RE: why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?
January 2, 2019 at 9:05 pm
(This post was last modified: January 2, 2019 at 9:06 pm by bennyboy.)
The essence of it is this: there is no science of mind. There's a science of neural correlates to mind, and the philosophical position that they can safely be conflated.
This is immediately obvious if I ask you what measurements of mind you are able to make. How, even, do you establish that there even IS such a thing as mind, anywhere in the Universe, based purely on physical observations?
It pretty much amounts to this: you poke something with a stick and it says, "Ouch. Fuck off!" and you take this to be an expression of displeasure, i.e. mind. But what happens when robots say "Ouch. Fuck off!" when poked with a stick? What if, given mechanical tear ducts, highly expressive synthetic musculature in their faces and so on, robots are sufficiently humanoid in appearance and mannerisms to stimulate evolved emotional responses in humans?
I think it's perfectly possible that some people will be so convinced that such machines are sentient that there will be a campaign for "Robby's Law," named for Robby the Robot who was gunned down while picking up a Starbucks Latte for his owner, for the protection of sentient bots or whatever, despite the fact that we cannot establish that Robby was ever really sentient to begin with, and merits this type of protection.
This is immediately obvious if I ask you what measurements of mind you are able to make. How, even, do you establish that there even IS such a thing as mind, anywhere in the Universe, based purely on physical observations?
It pretty much amounts to this: you poke something with a stick and it says, "Ouch. Fuck off!" and you take this to be an expression of displeasure, i.e. mind. But what happens when robots say "Ouch. Fuck off!" when poked with a stick? What if, given mechanical tear ducts, highly expressive synthetic musculature in their faces and so on, robots are sufficiently humanoid in appearance and mannerisms to stimulate evolved emotional responses in humans?
I think it's perfectly possible that some people will be so convinced that such machines are sentient that there will be a campaign for "Robby's Law," named for Robby the Robot who was gunned down while picking up a Starbucks Latte for his owner, for the protection of sentient bots or whatever, despite the fact that we cannot establish that Robby was ever really sentient to begin with, and merits this type of protection.
