It is a staple of science fiction to tell a tale in which artificial intelligences must struggle to attain equal rights with humans. It is also commonplace to recognize that, if a human being uploads their consciousness to a machine, the rights are carried with that consciousness.
People find it much easier to accept that an artificial intelligence deserves rights when that intelligence inhabits a body. This is, of course, a natural by-product of the way our brain interprets other humans as moral agents - our moral sense evolved to recognize other humans as deserving of rights.
When speculating about a consciousness being uploaded from its originating human body to a machine, we usually assume that either the body is then rendered effectively comatose (a shell or doll, so to speak) thus removing moral obligations to the body, or we assume that the consciousness is copied to the machine while also remaining in the body, creating two beings each deserving of moral consideration.
I would like to consider the former situation - suppose that a human consciousness is uploaded to a machine and the body then retains its neural ability to regulate breathing, heartbeat, and other unconscious brain functions, but does not keep memories or even acquired skills. Is the body then truly no longer deserving of moral consideration?
Shouldn't we then treat this body as a somewhat comatose individual? In this case, this "uninhabited" body may very well relearn motor skills and language as an infant would (alright, neuroplasticity in adults is much lower than in infants, so it could relearn these things as a developmentally challenged infant would), then it might proceed to develop another new personality. Should we dismiss this possibility outright and simply treat this body as a shell?
I think these ideas certainly merit consideration, but are highly unlikely to be resolved until such time as we actually develop some form of consciousness-uploading technology.
Additionally, the primary source for my thinking about these ideas is the series Dollhouse which, near the end of season 1, poses the question of whether or not the mind has an obligation to the body.
Clearly, of course, all this presupposes that mind and body are, in fact, separable in some meaningful sense, which I believe to be a reasonable idea but clearly not yet supported by evidence.
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2009
Sunday, January 27, 2008
A Truly Horrible Super-Power
A week or so ago, I was thinking as I tried to sleep. For some reason, superhero role-playing games came into my head and I started to think of an interesting character to play if I ever get the chance again.
The fairly cliché character who is afraid of their own power came to mind, and as usual I decided to put my own twist on it by taking it to real extremes.
I wanted to play a character who was not new to their power, no longer surprised by it, but who has been so traumatized by their power's effects that they really hate to use it. Of course, for this to make sense, the power would have to be truly horrific to watch or experience.
More difficult than simply an excruciating power, it had to be one which might actually be useful to a party of characters and which could be considered balanced in-game, so this basically eliminated large-scale blanket powers like making everyone in a 5-mile radius suddenly become severely schizophrenic.
The power I came up with was as follows:
The power is used through application of will on a specific person who is relatively nearby and concentration and line-of-sight must be maintained until it is completed.
Upon activation, the target begins having their blood systematically replaced by stomach acid, starting at their venous capillaries near their extremities and moving inward through their veins to their torso and finally their heart.
I imagine that this would be quite disgusting and painful to watch. First they would scream in pain as every nerve ending in their body simultaneously began dissolving. The next thing to happen would be their skin becoming loose and sliding down their flesh (I think skin takes a little longer to dissolve than some internal tissues), as skin separates from muscles internally. Next their limbs would fall limp and their bones would begin to disarticulate as tendons are separated from bone and flesh begins to dissolve. About here we would probably begin seeing pieces of the skin dissolve and they would be unable to maintain a standing position.
Next, I think, their screaming would stop as the stomach acid reaches the inside of their heart and they die, but their body continues to dissolve over the next few minutes until they are basically left as a pile of bones and pieces of partially dissolved flesh in a pool of blood and stomach acid.
Like I said, this would probably be pretty traumatizing to watch and any moral human being who knew they were the cause of this would try to avoid it almost pathologically from then on.
Of course, I haven't done any medical research to see how long any of this would take or even if I've got the basic order of things right, but since I'm not going to be playing in a superhero game anytime soon, I don't really see the need.
The fairly cliché character who is afraid of their own power came to mind, and as usual I decided to put my own twist on it by taking it to real extremes.
I wanted to play a character who was not new to their power, no longer surprised by it, but who has been so traumatized by their power's effects that they really hate to use it. Of course, for this to make sense, the power would have to be truly horrific to watch or experience.
More difficult than simply an excruciating power, it had to be one which might actually be useful to a party of characters and which could be considered balanced in-game, so this basically eliminated large-scale blanket powers like making everyone in a 5-mile radius suddenly become severely schizophrenic.
The power I came up with was as follows:
The power is used through application of will on a specific person who is relatively nearby and concentration and line-of-sight must be maintained until it is completed.
Upon activation, the target begins having their blood systematically replaced by stomach acid, starting at their venous capillaries near their extremities and moving inward through their veins to their torso and finally their heart.
I imagine that this would be quite disgusting and painful to watch. First they would scream in pain as every nerve ending in their body simultaneously began dissolving. The next thing to happen would be their skin becoming loose and sliding down their flesh (I think skin takes a little longer to dissolve than some internal tissues), as skin separates from muscles internally. Next their limbs would fall limp and their bones would begin to disarticulate as tendons are separated from bone and flesh begins to dissolve. About here we would probably begin seeing pieces of the skin dissolve and they would be unable to maintain a standing position.
Next, I think, their screaming would stop as the stomach acid reaches the inside of their heart and they die, but their body continues to dissolve over the next few minutes until they are basically left as a pile of bones and pieces of partially dissolved flesh in a pool of blood and stomach acid.
Like I said, this would probably be pretty traumatizing to watch and any moral human being who knew they were the cause of this would try to avoid it almost pathologically from then on.
Of course, I haven't done any medical research to see how long any of this would take or even if I've got the basic order of things right, but since I'm not going to be playing in a superhero game anytime soon, I don't really see the need.
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