Thursday, October 7, 2010
Do natural rights attach to humanoids?
Science is poised to pose some challenging questions for our understanding of the human person; Catholic legal theorists also need to begin thinking about what science means for our understanding of the legal rights that attach (or do not attach) to the human person (or to a creation that looks awfully similar to the human person). Adam Serwer reports on the ACLU's exploration in this area.
UPDATE: Thanks to R. George Wright for forwarding his article, "Pale Cast of Thought: On the Legal Status of Sophisticated Androids."
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/10/do-natural-rights-attach-to-humanoids.html
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This must be the silly season. Either that or we just don't have enough real matters to keep us occupied. The article by Professor Wright graps at authenticity by citing a conjecture from Hilary Putnam asking how we will, or would, deal with an android that tells us "I am conscious."
Apparently Ms Putnam doesn't know about octopedes. They are incomparably more complex than androids but, you'll never guess, they never claim to be conscious. That's because octopedes, little dears that they are, have never learned to lie. Evidently however it is not necessary to be conscious to utter lies if your innards are made of etched glass.