If people are just complex machines, what does that suggest about the moral status of machines.?

Question

Cont: Q: Could I be committing murder every time I turn off my computer? Explain your answer.

Chap 3 of About Philosophy Auth Robert P. Wolff 8th Edition

Answer 1

If machines are just like simplified people, why can they not express their point of view? Having a point of view *that one can express* is the way we assign humanity in practice -- remember, they unplugged Terri Schiavo ... and it was the right thing to do (in my estimation at least).

Answer 2

Okay lets carry your analogy further. Would God be committing murder if he takes the life of a human?

Its hard to define machine in terms that would allow humans to fit the definition. Bear in mind that scientist are only now trying to develop A.I. that are built for robots designed like insects. You look at the efficiency of a beehive or an ant colony, and already its more complex then any A.I. And your computer probably doesn't have A.I. either.

There is also another characteristic that separates A.I. from humans. A.I. does not have awareness of its thought. Its responses are programmed, and it has no understanding of the "why". When A.I. starts pondering the question of God and the reason for its being, and when it starts to question its own programming, that's when I'd say we've created a machanical soul.

Answer 3

The fallacy of morals is the presumption that they're invariants. Morals cannot be "derived from first principles", they just are, by popular opinion. For example, killing a man to eat his flesh is considered morally abhorrent, but we kill animals all the time for this purpose. I'm sure if cows could philosophize, they'd find it morally repugnant being killed for human consumption.

Pragmatically speaking, computers today are merely tools. Turning of a computer is no different from turning off an electric drill when we're done with the job. Is it morally repugnant to turn off an electric drill? However, only the same kind of people who refused to believe that man could fly or that we've landed on the moon don't believe that someday we'll have sentient robots. Then "turning off" such a sentient robot irrevocably will be murder. Some will refuse to believe it murder because they will have posited that such machines cannot have souls. Differences in opinion will be inevitable, but one thing for sure, the rarified study of philosophy won't quell this controversy.

Answer 4

first of all your question assumes the reader believes the statement that humans are complicated machines. So fault one, but lets play along anyway. Murder is the unlawfully taking of a life by force. A computer has no life as compared the a human. it has no ability to self propel, no ability to reproduce, no ability to innate anything with out being prompted to do so. There fore no life. Now the computer does have an off on button, so if it is equipped with this button the it's function is to turn it off and on correct? So you are not killing it. You are nearly interrupting power from the house or battery to enter the computer. The computer still has a capacitor on board which stores enough power to allow memory to remain in tact. So, even if the computer were alive, you are still not killing it by utilizing a function that is part of the computer.

Answer 5

The important distinction is that a computer has no will of its own. It takes input and stores it for future removal. If you put a light sensor, a motion sensor and give the computer legs and a will to avoid movement, then you start to have an interesting question. Basically, this is all an insect is. Is it wrong to kill an insect? Does an insect have a soul? Basically all an insect is, is a set of receptors and actuators. Scientests have developed robots almost as complex. If it is morally wrong to kill an insect, then it may become morally wrong to kill a computer, if that computer has been given a will of its own and the liberty to follow it.

Answer 6

Being human, the human being, the being that is the creator, has that judgment. The Judgment is negative and the Will is positive. If we are created to be a self for itself, and it has not followed that the machine is a made self made for itself, should it have been made for itself? We did not reflect our Judgment into it, only our Will. We do not know enough to reflect self consciousness into it, but we have enough knowledge to give it an automated Judgment and a purposed organ for a Will. Would that be enough to identify it as a living thing? No; It does not self reproduce its kind in the participles of its own being.

Answer 7

no. Machines are artificial, whereas the human is not. the human is entirely organic, and the machine is built from procured elements. humans are not. machines are man-made, and cannot be more. humans were made by God, and imitating that can NEVER create true life.....

but like Sonny in I, Robot, can something acquire the "bitter mote of a soul"? and in Diana Marcellas's Witch of Two Sons book, the Everlight finds herself after millennia of existing, and through LOVE, and understanding, becomes real....

so now, at present, no, you are not committing murder when you turn off the frakking computer.... it turns back on, you dolt, unlike a human, whose is dead for good when you kill them......

Answer 8

The basic difference is that humans are aware of being aware and machines are just 010101011 over and over so go ahead turn off your machine. It will return to "life" when you plug it back in.

Answer 9

Humans are sentient and sapient....The latter of which makes us homo-sapiens....A machine having these qualities has not yet been achieved in science. The apparatus in which the homo-sapien functions has machine-like qualities....Just as a robot has human-like qualities....Yet the two are not the same...

Answer 10

Not an equal comparison since people are not complex machines. People are cellular and spiritual.