[p2p-research] Free flipper! argues scientist

Mon Jan 4 04:21:10 CET 2010

there is an interesting spiritual background to this.

It is possible to interpret the evolution of religious feeling (I'm not
implying progress necessarily) as a increasing condensation of the spiritual
force away from the objects of nature. Animist peoples see the spirit
everywhere, both in living and non-living things; as we moved to
polytheistic religion, it was condensated in some more general personalized
principles, and finally, with monotheism, is concentrated into one God. This
paradoxically depletes the natural universe from spirit, and henceforth,
nature becomes an object to be treated in secular and capitalist industrial
society.

There is a difference between East and West in that regard, the western
oriented monotheistic religions violently suppress earlier modes of
consciousness, and so there the de-spiritualisation of the world is very
radical, but the eastern religious reforms, like Buddhism and the renewal of
Hinduism, remain essentially polytheistic (buddhism is often mistaken for a
non-religion by westerners focusing on the texts of the buddha instead of
the lived reality of popular religion), but as an overlay on surviving
animism.

This has concrete consequences, though it may appear that east asian
countries like Japan are just as furiously industrializing, and hence have
taken over objectified nature in their consciousness, the earlier modalities
are just as strong and co-existing. Hence, since rocks are inhabited by
spirits, machines obviously does as well. So Asian peoples treat their
robots are animated spirits, without having to invent a fake humanity to
them, as transhumanist-influenced people may want to do.

I witnessed this myself at close hand when I filmed a Japanese family with a
Aibo dog pet, treated as westerners would treat a living pet, completely
non-probematically, and it explains a lot of (for us) 'weird' behaviour,
such as people writing love letters to known virtual avatars (of course, our
children do it with santa, but in Japan, we're talking adults).

To Ryan's question, I'm tempted to reply: we are still very far away to have
robots with a complex consciousness and complexity that would put them on a
par with humans; two keys for me are: 1) are they suffering? ; 2) are they
asking for it. So far, my answer would be no, but that does not imply we
cannot invent a ethics of treating complex objects, and the day the two
factors will exist, we can start recognizing them as true persons as well.

Right now of course, this is a s-f discussion, while animal suffering on the
other hand, is very very real. Transhumanists generally prefer these s-f
discussions though.

Michel

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I suppose it would have to have an intentionality of its own -
>> though actor-network theorists would maintain that 'objects' have
>> intentionality of sorts in any case.  ...  A machine modified by someone who
>> relates to it in a craft modality soon takes on a personality of sorts.
>> Benjamin's collector and the "redemption" of objects come to mind here.
>>
>
> The issue has been dealt with some, but not very well.  Here is Wired on
> the topic:
> http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-02/st_essay
>
> There are the three laws of robots from Isaac Asimov...robots should obey,
> not hurt each other and not hurt humans...
>
> You are right of course that we tend to abuse our power; my own fear is
> that is the very reason why we will have problems with robots.
>
> Power plays a key role.  We are very used to being dominant.  It is only in
> old age or extreme illness we become dependent--and generally it isn't much
> liked.  I think it would be interesting to pose the question of robot rights
> to the severely disabled...especially the physically disabled.
>
> Colonialism to P2P is a spectrum on which these issues fall.  An essential
> element of P2P we often ignore is mutual respect.  But what does that
> entail?  Rights?  At least according to the U.S. political philosophical
> roots, rights are not granted; they are recognized.  When would people
> protect machines' rights?
>
> People protect animals...there are shelters.  What would a shelter for
> machines look like?  It is easy to imagine at a certain point, but what is
> hard to imagine is a threshold.  I don't want to see a lizard abused.  I'd
> offer it shelter as would many.  That's sort of low standard of emotion and
> interchange.  I know it knows pain, I suppose.  Pain is useful in an
> evolutionary sense, so I'm sure robots would get it reasonably quickly.
> Their tolerances would of course be set higher.  But maybe a mosquito feels
> pain and I would not offer it shelter, nor a small fish.
>
> Soon (probably this year) sythesized life will be created.  Similar issues
> will start to apply.  What if we could build (through synthetic biology)
> life forms as sophisticated as a lizard.  Would these be held to different
> standards of what it is to be living?  The same questions could arise when
> people are augmented by machines.  Let's say 30% of a brain could be
> replaced by a computer.  Would we hold that to be an individual.  One thinks
> of Stephen Hawking...clearly human...but how do we know?  Imagine his speech
> synthesizer saying Hawking like things without the mangled body attached.
> There are interesting questions of threshold.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100104/266b717f/attachment.html>