised that this is not a completely watertight assumption.
It has been postulated by biologists that something that can be considered alive is something that has self-serving interests. In the case of a plant the interests are obviously basic - the plant is not aware that is has a need for water. This is to say that a non-sentient being has interests, and if it has interests it can be satisfied, and consequently it can be thwarted. This is a definition of suffering. A plant may not have a central nervous system, it may not feel pain, but physical pain is only a subset of suffering. Think of the emotional trauma a sentient being can go through – this is definetly suffering, but is not something that has any relevance to a plant. A plant can suffer if it’s basic interests are frustrated – by removing a blade of grass’ source of light, you are causing it’s growth and development to become stunted, so it is effectively suffering.
If something can suffer, it must be considered a member of the moral community and must therefore have rights, just as animals and plants have rights. Since it is already possible to create technical artifacts whose complexity and behaviour closely match or surpass that shown by plants, there must be some precedent for admitting such artifacts into the moral community and establishing rights for them. Just because the artifact was not biologically evolved, and is not constructed in a biological fashion, why shouldn’t it be considered to be alive? A plant is something a human can peceive to be organic, and, as stated before, humans habitually associate biology and life. A humans perception on what life is becomes less clear when apparantly living things are too small to be perceived, such as virus’ and microbes. Do these live?
If artificial life forms were officially recognised that what sort of rights would be established for them? Will it become international law to preserve any examples of artificial life created until such time as they die out by natural causes? The answer is no. Plants are not governed by any such law, and it is not illegal to kill a plant, merely immoral. Animals enjoy a greater amount of rights, and humans the greatest amount of all. The rights of a being seem roughly proportional to its intelligence, with non-sentient beings such as plants allocated virtually no rights at all.
It seems that mankind is safe for the meantime, then. No sentient artificial life form has been observed, yet. The key to consciousness, as defined by biologists and philosophers, is sense, specifically outer and inner sense. The outer senses are the ones that work in the physical world, such as sight and hearing. The inner sense, commonly known as introspection, is the ability of a being to reflect on aspects of it’s welfare not directly related to the situation it’s in. In other words to think. This process, in which messages in the beings brain are not directly represented by signals coming in from sensory organs, needs some fundamental way of expressing and organising those messages, which is the communication skill of language. The process humans use to express their thoughts to each other is also used to express these thoughts to themselves. There have been several cases where humans have been raised in the wild by animals, not coming into contact with humans until their teenage years. The language development of a human seems to take place mainly between the ages of two and four. When attempts were made to integrate these ‘feral children’ into society, they largely failed, the subjects seemingly unable to grasp skills that civilised humans take for granted, such as long term memory and socialising. In fact, it was noted that the development of these people closely resembled that of an ape taken from the wild. It seems that without a social environment in which to develop in, the human brain loses a lot of intelligence. So the process of developing a language was perhaps the most important step in raising human intelligence levels. Perhaps the same thing could apply to artificial beings. If a way was found to put an artificial life form into a social environment and give it a means of communicating with its peers, then it could well develop inner sense and hence become conscious.
If a human were able to directly and intelligently react with a machine then that would be a big step forward in recognising that a machine could possibly have rights, and would cause mayhem with popular perception as to what life is, and what it means to be alive. It is therefore plausible that if such a development took place, the acceptance of intelligent machines into the moral community could take place. Machines would have rights.
As was mentioned earlier, the rights a lifeform is awarded is roughly proportional to its intelligence. A human has more rights than a dog, because there is a clear difference between the intelligence level of a human and a dog. In effect, the human has a more complex set of interests than a dog, and hence needs more rights to protect these interests. But what if an intelligent machine evolved to become more intelligent than a human. If machines were to develop language, there is no reason why they could not progress on past the current benchmark. Biological lifeforms are based in the physical world; artificial lifeforms will be based on silicon, and can be run at fantastic speeds. With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, w$a,z(Ê
:::::
Throughout the centuries, the term living has always been closely associated with the term biological. Due to the romantic/religious human assumption that nothing artificial could ever be considered alive, and a lack of counter examples to study, it has been a habit to consider the study of life intertwined with the study of biology. Now, with the advent of artificial life in computer technology, it is beginning to be recognised that this is not a completely watertight assumption.
It has been postulated by biologists that something that can be considered alive is something that has self-serving interests. In the case of a plant the interests are obviously basic - the plant is not aware that is has a need for water. This is to say that a non-sentient being has interests, and if it has interests it can be satisfied, and consequently it can be thwarted. This is a definition of suffering. A plant may not have a central nervous system, it may not feel pain, but physical pain is only a subset of suffering. Think of the emotional trauma a sentient being can go through – this is definetly suffering, but is not something that has any relevance to a plant. A plant can suffer if it’s basic interests are frustrated – by removing a blade of grass’ source of light, you are causing it’s growth and development to become stunted, so it is effectively suffering.
If something can suffer, it must be considered a member of the moral community and must therefore have rights, just as animals and plants have rights. Since it is already possible to create technical artifacts whose complexity and behaviour closely match or surpass that shown by plants, there must be some precedent for admitting such artifacts into the moral community and establishing rights for them. Just because the artifact was not biologically evolved, and is not constructed in a biological fashion, why shouldn’t it be considered to be alive? A plant is something a human can peceive to be organic, and, as stated before, humans habitually associate biology and life. A humans perception on what life is becomes less clear when apparantly living things are too small to be perceived, such as virus’ and microbes. Do these live?
If artificial life forms were officially recognised that what sort of rights would be established for them? Will it become international law to preserve any examples of artificial life created until such time as they die out by natural causes? The answer is no. Plants are not governed by any such law, and it is not illegal to kill a plant, merely immoral. Animals enjoy a greater amount of rights, and humans the greatest amount of all. The rights of a being seem roughly proportional to its intelligence, with non-sentient beings such as plants allocated virtually no rights at all.
It seems that mankind is safe for the meantime, then. No sentient artificial life form has been observed, yet. The key to consciousness, as defined by biologists and philosophers, is sense, specifically outer and inner sense. The outer senses are the ones that work in the physical world, such as sight and hearing. The inner sense, commonly known as introspection, is the ability of a being to reflect on aspects of it’s welfare not directly related to the situation it’s in. In other words to think. This process, in which messages in the beings brain are not directly represented by signals coming in from sensory organs, needs some fundamental way of expressing and organising those messages, which is the communication skill of language. The process humans use to express their thoughts to each other is also used to express these thoughts to themselves. There have been several cases where humans have been raised in the wild by animals, not coming into contact with humans until their teenage years. The language development of a human seems to take place mainly between the ages of two and four. When attempts were made to integrate these ‘feral children’ into society, they largely failed, the subjects seemingly unable to grasp skills that civilised humans take for granted, such as long term memory and socialising. In fact, it was noted that the development of these people closely resembled that of an ape taken from the wild. It seems that without a social environment in which to develop in, the human brain loses a lot of intelligence. So the process of developing a language was perhaps the most important step in raising human intelligence levels. Perhaps the same thing could apply to artificial beings. If a way was found to put an artificial life form into a social environment and give it a means of communicating with its peers, then it could well develop inner sense and hence become conscious.
If a human were able to directly and intelligently react with a machine then that would be a big step forward in recognising that a machine could possibly have rights, and would cause mayhem with popular perception as to what life is, and what it means to be alive. It is therefore plausible that if such a development took place, the acceptance of intelligent machines into the moral community could take place. Machines would have rights.
As was mentioned earlier, the rights a lifeform is awarded is roughly proportional to its intelligence. A human has more rights than a dog, because there is a clear difference between the intelligence level of a human and a dog. In effect, the human has a more complex set of interests than a dog, and hence needs more rights to protect these interests. But what if an intelligent machine evolved to become more intelligent than a human. If machines were to develop language, there is no reason why they could not progress on past the current benchmark. Biological lifeforms are based in the physical world; artificial lifeforms will be based on silicon, and can be run at fantastic speeds. With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, w$a,z(Ê
*** WARNING, GAYDAR HAS DETECTED GAYNESS IN THE SR UPLOADING MECHANISM ***
Here is the last bit that got annexed:
With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, we could see extrodinarily rapid growth in intelligence levels.
So if a computer became literally more intelligent than a human, what would we do then? Would we give this machine more rights than we award ourselves, or, more likely, would we gloss it over and pull the plug?
Here is the last bit that got annexed:
With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, we could see extrodinarily rapid growth in intelligence levels.
So if a computer became literally more intelligent than a human, what would we do then? Would we give this machine more rights than we award ourselves, or, more likely, would we gloss it over and pull the plug?
It's amazing what you find when you're clearing out your cupboards, innit. I found this mini essay still intact on my hard disk from when I wrote it between 3 and 4 years ago. It's survived numerous file culls, formats, and file system rejiggles. Anyway, I reckon it's quite interesting, although it was pretty much paraphrasing a much larger essay written by some academic somewhere a long time ago.
:::::
Throughout the centuries, the term living has always been closely associated with the term biological. Due to the romantic/religious human assumption that nothing artificial could ever be considered alive, and a lack of counter examples to study, it has been a habit to consider the study of life intertwined with the study of biology. Now, with the advent of artificial life in computer technology, it is beginning to be recognised that this is not a completely watertight assumption.
It has been postulated by biologists that something that can be considered alive is something that has self-serving interests. In the case of a plant the interests are obviously basic - the plant is not aware that is has a need for water. This is to say that a non-sentient being has interests, and if it has interests it can be satisfied, and consequently it can be thwarted. This is a definition of suffering. A plant may not have a central nervous system, it may not feel pain, but physical pain is only a subset of suffering. Think of the emotional trauma a sentient being can go through – this is definetly suffering, but is not something that has any relevance to a plant. A plant can suffer if it’s basic interests are frustrated – by removing a blade of grass’ source of light, you are causing it’s growth and development to become stunted, so it is effectively suffering.
If something can suffer, it must be considered a member of the moral community and must therefore have rights, just as animals and plants have rights. Since it is already possible to create technical artifacts whose complexity and behaviour closely match or surpass that shown by plants, there must be some precedent for admitting such artifacts into the moral community and establishing rights for them. Just because the artifact was not biologically evolved, and is not constructed in a biological fashion, why shouldn’t it be considered to be alive? A plant is something a human can peceive to be organic, and, as stated before, humans habitually associate biology and life. A humans perception on what life is becomes less clear when apparantly living things are too small to be perceived, such as virus’ and microbes. Do these live?
If artificial life forms were officially recognised that what sort of rights would be established for them? Will it become international law to preserve any examples of artificial life created until such time as they die out by natural causes? The answer is no. Plants are not governed by any such law, and it is not illegal to kill a plant, merely immoral. Animals enjoy a greater amount of rights, and humans the greatest amount of all. The rights of a being seem roughly proportional to its intelligence, with non-sentient beings such as plants allocated virtually no rights at all.
It seems that mankind is safe for the meantime, then. No sentient artificial life form has been observed, yet. The key to consciousness, as defined by biologists and philosophers, is sense, specifically outer and inner sense. The outer senses are the ones that work in the physical world, such as sight and hearing. The inner sense, commonly known as introspection, is the ability of a being to reflect on aspects of it’s welfare not directly related to the situation it’s in. In other words to think. This process, in which messages in the beings brain are not directly represented by signals coming in from sensory organs, needs some fundamental way of expressing and organising those messages, which is the communication skill of language. The process humans use to express their thoughts to each other is also used to express these thoughts to themselves. There have been several cases where humans have been raised in the wild by animals, not coming into contact with humans until their teenage years. The language development of a human seems to take place mainly between the ages of two and four. When attempts were made to integrate these ‘feral children’ into society, they largely failed, the subjects seemingly unable to grasp skills that civilised humans take for granted, such as long term memory and socialising. In fact, it was noted that the development of these people closely resembled that of an ape taken from the wild. It seems that without a social environment in which to develop in, the human brain loses a lot of intelligence. So the process of developing a language was perhaps the most important step in raising human intelligence levels. Perhaps the same thing could apply to artificial beings. If a way was found to put an artificial life form into a social environment and give it a means of communicating with its peers, then it could well develop inner sense and hence become conscious.
If a human were able to directly and intelligently react with a machine then that would be a big step forward in recognising that a machine could possibly have rights, and would cause mayhem with popular perception as to what life is, and what it means to be alive. It is therefore plausible that if such a development took place, the acceptance of intelligent machines into the moral community could take place. Machines would have rights.
As was mentioned earlier, the rights a lifeform is awarded is roughly proportional to its intelligence. A human has more rights than a dog, because there is a clear difference between the intelligence level of a human and a dog. In effect, the human has a more complex set of interests than a dog, and hence needs more rights to protect these interests. But what if an intelligent machine evolved to become more intelligent than a human. If machines were to develop language, there is no reason why they could not progress on past the current benchmark. Biological lifeforms are based in the physical world; artificial lifeforms will be based on silicon, and can be run at fantastic speeds. With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, w$a,z(Ê
:::::
Throughout the centuries, the term living has always been closely associated with the term biological. Due to the romantic/religious human assumption that nothing artificial could ever be considered alive, and a lack of counter examples to study, it has been a habit to consider the study of life intertwined with the study of biology. Now, with the advent of artificial life in computer technology, it is beginning to be recognised that this is not a completely watertight assumption.
It has been postulated by biologists that something that can be considered alive is something that has self-serving interests. In the case of a plant the interests are obviously basic - the plant is not aware that is has a need for water. This is to say that a non-sentient being has interests, and if it has interests it can be satisfied, and consequently it can be thwarted. This is a definition of suffering. A plant may not have a central nervous system, it may not feel pain, but physical pain is only a subset of suffering. Think of the emotional trauma a sentient being can go through – this is definetly suffering, but is not something that has any relevance to a plant. A plant can suffer if it’s basic interests are frustrated – by removing a blade of grass’ source of light, you are causing it’s growth and development to become stunted, so it is effectively suffering.
If something can suffer, it must be considered a member of the moral community and must therefore have rights, just as animals and plants have rights. Since it is already possible to create technical artifacts whose complexity and behaviour closely match or surpass that shown by plants, there must be some precedent for admitting such artifacts into the moral community and establishing rights for them. Just because the artifact was not biologically evolved, and is not constructed in a biological fashion, why shouldn’t it be considered to be alive? A plant is something a human can peceive to be organic, and, as stated before, humans habitually associate biology and life. A humans perception on what life is becomes less clear when apparantly living things are too small to be perceived, such as virus’ and microbes. Do these live?
If artificial life forms were officially recognised that what sort of rights would be established for them? Will it become international law to preserve any examples of artificial life created until such time as they die out by natural causes? The answer is no. Plants are not governed by any such law, and it is not illegal to kill a plant, merely immoral. Animals enjoy a greater amount of rights, and humans the greatest amount of all. The rights of a being seem roughly proportional to its intelligence, with non-sentient beings such as plants allocated virtually no rights at all.
It seems that mankind is safe for the meantime, then. No sentient artificial life form has been observed, yet. The key to consciousness, as defined by biologists and philosophers, is sense, specifically outer and inner sense. The outer senses are the ones that work in the physical world, such as sight and hearing. The inner sense, commonly known as introspection, is the ability of a being to reflect on aspects of it’s welfare not directly related to the situation it’s in. In other words to think. This process, in which messages in the beings brain are not directly represented by signals coming in from sensory organs, needs some fundamental way of expressing and organising those messages, which is the communication skill of language. The process humans use to express their thoughts to each other is also used to express these thoughts to themselves. There have been several cases where humans have been raised in the wild by animals, not coming into contact with humans until their teenage years. The language development of a human seems to take place mainly between the ages of two and four. When attempts were made to integrate these ‘feral children’ into society, they largely failed, the subjects seemingly unable to grasp skills that civilised humans take for granted, such as long term memory and socialising. In fact, it was noted that the development of these people closely resembled that of an ape taken from the wild. It seems that without a social environment in which to develop in, the human brain loses a lot of intelligence. So the process of developing a language was perhaps the most important step in raising human intelligence levels. Perhaps the same thing could apply to artificial beings. If a way was found to put an artificial life form into a social environment and give it a means of communicating with its peers, then it could well develop inner sense and hence become conscious.
If a human were able to directly and intelligently react with a machine then that would be a big step forward in recognising that a machine could possibly have rights, and would cause mayhem with popular perception as to what life is, and what it means to be alive. It is therefore plausible that if such a development took place, the acceptance of intelligent machines into the moral community could take place. Machines would have rights.
As was mentioned earlier, the rights a lifeform is awarded is roughly proportional to its intelligence. A human has more rights than a dog, because there is a clear difference between the intelligence level of a human and a dog. In effect, the human has a more complex set of interests than a dog, and hence needs more rights to protect these interests. But what if an intelligent machine evolved to become more intelligent than a human. If machines were to develop language, there is no reason why they could not progress on past the current benchmark. Biological lifeforms are based in the physical world; artificial lifeforms will be based on silicon, and can be run at fantastic speeds. With the advent of computer based lifeforms communicating with one another as humans do, w$a,z(Ê