COMMENSAL ISSUE 104

In response to Theo's reply in C103 may I say that my comment about the argument to support free will was put in because I could not understand Roger's accusation of 'Nazi' if he had actually read what I'd said. Of course, no argument could ever prove free will but I thought that I had 'supported' the idea.

To claim that there is no essential difference between a (presumed perfect) android and a human being is a perfectly valid position. Theo adds that "humans are born pre-programmed ... to enable them to live in communities ...(and)... to learn moral codes". What I still do not understand is why, under such determined conditions, those who offend community life and moral codes should not be chopped up for dog food. After all, Theo seems to imply that such people are worse than androids; and no-one would think twice about dismantling them if they malfunctioned. Thus I submit that compassion is both illogical and unnecessary in a determined being. Can anyone suggest a mechanism for its evolution?

Theo Todman à Anthony Owens (2^nd October 2000) : Thanks for your brief reply. As an even briefer response, I think where I would take issue with you is where you say "no-one would think twice about dismantling them (androids) if they malfunctioned". Well, maybe they wouldn't, but they should. Time was when people thought that animals were automata that couldn't feel pain, and treated them accordingly. We can never know for sure that animals do feel pain, but since they act as though they do, and the higher ones have the neurological equipment that looks sophisticated enough to enable them to, it seems the prudent policy to adopt to assume that they do indeed feel pain (just as I presume that you do, or, if I were a Nazi, would have reason to believe that Jews do - haven't we had that one before ?). The point of this is that if we did manage to create an android with sufficiently sophisticated neurological hardware (be it silicon or whatever) that acted as though it had hopes, fears, felt pain etc. then we would be prudent to assume that it did and treat it accordingly. This is along the lines of the Turing test - though I would take the hardware side of things to be important (as does John Searle with his Chinese Room) whereas it's irrelevant in a universal Turing machine. Hence, your reductio fails as far as I can see.

Theo

Anthony Owens à Theo Todman (4^th October 2000) : I am glad to say that I am sufficiently not Nazi to treat everything possessing life with great care, evicting wood-lice, beetles, double glazing salesmen and all to the garden, where I trust they will live out their lives, however disgusting they might be, in a completely chemical free environment. I even object to cut flowers; and only trim my hedges under protests from my neighbours.

The trouble is I'm a hypocrite: eating steak pies; pork; and chicken. Indeed, the majority of people have few qualms about dismantling these animals, or at least eating the result, so if that's all we are, where's the problem in turning criminals into dog food?

I'm sure a painless way of dismantling your super automata could be devised; that is if they are ever built. Why not start the world's first Automaton Rights Organisation: just in case?

Tony Owens

Theo Todman à Anthony Owens (5^th October 2000) : I almost missed the serious point in the item above, and thought our discussion was over.

You're right - most people don't like to think what they (or their proxies) do to animals - and we are irrationally ambiguous in our approach to pets and non-pets. I suspect our concern is for our feelings rather than theirs.

I think there are two complicating factors. We are partly in symbiosis, partly in competition with other species. We cannot adopt a universal "live and let live" policy - but where we can I think we should. Personally, I avoid gratuitously treading on snails and deliver the occasional gargantuan spider safely to the garden care of my patented catching device (a reconditioned tea-bag box). I'm less emotionally attached to slugs and crane flies - and in any case they don't have the convenient handles, or have bits that drop off, making their rescue more difficult.

My view on animal husbandry is that life in the wild is not a bed of roses, and domesticated species would not exist, certainly in the numbers they do, without human intervention. So, I would say that if an animal's life (albeit one cut short) is for it on balance worth living then that animal's treatment at human hands is justifiable. It has a number of free lunches in order to become lunch itself, so to speak.

More seriously, though, I would think it wrong to eat the highest species that are more self aware, given our opportunity for alternative sources that in any case taste nicer.

The bottom line in all this is that you seem to take a rigorously "speciesist" line, and assume that anyone who doesn't would be committed to treating objectionable humans in as cavalier a fashion as a speciesist would treat animals. I don't see that this is the case at all.

To restate what I perceive to be your argument :-

1. Androids are determined.
2. If we could make a perfect android, and humans are also determined, there would be no reason to prefer a human to an android.
3. Item 2 is a ridiculous state of affairs, so humans aren't determined.
4. In any case, we can dismantle a (perfect) android at will.
5. Hence if humans are determined, we would be able to dismantle humans (or at least bad ones) at will.
6. Item 5 is a bad state of affairs, so humans aren't determined.

As previously argued, I disagree that item 2 is a ridiculous state of affairs and disagree with you on item 4.

I'm still not sure what determinism's got to do with it, because if you are a speciesist, you'd prefer a human to an android even if both were determined, so the fact that you do so prefer humans is no proof that humans be deemed to have free will.

If I've got your argument wrong, could you re-state it in unambiguous form ?

Theo

Anthony Owens à Theo Todman (6^th October 2000) : In response to your assessment of my argument above; it is a model of brevity, but I am not trying to prove that humans are not determined, which I believe is impossible. Consequently both items 3 and 6 become irrelevant, and the argument would run :-

1. Androids are determined.
2. If we could make a perfect android, and humans are also determined, there would be no reason to prefer a human to an android.
3. We need have no qualms about dismantling a malfunctioning android.
4. It necessarily follows that if humans are determined we ought to have no qualms about dismantling malfunctioning humans, such as criminals.
5. Those who would deny item 4 are being illogical.
6. Therefore, those who would deny item 4 yet claim that humans are determined are capable of coming to illogical conclusions, and it follows that their opinions are unreliable.

In other words I am inviting an argument against the view that we should chop up criminals for dog food in the hope that it might demonstrate that an argument against determinism in humans is possible. I believe it may demonstrate that humans are either illogical or possess free will. To deny free will must therefore be the product of a mind which is demonstrably illogical.

Tony Owens

Theo Todman à Anthony Owens (8^th October 2000) : Thanks for clarifying matters. As previously argued, I would part company with you over (your) item 3 - ie. we would have to treat a perfect android with more respect (so we should chop up for dog-food neither perfect androids nor criminals). Also, you might need to argue more strongly that what sets us apart from androids is just that they are determined and we are (for the sake of argument) not - unless you define android perfection as being "human but determined".

Theo