Can Animals and Machines be Persons?: A Dialogue"This is a dialogue about the notion of a person, of an entity that thinks and feels and acts, that counts and is accountable. Equivalently, it's about the intentional idiom--the well-knit fabric of terms that we use to characterize persons. Human beings are usually persons (a brain-dead human might be considered a human but not a person). However, there may be persons, in various senses, that are not human beings. Much recent discussion has focused on hypothetical computer-robots and on actual nonhuman great apes. The discussion here is naturalistic, which is to say that count and accountability are, at least initially, presumed to be naturally well-knit with the possession of a cognitive and affective life." --Justin Leiber, from the Introduction |
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absolutely obvious Alan Turing animals argue argument Baruch Spinoza basic biological box setup central processing unit chimpanzees Chinese symbols cognitive COMMISSIONER BARBARA HERSHELL COMMISSIONER INDIRA RAMAJAN COMMISSIONER JUAN MENDEZ COMMISSIONER KLAUS VERSEN Commissioner Ramajan COMMISSIONER WAI CHIN computer-robots Counselor Goodman course crew members crib book Daniel Dennett dignity and worth electronic computers ELIZA English experience extraterrestrial Finland Station fullfledged persons genetic hearing human crew human persons Humanico illusion imitation game intelligence interrogator intrinsic dignity Joseph Weizenbaum logical MARY GODWIN mean meaningless memory metalloids metaphorical microchip mind monkeys Nations neurons off-on switches organism Paine and Godwin panzees pass the Turing perhaps PETER GOODMAN philosophers processing unit programmed puters question raft reason Rights of Brutes satire scientists sectarian religious view sensory sort soul speak strings structure sure Taylor tell things thought tion Turing test Turing's understand universal Turing machine Washoe Washoe-Delta women words