(2023-05-29, 08:20 PM)Typoz Wrote: This step seems way out of sequence to me. If the proposal is to give rights to conscious entities this planet is filled with vast numbers of different kinds, from birds of the air, animals of the land to creatures of the oceans, lakes and rivers. I really think we should attend to these first or we will look foolish as well as devalue our own selves and our higher aspirations.
Oh I am not saying we should be in any rush to create said synthetic conscious entities, treatment of all kinds of life should be vastly more improved for all living beings before that. [Also maybe we just shouldn't make synthetic life because it might upset some Natural Balance.]
However I think there is some difficulty in the language of rights - we don't really "grant" them in the sense of giving a gift but rather acknowledge a moral standard.
So *if* someone put together synthetic life that we had a reasonable reason to think was conscious - maybe it matches some quantum biology structure that we found was necessary for human minds - then I think we would have to grant these robots/androids/whatever the rights we grant to beings of our sentience/sapience level.
As to whether the structure is what makes the Ur Mind split into a new alter, the Classical God stamp intellect into the creation of a new soul, an existing soul chooses the robot/android to inhabit, the particles of panpsychic consciousness have been arranged in just the right way, etc etc...
...The robot/android will probably just join in the debate with us, but maybe provide some new insight...and hopefully not enslave us...
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(This post was last modified: 2023-05-29, 09:32 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel. Edited 2 times in total.)
- Bertrand Russell