My Third Sci Phi Show Minicast
Today's episode of The Sci Phi Show podcast is my essay about Edmund Furse and his attempt to adapt his traditional view of Christianity to fit robots into it. In discussing this I go into topics of non-human people, and the word "mindkind" in place of "mankind".
(MP3 link)
Hello. I'm Matt Arnold. Welcome to Suspension of Belief. This Episode: A Religion For Robots.
In the show notes, I'll link to a URL of an address by Christian
cognitive scientist Edmund Furse. This is a totally straight-faced
explanation of how robots, in his opinion, will be able to do things
like sin, or communicate with God. At one point, Furse says, quote:
..."give us this day our daily bread" might have to be replaced by
"give us our regular electric feed".
Unquote. Robot religion comes off as funny at first because it mixes
two sets of stories we treat with different kinds of seriousness. The
ones we get in science fiction, and the ones some of us get in church.
It wouldn't seem so jarring if instead of Robby the Robot from
Forbidden Planet, we imagine Haley Joel Osment as David from
Spielberg/Kubrick's film A.I. Furse also says, quote:
...It seems to me that Christ died for all persons, male, female,
human and robot. A second argument might be that a robot is unlikely
to be an icon of Christ at the altar, but I suppose that priestly
robots could grow long hair and a beard if desired.
Unquote. A noble sentiment indeed. Notice that Furse says "persons"
rather than "humans". He might find it fruitful to use the word
Mindkind. This is a word I picked up from the novel Diaspora by Greg
Egan, as well as from the online Orion's Arm setting. These depict
civilizations in which the clades and sub-species who are descended
from humans, bonobos, elephants, etc. have to accommodate each other--
even software citizens that don't need a body. A mind is all that
matters. "Mindkind" is not as sexist, and especially speciesist, as
"mankind."
The culture of fantasy and science fiction is saturated with non-human
characters who are entitled to full personhood (and others such as
orcs who are not and therefore can be slaughtered by the protagonists
without remorse, which tells you a lot about the authors), so one
would think we of all people would have realized by now that Bones'
accusation that Spock is "inhuman" is pointless. As Eliezer Yudkowski
wrote, all that matters morally is-- not to be human-- to be "humane."
Anyone who might be invented in a laboratory during the upcoming
century, and has a mind, could be a person regardless of what species
it is. "Mindkind" instead of "mankind", "person" instead of "human" is
an attempt to expand the circle of empathy, not contract it to say who
is inhuman. "Mindkind" is also effective in that it acknowledges the
difference between lifeforms that have minds and those that do not.
The commonalities between most moral systems, regardless of their
stated justifications, serve to make room for the intentions and
desires of minds other than one's own. We can't respect the intentions
and feelings of life forms that don't have any. The suffering of a
victim is the property of a mind. Wherever there are intentions and
feelings, we must make accommodation for them next to that of everyone
else.
To go back to the paper by Furse, Quote:
Could a robot steadfastly set its face against the will of God. Could
a robot continuously know what is the right thing to do, and yet
choose to go against it. Could a robot ultimately choose to reject God
and all goodness, and desire to be cut off from God and his grace for
all eternity? Surely a robot being so knowledgeable would choose a
path of goodness. But we have to allow for the possibility of free
choice, and in allowing the robot this possibility, we also have to
allow for it to ultimately to go to Hell.
Unquote. You heard that right-- he seriously entertained the idea of
robots in hell. I can hardly blame you for chuckling, but since I'm
the kind of guy who thinks death and taxes are engineering problems,
my own views of the future would be met with a similar chuckle, so
there's a humility check involved. I'm convinced there are going to be
other species in this solar system, created by us. I don't agree with
Furse's metaphysical claims, but since I expect machine intelligences
to disagree with each other just like we do, I honestly see no reason
so far why religion would be less appealing to some of them than it is
to us. On the other hand, the invention of artificial intelligence
would prove that the conscious mind is not a magical object. So you'd
think a robot couldn't fail to notice that.
I'm happy to have discovered Furse, because he's interestingly unique:
the serious traditional religionist who simultaneously takes seriously
radical future change in what it means to be human. Someone who cares
about artificial people, and someone who cares whether they can
fulfill rituals by having beards. There are plenty of luddites
claiming it's immoral to upgrade ourselves, but you don't hear them
trying to come up with sociological frameworks for having to deal with
other species once they're here. As long as somebody's going to be in
one of these religions and not abandon it, they are eventually going
to adapt to the issues that Furse describes. His future counterpart
has been depicted in many science fiction novels baptizing aliens and
robots. That prediction come true in him, and Furse will not be the
last.
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