Can Animals and Machines be Persons?
Title | Can Animals and Machines be Persons? PDF eBook |
Author | Justin Leiber |
Publisher | Hackett Publishing |
Pages | 102 |
Release | 1985-01-01 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 9780872200029 |
"Written in a lively and entertaining style, this little book, which deals with topics such as 'personhood,' animal rights, and artificial intelligence . . . makes some rather difficult philosophical points clear in an unpedantic fashion." -- M E Winston, Trenton State College
Humans, Animals, Machines
Title | Humans, Animals, Machines PDF eBook |
Author | Glen A. Mazis |
Publisher | State University of New York Press |
Pages | 289 |
Release | 2008-09-04 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0791477762 |
Examines the overlap and blurring of boundaries among humans, animals, and machines.
Can Animals Be Persons?
Title | Can Animals Be Persons? PDF eBook |
Author | Mark Rowlands |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 256 |
Release | 2019-04-23 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0190846046 |
Can animals be persons? To this question, scientific and philosophical consensus has taken the form of a resounding, 'No!' In this book, Mark Rowlands disagrees. Not only can animals be persons, many of them probably are. Taking, as his starting point, John Locke's classic definition of a person, as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself the same thinking thing, in different times and places," Rowlands argues that many animals can satisfy all of these conditions. A person is an individual in which four features coalesce: consciousness, rationality, self-awareness and other-awareness, and many animals are such individuals. Consciousness--something that is like to have an experience--is widely distributed through the animal kingdom. Many animals are capable of both causal and logical reasoning. Many animals are also self-aware, since a form of self-awareness is essentially built into the possession of conscious experience. And some animals are capable of a kind of awareness of the minds of others, quite independently of whether they possess a theory of mind. This is not just a book about animals, however. As well as being fascinating in their own right, animals, as Claude Levi-Strauss once put it, are "good to think." In this seamless interweaving of the empirical study of animal minds with philosophy and its history, this book makes a powerful case for the idea that reflection on animals allows us to better understand each of these four pillars of personhood, and so illuminates what means for any individual--animal or human--to be conscious, rational, self- and other-aware.
Humans, Animals, and Machines
Title | Humans, Animals, and Machines PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Lynch |
Publisher | |
Pages | 153 |
Release | 1998 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
God, Human, Animal, Machine
Title | God, Human, Animal, Machine PDF eBook |
Author | Meghan O'Gieblyn |
Publisher | Anchor |
Pages | 305 |
Release | 2022-07-12 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0525562710 |
A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
Bots and Beasts
Title | Bots and Beasts PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Thagard |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 307 |
Release | 2021-10-19 |
Genre | Computers |
ISBN | 026236588X |
An expert on mind considers how animals and smart machines measure up to human intelligence. Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts, Paul Thagard looks at how computers ("bots") and animals measure up to the minds of people, offering the first systematic comparison of intelligence across machines, animals, and humans. Thagard explains that human intelligence is more than IQ and encompasses such features as problem solving, decision making, and creativity. He uses a checklist of twenty characteristics of human intelligence to evaluate the smartest machines--including Watson, AlphaZero, virtual assistants, and self-driving cars--and the most intelligent animals--including octopuses, dogs, dolphins, bees, and chimpanzees. Neither a romantic enthusiast for nonhuman intelligence nor a skeptical killjoy, Thagard offers a clear assessment. He discusses hotly debated issues about animal intelligence concerning bacterial consciousness, fish pain, and dog jealousy. He evaluates the plausibility of achieving human-level artificial intelligence and considers ethical and policy issues. A full appreciation of human minds reveals that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.
Being Human
Title | Being Human PDF eBook |
Author | Ron Broglio |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 203 |
Release | 2017-10-02 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 1317610318 |
Technology and animals often serve as the boundaries by which we define the human. In this issue contributors explore these categories as necessary supplements or as porous membranes which disturb the scaffolding of how the human is constructed. A lingering question throughout is whether we have ever been human or if such a category is a non-localizable ideal or perhaps a misnomer. In this collection of essays, internationally known theorists muddle the categorical boundaries such that animals and technologies become necessary components rather than limits for what it means to be human. They examine a range of subjects, including apophatic animality, critical media objects-to-think-with, biosemiotic insect resonances, the monstrous and horrific which dislodges our cultural animals, and the problem of thinking of animality as stupidity. Novels, films, digital objects, scientific laboratories, philosophical texts, animals on the road and in the fields serve as sites for inquiry. The result of these investigations is the spectral possibility that we are not the humans we make ourselves out to be. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.