Could a Highly Sophisticated Robot be a Full-Fledged Person with Conscious Mental States?
Could a Highly Sophisticated Robot be a Full-Fledged Person with Conscious Mental States?
Make it 5 page Format…
• No title page is needed; just give the title of your paper, your name, student number on the first page
• 5-7 pages (1,500-2,000 words) in length
• 12 point font, double-spaced
• Your paper may not require any references (this may depend on which topic you choose), but, if there are any, I suggest you put them at the end of your paper. (You may use any standard format for this – just make sure the reference is detailed enough for the grader to check it if necessary.)
• Any Internet sources used must be cited, with complete address, as follows: <http://www.search.yahoo.com/…
Suggested Topics
Write your discussion essay on one of the topics below, or some other topic approved by the Prof.
1) Could a Highly Sophisticated Robot be a Full-Fledged Person with Conscious Mental States?
Would it be correct to say that a highly advanced, sophisticated robot/computer (like Data, for example, in the TV series: Star Trek: The Next Generation) that can exhibit all of the complex behaviors of human beings, would be a person? In other words, would it be correct to say that such a robot actually has thoughts, beliefs, desires, sensations, and other mental states that human beings have, and that it would, in fact, be conscious, just as human beings are?[There is an episode in the TV series in which an inquiry is held to answer these questions about Data, and that it would be wrong to destroy Data.]
Two readings are especially relevant to this topic and both are on the website The Mind Project The Mind Project – (to get this, Just Google “The Mind Project”).The first is “Artificial Intelligence: Can a Machine Think?”and thesecond readingis “The Turing Test”. The latter discusses the test of whether something is conscious, proposed by the great English mathematician Alan Turing, that has come to be known as “Turing’s test of consciousness”. Needless to say, since this is a much-discussed issue, you may find other usefulsources online.
2) Thomas Nagel’s Essay “What Is It Like to Be A Bat?”
Explain and critically discuss Nagel’s central thesisthatmental states, by their verynature,have a subjective aspect or character that can never be fully captured or explained by science, that is, by a purely physical, scientific, theory of how the brain functions.You can getNagel’s article at this address:https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/nagel_nice.html
The crux of Nagel’s argument is contained in passages likethe following:
“For if the facts of experience—facts about what it is like for the experiencing organism—are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism. The latter is a domain of objective facts par excellence— the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view and by individuals with differing perceptual systems. There are no comparable imaginative obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge about bat neurophysiology by human scientists, and intelligent bats or Martians might learn more about the human brain than we ever will.”
3) John Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought Experiment in response to the functionalist theory of mind. If you chosethis topic, you must explain Searle’s thought experiment briefly, but clearly, and then critically evaluate it in detail. The best place to get started is tolookat the module“Searle and the Chinese Room Argument”, which is on the website The Mind Project.
4) Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument”, as it is called, against physicalist theories of mind in his article “What Mary Didn’t Know”. To get this article just Google the author and title, or go to: http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/Jackson.p…At the heart of Jackson’s argument is an interesting thought experiment thatyou must explain and discuss in your essay.
5) The Nature of Personal Identity:
“What Makes You You?” This topic is about whatphilosophers refer to as “personal identity”. We all believe that we persist through time, despite the fact that our properties change a lot over the course of our lives.So, this seems to raise the obvious question: what is it that “preserves our identity” across time? What is it that is responsible for me being identical to that newborn baby that cameinto existence so many years ago?
If you wish to write your discussion essay on this very puzzling topic, you could start with a pieceby Tim Urban, “What Makes You You?”, which is on Urban’s wonderful website Wait, But Why. This reading is enough to get you started on the issue. (If you wish to bring other readingsinto your discussionyou may, but you don’t have to.) [ You can get the reading by Urban, “What Makes You You?”at this web address: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you…. ]
6) How Should the Relationship between Science and Religion be Characterized? Are they incompatible?Do they have different subject matters?Do they complement one another?
It is often taken for granted that there is a basic conflict between science and religion. One defender of this view is the famous (or perhaps better to say, infamous)evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. (See Reading 25: “The Improbability of God”in our list of Topics and Readings)
By contrast, the late Harvard paleontologist,Stephen Jay Gould,argues in his essay,“Nonoverlapping Magisteria”(Reading 24 in our Topics and Readings), that there is no fundamental conflict between science and religion because they concern quite different subject matters, because they havedifferentgoals. A somewhat similar view is defended bythe philosopher Tim Crane, in his paper“Mystery and Evidence” (New York Times, Sept. 5, 2010, availableonline at: https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/mystery-and-evidence/ )
Which of these opposing views do you think is closerto the truth and why?
7) The Prospects of Being Able to Communicate with Intelligent Aliens.
There are two ways of thinking about the prospects of being able to understand and communicate with intelligent aliens (assuming that they exist) andwe were ever to come into contact with them. The first is that aliens arelikely to be so different from us that communication and understanding would be next to impossible. The second view is that,given that we inhabit the same world, and intelligence presupposesor involvesan accurate understanding of that world, there will be a basis for understanding and communication. Which of these two views do you think is more plausible? Defend your view as best you can by argument.
A good reading to look at for this topic is: “Why Extraterrestrial Life May Not Seem Entirely Alien, by Cambridge zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, availableonline at: https://www.quantamagazine.org/arik-kershenbaum-on-why-alien-life-may-be-like-life-on-earth-20210318/
You could then look at some of the other readings on this issue in the list of Topics and Readings for our course.
Evaluation of Your Paper
Your essay will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria (The percentages are only approximate):
20% – Presentation of your ideas, e.g., writing style, organization, clarity of expression
30% – Strength of your arguments and analyses of the issue
30% – Creativity in addressing the issue
20% – Overall understanding of the issue being discussed
Requirements: 1600 words | .doc file
Answer preview for the paper on ‘Could a Highly Sophisticated Robot be a Full-FledgedPerson with Conscious Mental States?‘
APA 1827 words
Click the purchase button below to download the full answer…….