Machines and Beings
If we define the term
'machine' to mean systems where causes can be traced outside, to programmers,
or operators, etc., then it seems to me that the most intelligent devices we
have made thus far are still machines because they are deterministic - we can
always trace causes to the outside. Using this kind of distinction, there is a
huge gulf between even lower animals and our most powerful computers.
If we are searching for
systems that clearly start causal chains rather than just acting as players in
them, we need to find more than machines, we need to find free agency. What is the 'right
stuff' that makes agency? I believe we have located agency when causal chains
disappear (for all practical purposes) inside
complex objects. Many biological systems are extremely complex, but effects can
still be traced to external causes. They will only disappear into objects that
possess sufficient complexity and internal degrees of freedom that our
instruments and measurements cannot reliably follow. As we leave the realm of
machines, we encounter what might be termed beings. Of course, the example par
excellence of a complex system with a great many degrees of freedom is the
human brain/body.
Limitations
Some might say this is a cheap
trick. I'll admit, that ultimately I'm just appealing to epistemic brevity. I
need something to count as an
agent in order to carry on the conversation. I believe the most useful (brief, efficient) descriptions of situations that
include conscious human persons, will legitimately include them as potential
agents simply because I don't see how to usefully trace some of the effects of
people anywhere else. It can be argued that such a search for agency will only
stick at 'mind' and other high-level systems for as long as we remain ignorant
as to the functioning of lower level parts of such complex systems, as is
currently the case with the human brain. Perhaps with more knowledge we'll find
that human agency at the conscious level is just an illusion, and that it
should properly be located at lower levels, perhaps eventually sliding all the
way down to nothing but physics and chemistry, but I doubt it.
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| Contributed by: Adrian
Wyard
|
