Back in December, Peter Singer and Agata Sagan wrote a piece in the Guardian arguing on behalf of robot rights. I took exception here as SHS, my headline being, “Robots Will Never be People and Should Never Have Rights.” Singer and Sagan have now taken exception to my exception in the humanist magazine, Free Inquiry (no link), with “No Rights for Robots? Never?” (June/July 2010).
The piece begins by exploring questions about the potential dangers, and the use of robots as servants and performing sex duties. In the second half, they get to the nub of the question, claiming that the “movement for robot rights” would begin once robots were “designed to have humanlike capacities that might incidentally give rise to consciousness.” And that’s where I come in. From the piece:
Wesley J. Smith asserts that it is “fanciful” to think that robots will ever be conscious. They will, he says, never be people and should never have rights. Never? How could Smith know that? Because it seems, “We are much more than than mere complex machines. We are alive, for example. Robots would not be.” Unfortunately, Smith doesn’t tell us what it is that distinguishes living things from non living ones. [Discussion of Frankenstein omitted.] Now scientists have already created the basic components of living matter, and creating a whole living organism may be possible.
That might be an interesting discussion to have, but it is a deflection of the point and irrelevant to the question at hand. In the original article, Singer/Sagan did not discuss the engineering of living beings, but of the putative rights of “intelligent machines,” e.g., robots. Then, comes the attack on human exceptionalism:
Smith’s confidence that this will never happen comes from his dogmatic belief in human exceptionalism. Obviously, the fact that we are alive is not enough to make us exceptional. Smith appears to think that it is, instead, the fact that we have free will and robots could not, or not in the same sense. He also seems to think that a robot could not be conscious. “If a robot could program itself into greater and greater data processing capacities, that doesn’t make it truly sentient, just sophisticated.” Nor could a robot learn in the way that we do: “Human behavior arises from a complex interaction of rationality, emotions, abstract thought, experience, education, etc. That would never be true of robots.
Behind all this appears to lie a denial of the possibility that the human brain could be merely a very complex machine.
They did not want to go there. If our brains are complex machines, that implies a designer, or a least, a purpose, which is verboten in Singer-style atheistic materialism. So they quickly pivot and accuse me of religious motives:
It is clear that some kind of religious view is motivating Smith’s hostility to the idea of conscious robots. If human beings are divine creations, then we could be more than very complex machines. We might, for instance, have that mysterious thing that religious people call a “soul,” given to us by God. But if life on Earth began from the chance interaction of molecules and millions of years of evolution did the rest, then it is hard to see why consciousness, or even the capacity for decision making that we call free will, should be in principle, beyond any machine, no matter how sophisticated.
How disappointing for someone of Singer’s status to slip into that intellectually lazy crutch of arguing against my supposed secret religious purpose, when I never brought religion up, and indeed, think it irrelevant to the question at hand. Moreover, the rest of the the writers’ argument is nonsensical. The machines in question would not have just happened into existence via random natural selection. Rather, they would have been created by us, and designed (most likely) for the specific purpose of mimicking human consciousness and free will. That argument seems to support my argument, not theirs.
Singer/Sanger conclude:
We find it hard to understand why anyone would feel the need to deny the very possibility of an intelligent computer, with as much intellect and free will as we have. Who knows where science will take us in fifty years?
I don’t have a “need” to deny it. It offends my sense of intellectual integrity. Machine consciousness would be a fiction. No matter how sophisticated, what appeared to be free will rationality and consciousness would be merely a direct result of programming installed by that exceptional species that people like Singer so dogmatically and ironically deny is special.
But here is what is really going on beneath the nonsense of robot rights. Peter Singer is very clear about his intention to destroy Western civilization’s focus on the worth of the human individual in order to replace it with crass utilitarianism in which animals and intelligent machines receive “equal consideration” in determining the propriety of actions and policies. He is, then, out to obliterate universal human rights. Human exceptionalism stands athwart that agenda. Thus, on this fundamental point Peter Singer and Wesley J. Smith completely agree: The issue of our times is human exceptionalism. That now engaged philosophical contest will determine the morality and politics of Western Civilization in the 21st Century.
May 18th, 2010 | 10:27 pm
Smith vs Singer: The Archangel Michael vs. The Beast, round 2010
May 18th, 2010 | 10:38 pm
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May 19th, 2010 | 3:06 am
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May 19th, 2010 | 8:11 am
[...] Singer Versus Smith on “Robot Rights” and Human Exceptionalism [...]
May 19th, 2010 | 8:12 am
[...] Singer Versus Smith on “Robot Rights” and Human Exceptionalism [...]
May 19th, 2010 | 11:13 am
Yeah, but which is which, safepres? ;)
Seriously, as an old Isaac Asimov fan, I must say this robot rights “issue” is at best silly and at worst a smoke screen for an animal rights argument. Even Asimov’s robots were considered to be tools, and were intrinsically subservient to mankind. Many of the “I, Robot” stories were ways of illustrating the issues that Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” created.
The irony here is that many of the machines we’ve developed have replaced domestic animals. Cars replaced horses. Tractors replaced oxen. And the most advanced robots we have do work that humans would find dangerous or boring, like assembly line work or bomb defusing. That’s their value. A robot with human rights wouldn’t have any value to us, so why would we build one?
May 19th, 2010 | 12:05 pm
Singer’s status? Oh my gosh, just because he’s loud?
For starters, there is a difference between natural selection and abiogenesis. Smith makes many errors in science.
A brain is complex so it should have a designer and/or purpose?
This makes no sense to me, and presumably other readers, and should be defended or explained.
*There is substantial scientific evidence that atoms can be generated in the quantum states of a vacuum, and matter and energy are inter-convertible. Chemicals can accumulate from the atoms under intense/extreme conditions from which they initially interconverted, these chemicals can then aggregate even into pre-biotic systems (regenerating chemical cycles, etc), pre-biotic systems can begin to propagate as thermodynamic winners and chemically evolve, eventually the characteristics of cellular life emerge from ‘more evolved’ pre-biotic/chemical systems, and later we have organisms that evolve. Some evolve high functioning brains. “Time” for testing many conditions and microstates is a necessity.
How, then, does a complex brain imply a designer, Smith, or even a purpose in light of this evidence-based alternative? I don’t see it. Did this designer or purpose also include the Neanderthals, of which we recently sequenced their genome (how well it’s sequenced is another matter)?
*I will not lay out the experimental evidence supporting my summaries, here. I leave it to readers to spend many years studying the experimental evidence supporting my poor summary.
Watching the loud peanut gallery (neither holds a PhD, both are focused on self-marketing rather than quality scholarship, research, understanding, and discovery) quibble over different definitions of consciousness (without confronting this reality) is really amusing for a coffee break. While these great apes mutually engage each other’s juvenile intellectual self-stimulation/gratification, we’ll let the real thinkers and innovators solve the actual problems we presently face. Hmm, I wonder how many children will die today from TB…
May 19th, 2010 | 6:03 pm
There is no a priori reason to deny that, perhaps one day, robots will be sufficiently complicated to produce consciousness. Clearly, if the robot had enough, say silicon chips, with enough interconnections between them, it’s at least in principle feasible.
Why should we fear this? These future robots may be conscious, may supercede us in information processing, in terms of say, speed, and the amount of data stored, but they would owe their creation to us!
There seems to be this common theme, wesley, that we must do everything possible to thwart any being from possibly entering the “human exceptionalism” turf. this fear you seem to have seems unwarranted. If humans genuinely are exceptional, nothing will change that fact. If we’re not, or if say, robots do supercede us cognitively, then we should be mature enough to accept that fact.
I simply don’t see the need to fear other entities, whether animal, or artificially created beings, stopping us from having the same rights we always had (minus the alledged “right” to kill other animals). We’ll still be what we are. humans are amazing, but if we have to share the stage with other animals, or even robots, I think that the stage is big enough for all.
May 19th, 2010 | 7:13 pm
David, or someone, please tell me what is the evidence that “the characteristics of cellular life emerge from ‘more evolved’ pre-biotic/chemical systems, and later we have organisms that evolve. Some evolve high functioning brains. ” ??
Isn’t that just the best theory we have right now for how humans came to be the way that we are, I mean the one that doesn’t involve aliens, space robots, or something outside of material existence that we can’t comprehend?
I mean, I don’t really see how it is any better than aliens. No joke. Maybe it makes less sense, actually, as the only evidence that could stongly support the way you describe it would require billions of years to replicate?
Please, explain this to me.
May 19th, 2010 | 8:33 pm
Well, Terror, even if our planet was seeded with alien life, that alien life had to come from somewhere. At some point, it’s certain that cellular life emerged from ‘mere’ chemicals.
And scientists don’t claim that they can turn chemicals into organisms, so I don’t see why they’d have to replicate that. They should, though, replicate their observations about the early earth. If you’re going to claim that scientists should try to recreate life, then that applies to any creation hypothesis – maybe scientists should recreate the six days of Genesis before we accept that?
May 19th, 2010 | 9:00 pm
Well, David, Peter Singer isn’t worried about children dying from TB because unless they are useful by his definition of utility, they aren’t worth the effort. And that’s what this discussion is about. Human exceptionalism. Every human matters. Just because he/she is human.
May 20th, 2010 | 2:06 pm
Denise,
I, too, wonder if Singer cares, because I don’t know how he could make $$ off them. He has a pretty clear track record of borrowing a page right out of Ann Coulter’s playbook – the more inflamatory, the more $$.
I sometimes wonder if we, society, are human utility, translation – $$$, for Singer’s work.
holyterror,
Really good question. Right now, we just have experimental evidence suggesting possibilities and indicating phenomena that can occur, whether that ACTUALLY occuried, who knows? The difference being, we have evidence of these possibilities, we do not have evidence for aliens. If these possibilities are what actually occured, and there is evidence suggesting it’s possible – how would design or purpose be involved, I don’t see it? However, Josh is correct – where did the aliens come from? And, yes, I think time is a HUGE factor in evolution – both biological and chemical. The research I would refer you to is done by scientists starting with Stanley Miller(chemical generation), and Jack Szostak (Nobel laureate) (chemical aggregation/pre-biotic systems) and Gunther Wachterschasen (spellings?) (chemical pre-biotic systems), etc, etc. Upon the development of the first life forms, the rest is evolution via natural selection and genetic drift. The subject heading would be “abiogenesis”. For a starting author, I would recommend Robert Hazen. Lawrence Krauss has a lecture on the “pre-big bang”, if you will. It’s called “A Universe From Nothing” and should be on You-Tube. There are some weirdos, like Sydney Fox, whom the field has tried to distance; he claimed his peptides had “consciousness” (no exaggeration).
Further, they really aren’t theories right now, they are just hypotheses, IMO.
It would take weeks for me to spell out the experiments, books are a better start (Robert Hazen) – especially with my writing style.
May 20th, 2010 | 7:49 pm
“No matter how sophisticated, what appeared to be free will rationality and consciousness would be merely a direct result of programming installed by that exceptional species that people like Singer so dogmatically and ironically deny is special.”
Intelligent Design theory claims that all life (on Earth) was designed (Stephen Meyer likes to say genetically programmed) by one or more beings of exceptional intelligence. If true, then by Wesley J. Smith’s definition we are nothing more than sophisticated organic robots who suffer from the delusion of having free will.
May 21st, 2010 | 12:21 am
R Hampton,
You really shouldn’t misquote Stephen Meyer.
According to materialists/evolutionists we are also “genetically programed” – only it is by random chance/selfish genes alone. No free will there.
You need to do better than that.
May 21st, 2010 | 3:14 am
Without “religious motivations,” why should we recognize ANY rights?
I guess that because those religious motivations are lacking, we are left with so many ridiculous arguments of equality between humans and animals …..and robots. When there aren’t religious motivations for the rights of mankind because of their relation to each other and their creator, the idea of rights loses all meaning and instead becomes a catchphrase for an assortment of political beliefs.
May 21st, 2010 | 9:27 am
It’s clearly not true that Singer wants to “obliterate universal human rights”. He merely argues that in certain carefully considered situations, that many of the human rights that we take for granted should also be afforded to other sentient beings. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 9:47 am
Ronnie: By definition, if every human being is not equal, and indeed some can be killed or used instrumentally, universal human rights are destroyed. So yes ye does. Besides, he doesn’t believe in fixed rights per se.
May 21st, 2010 | 2:39 pm
Daniel
When describing life as being genetically programmed, “materialists/evolutionists” speak metaphorically whereas ID proponents speak literally. In other words, one views life as the result of natural causes whereas the other views life as the “direct result of programming installed by that exceptional species.”
May 21st, 2010 | 3:54 pm
Wesley J. Smith: Yes, on reflection, you are correct. When I made my comment, I (mistakenly) was only thinking about ‘normal’ humans with standard mental faculties.
May 21st, 2010 | 9:12 pm
Singer, apparently, thinks that he has a right that violates informal logic: the right to hurl ad hominem attacks at those with whom he disagrees. After all, who cares whether someone has “religious motives”? It’s the arguments, not the motives, that count.
Moreover, Singer is a physicalist concerning the soul. But motives are beliefs that serve as a condition for human action. But beliefs are immaterial. Now, Singer may believe they are “caused” by physical states, and in this sense Singer would be a property dualist. But in that case, you can’t be blamed for your motive, since, though immaterial, it is the consequence of physical laws that “explains” away your liberty.
Singer uses the language of a metaphysics he denies in order to claim that the metaphysics is false.
May 24th, 2010 | 8:38 am
Francis Beckwith,
“It’s the arguments, not the motives, that count.”
True. Though the argument is founded on the motive. Singer wasn’t fallacious in what he said. Only then is your scruitiny justified.
May 27th, 2010 | 5:32 am
Smith: “They did not want to go there. If our brains are complex machines, that implies a designer, or a least, a purpose, which is verboten in Singer-style atheistic materialism.”
They did want to go there. Darwinian evolution is an excellent designer. The human brain is a bigger and better chimp brain, which in turn is a bigger and better version of some other creature’s brain, which in turn …
Beckwith writes, “Singer … thinks that he has a right … to hurl ad hominem attacks at those with whom he disagrees,” as he hurls an ad hominem attack at Singer. Denise and David join in on the fun.
Beckwith also says, “But beliefs are immaterial.” All mental activities are material. If you doubt me, destroy your brain and then try to hold a belief.
May 28th, 2010 | 1:43 am
[...] those who suggest that Smith is a marginal figure, be assured that he is not. He has debated Peter Singer on the issue of robot ethics, and co-authored books with Ralph Nader. My theory is [...]
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