The image shown depicts a robot and old man sitting at a table playing chess. At this point in time, the robot is seen making his move. In the image, the robot is portrayed not as what people normally expect as it appears to be thinking deeply through the arch of his fingers and the expression on its face - it appears to be very human-like. The portrayal of this robot being very human and engaging in a human activity brings to mind the question of personhood and more specifically, whether machines and humans are fundamentally the same. The question here then is whether machines possess personhood, and as a result of that, are machines and humans identical? Personally, I do not believe machines possess personhood, and they are therefore not like humans in terms of personhood. This view and its opposing argument can be demonstrated using the theories of Cartesian dualism and functionalism respectively. The 17th century philosopher, Descartes, founded the idea of Cartesian dualism. The theory is grounded in the idea that there exist a separate mind and body in every individual human being. The main piece of evidence for his idea can be summed up with his famous quote, “I think, therefore I am.” The statement essentially illustrates that we can doubt the existence of the physical world and even our own bodies, but cannot doubt the idea that our minds exist because doubting is a thought process in itself. Therefore our minds must exist for us to perform this doubting. Through Descartes’ process of doubting, he recognised that regardless of what the changeable physical world was really like, his mind was still whole and unchanged and therefore separate somehow from the physical world. Cartesian dualism argues against the view that machines are identical to humans because it argues for the existence of a metaphysical substance that humans possess - the mind. It suggests that the mind is a metaphysical substance, thus a conclusion can be drawn that the mind cannot be constructed out of purely physical substances and therefore cannot be present in machines. I believe that the key difference that distinguishes between machines and humans is that humans have the ability to carry out conscious thought while machines cannot. Suppose a human was given a piece of information, they would have the ability to decide for themselves whether they agree with the information or not. A machine, on the other hand, must be programmed beforehand to agree with all of such information, or disagree with it. They do not have the ability to form an opinion for themselves without the aid of a human programming them to do so. Therefore, Descartes’ theory that humans possess a metaphysical mind sides with the view that machines are not humans because it accounts for the fact that the properties of matter seem to be unable to produce something as mysterious as consciousness or self-awareness because the qualities can only come from a type of reality that is non-material. In relation to the stimulus, it accounts for the fact that the robot shown can engage in mathematical activities such as chess as it is an activity where there are a set (albeit very large) number of moves that one can make according to the rules, and the machine can therefore be programmed to perform this activity. The
machine is not, however, seen writing a novel or painting a work of art as these activities require originality and creativity which cannot be programmed.
The opposing view of this, which supports the opinion that humans are in fact fundamentally identical to machines, is functionalism. Functionalism is the idea that the mind is not an entity, and is instead a sum of functions. Its sole responsibility therefore is simply carrying out tasks in response to inputs. The way that humans work according to functionalism is input > mental state > output, meaning that all of our experiences are simply a result of inputs and causation of outputs. This idea contributes to the machines vs. humans debate by arguing that there is no metaphysical entity that humans possess, and that since we are simply a sum of functions, and so are machines, therefore machines and humans are fundamentally identical. The strength of functionalism is that it leaves little room for empirical questioning, as it does not suggest the existence of something such as the mind or personhood which we do not have scientific evidence for. That being said, this is also where its main fault lies. This is because it fails to account for the sense of personhood that we as humans seem to experience. It does not provide reasoning for how humans can experience things rather than simply knowing about them. These problems are highlighted in two opposing arguments to functionalism: the two Mary’s argument and the Chinese Room argument. The Two Mary’s argument is a thought experiment with a set-up of two female scientists named Mary who have been contained in a room since they were born. The room, however, is purely black-and-white, and both Mary’s are both pale enough to appear white. Given all of this, they have no experience whatsoever of colour. Yet the two of them have spent quite some time studying colour and the physics behind it, including wavelengths and light frequencies, thus they have a substantial and in-depth knowledge of colour, but have just never been able to experience it. One day, one of the Mary’s is let out and shown a vibrant red tomato, therefore experiencing colour for the first time. The difference now between the two Mary’s is that one has experienced colour, whereas the other contained one has an understanding of it, but has never experienced it. The Mary who was let out represents humans, while the still-contained Mary represents machines. The thought experiment essentially aims to illustrate the fact that understanding and having a substantial knowledge of something is vastly different from actually experiencing it. This is the key difference between machines and humans, as humans can experience the world around us, while machines can simply gain knowledge of it without having the capacity to experience it. The ability to experience is referred to as qualia. The Chinese Room argument is another thought experiment with the following circumstances prescribed: a man is locked in a room with a small hole in the side. Through this hole, a series of cards with Chinese characters written on them are pushed into the room to the man. The man, having never learned the Chinese language, can only copy the characters and push them back through the hole. To anyone outside the room, it would seem that the man inside understands fully the Chinese characters as he has the capacity to send them back. This is far from the truth, however, as the man is quite simply mimicking the characters, which is very far from actually understanding the characters. This demonstrates the fact that while machines can mimic our behaviour, at the end of the day, that is all they can do. Being able to mimic our behaviour does not mean that they understand us or can experience things the way we as humans can, and therefore there is a stark difference between machines and humans. Both of these thought experiments go to show that there is a vast difference between machines and humans in their ability to both experience and understand what we know. This difference ultimately contributes to the view that machines are not equal to humans in terms of personhood, as personhood requires a sense of self-awareness and the ability to relate experiences to one’s sense of self. Given that machines neither possess a sense of self nor have the ability to experience things, they do not fulfil the criteria of possessing personhood.
This view, along with Cartesian dualism, ultimately contributes to my argument that machines cannot carry out conscious thought for themselves. They can only process information in a systematic manner when given a certain set of rules and programming. Therefore they do not have the capacity for creativity as they require humans to programme them and can therefore only be as ‘creative’ as we are. It can therefore be concluded that while machines can carry out systematic functions such as mathematics and playing chess better than we can, they are lacking in the specific area of personhood as they do not have the ability to think beyond what they have been programmed to do and cannot understand and experience things the way that humans do, no matter how human-like they appear to be drawn.
