Robot Rights
Out of context: Reply #16
- Started
- Last post
- 105 Responses
- flagellum0
"The problem is that mental properties are the results of the physical response. They never cause anything. Now, the problem with that is, it seems that mental states do cause things. It seems that we do make choices. It seems that we do think about things and adjudicate between good ideas and bad ideas and, therefore, exercise rationality.
You see, this bottom-up approach (which treats consciousness merely as a property) results in determinism, meaning that physical systems drive everything and produce consciousness. But all physical systems ultimately are determined.
You say: Here's a feeling I'm having. What caused that feeling? Well, this configuration of electromagnetic impulses (or whatever) going through your system. C-fibers firing. And you say: What caused that? Well, some kind of chemistry in the body. Well, what caused that? Some kind of physical stimulus to the end of the finger or something like that, which ends up in the feeling of pain, but it's some other thing that caused that.
And you see you can keep going back further and further and further, and there's always going to be some prior cause, because all purely physical systems are always the result of some prior necessary and sufficient physical condition that causes the subsequent condition.
Physical systems are always deterministic. This is why science works. We look at purely physical systems and we know that we can set up the same physical conditions and get the same result, because the circumstances determine the result.
But what does that make human beings then, if we're viewed simply as physical systems? If our consciousness is only an emergent property-- it's only a result-- then it's on the top. It doesn't effect anything. It's just riding along.
And if it doesn't effect anything, then I don't choose. What appear to be choices are merely the results of chemical reactions that happen on their own in a deterministic way in my physical body.
And if I don't choose anything, not really, then it doesn't make any sense to talk about my rights to autonomy as if I had choices. I'm not capable of choosing at all.
And indeed, if we're not capable of choosing at all, then we're not capable of choosing a good idea over a bad idea. Which means there is no rationality, because rationality means that we adjudicate between ideas and choose the one that makes the most sense, given the evidence. But if there's no choosing, then there's no rationality either.
So what this really does is make us all into just machines. Indeed, we start as machines, we end as machines. The only difference is, this machine has this property floating around on the surface of it that doesn't cause anything. And if we're machines, then choice makes no sense...then morality makes no sense...then rationality makes no sense."