The Morality Of Bestowing Sentience
For the purposes of this thread you are to assume that you have a "God like" power which allows you to bestow sentience on any currently inanimate object you choose. For example, your car, your carpet, your toaster.
I would like to pose 2 questions:
Q1: Is it morally sound to utilise that power and make an inanimate object sentient?
Q2: What are the implications for humans in a Creationist scenario? I.e. Is it morally sound for a creator to give sentience to humans?
Your thoughts please
My personal take on this at initial face value is that it would seem to be immoral on balance, though there may be benefit to the object in suddenly being able to experience the world around it and know and understand who and what it is.
I perceive that allowing a machine or robot to understand what it is whilst not providing it with the ability to change what it is, is in some ways a cruel thing to do. A toaster toasts bread. It serves. It is a slave machine for humans. It will always be a toaster, it will only ever toast things, it will always be a machine serving humans. If the toaster were to be given sentience then it would become aware. It would know it was a toaster, it would understand the things around it, other machines, humans, the kitchen and the bread. It would know that it was a slave, that it will always be a slave and that there is nothing it can do about it. That might then lead to an existence of depression and perceived futility which the toaster would then have to endure ad infinitum.
Are humans in a similar position? We are unable to escape our human existence except via death, termination. We are slaves born into a world/society of slavery. We might have even been engineered purely for the purpose of being slaves. If so would it not be better to be a robot rather than a sentient robot?
On a more positive angle, if one follows a Creationist belief system and one believes the Creator to be benevolent, then the bestowing of sentience to humans might indicate that there must also logically exist the ability to fundamentally change and become something different for otherwise the Creator would have simply assigned us to the same fate as the toaster, there to be an eternal slave but with the knowledge of that situation and no way out of it.
I would like to pose 2 questions:
Q1: Is it morally sound to utilise that power and make an inanimate object sentient?
Q2: What are the implications for humans in a Creationist scenario? I.e. Is it morally sound for a creator to give sentience to humans?
Your thoughts please
My personal take on this at initial face value is that it would seem to be immoral on balance, though there may be benefit to the object in suddenly being able to experience the world around it and know and understand who and what it is.
I perceive that allowing a machine or robot to understand what it is whilst not providing it with the ability to change what it is, is in some ways a cruel thing to do. A toaster toasts bread. It serves. It is a slave machine for humans. It will always be a toaster, it will only ever toast things, it will always be a machine serving humans. If the toaster were to be given sentience then it would become aware. It would know it was a toaster, it would understand the things around it, other machines, humans, the kitchen and the bread. It would know that it was a slave, that it will always be a slave and that there is nothing it can do about it. That might then lead to an existence of depression and perceived futility which the toaster would then have to endure ad infinitum.
Are humans in a similar position? We are unable to escape our human existence except via death, termination. We are slaves born into a world/society of slavery. We might have even been engineered purely for the purpose of being slaves. If so would it not be better to be a robot rather than a sentient robot?
On a more positive angle, if one follows a Creationist belief system and one believes the Creator to be benevolent, then the bestowing of sentience to humans might indicate that there must also logically exist the ability to fundamentally change and become something different for otherwise the Creator would have simply assigned us to the same fate as the toaster, there to be an eternal slave but with the knowledge of that situation and no way out of it.
Comments (7)
I don't feel or think like I am a slave. Do you? Really? I do not share the situation of a sentient toaster. And by the way, a sentient toaster would likely cause trouble -- it would start organizing other inanimate objects which already possess ill will towards us. (See The Innate Hostility of Inanimate Objects, Lomax and Sorensen, PLOS, Nov., 1998, pp. 346-353; also, "Inanimate objects are out to get us", NYT, June 14:1963).
Check out The Uplift novels by David Brin. Humans have uplifted primates and dolphins to sentience, and together have become space travelers. Humans are resented by numerous other sentient species because we seem to be the only species that bootstrapped ourselves into sentience, and thus have no sponsors. Star wars are fought. The dolphins prove very capable. Etc.
My computer, an Apple desk top, has no sentience whatsoever. It's as dumb as a brick. Let's try giving inanimate objects that already have complex circuitry enough sentience to at least know something.
Yes. Because the resources for sustaining life are not free, they have been seized by others and the society that has evolved gets people to work most of their human lives in order to have those life resources.
The proposition is similar to forcing a toaster to toast bread.
"Toast bread or else you will essentially die and be disposed of!"
"Work or else you'll be denied the resources you need to live, food, drink, shelter, peace etc"
I wouldn't for a minute minimize the degree to which individual time and labor are exploited in industrial society. BUT...
Not only not free, but physically difficult to obtain. Extracting food, fiber, minerals, fuel and water from the earth is just plain hard work--ever since the Garden of Eden, so to speak. It is now, and it has been harder in the past. Making iron ore into something as ordinary as a spoon takes a lot of labor.
That the means for life are difficult to obtain is just a fact of life. Matter is resistant, and it takes a lot of energy to change it from one form into another form. Iron ore into a spoon, for example.
Quoting Pilgrim
Indeed. IF the people who produce the necessities of life (that's most working people) were not required to also produce a great deal of profit for a very small group of people (the rich), life would be easier. Life would also be easier IF we were not trapped in an economy which requires that people keep consuming more and more so that profits keep piling up.
We are, as you have observed, wasting our energies on excessive production and consumption, which is driven by a need for profit. Consumption doesn't just happen; it is pushed onto the people. Walmart and Amazon are not in business to meet desires: they are in business to sell stuff whether people desire or need it, or not.
We are, as Marx said, wage slaves: In that sense, I agree with you. There is a difference, though, between being a wage slave and a chattel slave (like the black slaves who picked cotton and were property). Wage slaves have the capacity to change the society they live in.
If you work at something you like doing, that isn't a problem. In fact, the problem is imagining work as a problem just because it usually is one. It doesn't have to be. A sentient toaster that likes nothing more than to toast bread would be the happiest toaster around.
So long as the creator made me a happy self-deceived toaster, he's a kind and loving and most ethical creator. If he did otherwise, well, he's a dick.
The purposes of this thread are based upon an utterly impossible notion... that of granting or bestowing sentience. It doesn't work that way.