{"id":770,"date":"2019-01-01T12:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T12:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=770"},"modified":"2019-01-01T12:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T12:24:00","slug":"would-you-kick-a-turing-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/01\/would-you-kick-a-turing-robot\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Kick A Turing Robot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I teach cognitive science<\/a> and we discuss the Turing Test, I point out that the Turing Test<\/a> is not a trick or a game. It is a scientific research programme (reverse-engineering) for explaining how the mind works, by designing a system that can do everything that a real person with a mind can do \u2013 so much so that it is indistinguishable (for a lifetime) from a real person with a mind to a real person with a mind.<\/p>\n

But to bring it home to the students what it really means to pass the Turing Test, I pick out someone in the class, midway through the course, when we all know one another, and ask everyone to imagine that I now reveal to them that this person is in fact a robot who was created in MIT 4 years ago. My question is: would they now feel that it was all right to kick that person? Almost everyone always says no, it would not. And then I ask them why not? And they say that they have no way of knowing that it would not hurt that person, even if they were a robot. I then point out to them that they have no way of knowing with one another either, and that that\u2019s the whole point of Turing indistinguishability.<\/p>\n

And then I ask them: would they kick their dogs? And if not, why is it all right to do incomparably worse to countless calves, cows, pigs, chickens \u2013 and, yes, dogs<\/a> and cats \u2013 every minute of every day<\/a> in order to keep enjoying our carnivore pleasures rather than just satisfying our herbivore needs?<\/p>\n

Scholars and scientists are becoming increasingly involved in this question for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. Since the epochal book of Peter Singer<\/a> in 1975, not only philosophers but social scientists, biologists, environmental scientists and food scientists have generated a sizeable empirical and theoretical literature on all aspects of human\/animal relations, culminating in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness<\/a> by a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge in 2012:<\/p>\n

We declare the following: The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective [feeling] states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds , and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, animals feel. To give an idea of what is at issue, I would like to try to reduce the problem of the human treatment of non-human animals to a few basics that most of us can agree about. The first and most important one is that humans are animals too. The second is that all animals with nervous systems feel. They are not insensate lumps of matter. The third is that ethics and law \u2013 what is right and wrong to do \u2013 are predicated on the existence of feeling: In an insensate world there would still be natural laws (laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism) but no such thing as morality, or laws of conduct, or right or wrong, because if nothing feels, nothing matters.<\/p>\n

Now, although there is no suffering that we inflict on non-human animals that we do not inflict on humans, the vast difference is that the suffering we inflict on humans is seen as wrong by most decent people worldwide \u2014 and it is also against the law. Not so for animals. They are not protected by the law<\/a> and most of us are not only unaware of their agony in slaughterhouses<\/a> but we are actively sustaining it<\/a> as consumers. Most of us believe (1) that meat is obtained humanely, and (2) that it is necessary for our survival and health. Both of these beliefs are profoundly, tragically<\/a> and demonstrably<\/a> wrong. Reducing and eventually abolishing the gratuitous suffering that humans are inflicting on animals is hence one of the most urgent moral imperatives of our age.<\/p>\n

But even normal human beings have needs \u2013 indeed so do non-human animals. For example, they have to eat. And in nature, eating always entails a conflict of interest between predator and prey. Carnivores eat other animals, even though their prey feel and suffer, because otherwise the carnivores suffer. They cannot survive otherwise. So there is the familiar Darwinian struggle for survival between predators and prey.<\/p>\n

Herbivores have to eat too, and they too are predators, but their prey \u2013 plants \u2014 though they are likewise living organisms, are not feeling organisms. They do not have nervous systems. They are living matter, but insensate matter. So the survival needs of carnivores necessarily entail that they cause suffering to other feeling creatures, whereas the survival needs of herbivores do not.<\/p>\n

What about our own species? We are omnivores, capable of thriving healthily on either a carnivorous or a purely herbivorous diet. Our ancestors no doubt ate meat, because they had to: there was not enough herbivorous fare for survival. But then we invented agriculture, and it became possible, in principle, to thrive, healthily, on purely herbivorous fare. However, we have not yet taken that route, and the question is why?<\/p>\n

The worldwide March Against Slaughterhouses<\/a> on June 14 2014 is intended to open the eyes and hearts of decent people worldwide, to the enormity of the agony<\/a> of innocent, helpless creatures in slaughterhouses, to the fact that their suffering is unnecessary, and, to the great urgency of adopting laws to protect them<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I teach cognitive science and we discuss the Turing Test, I point out that the Turing Test is not a trick or a game. It is a scientific research programme (reverse-engineering) for explaining how the mind works, by designing a system that can do everything that a real person with a mind can do … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Would You Kick A Turing Robot?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}