Arbitrary Marks

This morning at Oak Park Unity Temple, the sermon topic was “Mammal Mind, Hard Drive Heart.” In an attempt to focus the congregation on what her thesis would be, the reverend encouraged us to reflect on our humanity, our emotions, our intelligence, our ability to be silly–things that animals like squid can’t do.

At that point, I realized I read too much PZ Myers because I started defending cephalopods. “They’re smart and they have emotions, too!” I started whispering to my wife beside me. “Shhh!”

So I drew this little guy. But hang on, because there’s a bit more to the story than a funny doodle in church.

First, came the children’s story: a little girl who wakes up as a robot (which she’d always wanted to be because they can run fast, don’t feel pain and are very smart). But soon she discovers that she can’t have emotional responses to what she normally does. And she wants to turn back into a robot. (”But it doesn’t make sense for her to feel sad about not having emotions” I whispered again . “You’re not a normal person, you’re a philosopher! Shhh!”)

Okay, the basic point is being established here: there’s something unique about humanity that separates us from squid and robots.

Then on to the reading. As soon as I saw it was from Daniel, I knew which passage it would be: Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation before Yahweh. The dude gets too big for his britches and is afflicted with the desire to eat grass like an ox. He lives like a beast for seven years until Yahweh decides to give him his reason back. At that point, the king recognizes that Yahweh is the one who gave him dominion as well as his faculty of thought.

(On a side note, I thought it was funny that we then sang a hymn that talked about grass tasting sweet–number 76 in the newest Unitarian Universalist hymnal.)

The basic thrust of the sermon, after the children’s story and the Bible reading, was that in today’s society, rather than a fear of being like the beasts (in the myth of Nebuchadnezzar) and having to find ways to distinguish ourselves from animals, we’re now too much like machines and/or robots. We have “machine ethics”, “machine bodies”, “machine food”, “machine children” and should recognize that our humanity is a gift, in between emotionless computers and irrational animals. We have reason and emotion.

Now, I think it’s true that we have reason and emotion. But I’m not so sure of the implied trichotomy: computer-human-animals. The problem, it seems to me, is that we’re stuck trying to find the thing which makes us “unique” out of all other things in reality. And if we start there, we’re bound to come up with ad hoc solutions that don’t hold water. The soul was an early attempt, which most people consider metaphysically untenable. Rationality, emotions, even language–these seem to be on a continuum in a way that doesn’t preclude calling some kinds of animals “persons.”

Similarly, although AI is not at the point to have that dilemma facing us today, we very well might have “machines” that are functionally indistinguishable from children, having the capacity to learn, to respond socially, etc. And, as the reverend pointed out this morning, the distinction between humans and machines in terms of material constitution is blurring–most of us have at least a few synthetic parts (including contact lenses and glasses), more so as we age.

I’m also not sure that it’s fair to call pragmatism “machine ethics”–the primary example was of looking purely at cost-benefit analysis rather than at human values. And in terms of “machine children” that are cultivated in petri dishes and chosen for their eye color or have diseases engineered, well, I think it’s wrong to value humans based on superfluous things like eye color. But “selecting” children through technology isn’t a new idea–people have chosen breeding mates for millennia on the hopes that they’ll get a certain kind of child. Now it’s merely more possible. The problem isn’t with the “machines”, it’s with human things like emotional attachment to eye color, sex, etc.

Anyway, all that is to say that I do think the question of what humans are, and how we are related to the rest of reality is a crucial one and does inform our ethics, not just our metaphysics. But can we leave the squid out of it?

(By the way, I thought the sermon was excellently presented and food for thought. I’m just using this space to do my thinking about it–it’s not intended to be a disparagement of Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons.)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Ethics, Unitarian Universalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Email me at arbitrary [dot] marks [at] gmail [dot] com if you think a discussion should be re-opened.