This is a series of questions too related to one another to work well in separate threads:
Can a machine ever be considered a person? Alternately: -equal to a person? [I imagine this has been debated before.]
New twist: We have seen numerous instances of abandoned or lost children who are raised by wolves, monkeys, etc. These ‘feral’ children usually have any of the behavioural traits and mannerisms of the animals with which they lived. They often seem lacking certain skills that they would have gained growing up among humans. This is arguably because they didn’t have humans to imitate, and so could not learn their mannerisms. They might be very good at foraging for food, but they would not have learned the normal human emotional responses. The child learns the ‘culture’ of the animals which it uses as a model.
Suppose a child is raised as a computer. Not by a computer; as a computer. The child models his behaviour after the machines, (instead of monkeys). He learns logic, reason, mathematics, the principles of cause and effect, but not art, dance or music. When he becomes happy, sad, or angry at something, he teaches himself not to react, in emulation of the machine. He takes in large amounts of information about many topics, but only those which are subject to analysis and reason. For example, he learns about psychology, and applies it to himself, learning to recognize phobias and neuroses before they form, and so avoid them. He doesn’t play sports, since his ideal, the computer-machine, does not. If he cannot find a logical reason or excuse for something, he conditions himself not to do it. He learns to be impartial: he avoids forming opinions, or having favourites of anything. He has exposure to humans, but for whatever reason chooses the machine culture instead, seeing it’s accuracy, efficiency and correctness as superior to the inefficiency, emotionalism and erroneousness of the human way. He strives to, like a machine, make no mistakes.
So is such a person human? All the ‘humanities’ have been chased from him. Sure, he can emulate compassion, joy, anger, etc. to function among humans, but is he, at heart, any different than a machine?
Could such a person ever learn to be human? It has been observed that the aforementioned ‘feral’ children could not adapt easily, but then, their intellect may not have developed. Our character developed at least the left side of his brain.
Could this person learn to be human? Could he ever integrate into society? If he could, should he?
I am an engineer in the field of Robotics so I know something about the question.
First, in our lifetimes the question will always be a philosophical one. Not for a very long time will there ever be such a thing as an “android” Electromechanical technology being what it is, we will have to deal with the very real possibility of hyperintelligent genetically enhanced dogs before anyone has a rechargeable Electric Grandmother.
As for children raised by computers: no teaching method I know can teach you to avoid a phobia or neurosis. A child raised by a computer would probably just be an unhealthy maladjusted adult. Probably no more than a child raised in a military academy or a catholic school or an inner-city public school. Lack of human contact is not something you need to segregate a child to achieve.
billy
New twist: We have seen numerous instances of abandoned or lost children who are raised by wolves, monkeys, etc. These ‘feral’ children usually have any of the behavioural traits and mannerisms of the animals with which they lived.**
We have? Sure, in mythology, but in real-life? I’d like to see a citation for this.
Short form - there aren’t any completely reliable reports of children being raised by any animal. The best documented case dealt with two young girls in India, found in 1920, although as Cecil reported “The credibility of this story has taken a few nicks. In a book published after Kamala’s death Singh said he found the children himself, but in earlier newspaper accounts he was quoted as saying they were brought to him–clearly a pivotal difference. Even if the children in fact were found in a wolf’s lair, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were raised by wolves, merely befriended–no small thing in itself, I suppose.”
Feral children, including the case of ‘Genie’, are more widely accepted, with documented cases going back to 1800 in France, as tracer mentioned. Suffice to say, in either case, there isn’t a great deal of evidence for the point of view that is implied in the OP.
The issue of befriending versus raising intrigues me. At our church we had a guy testify that he’d been raised by a wildcat for a considerable time as a child. As the story unfolded it transpired that he had indeed been befriended, rather than raised. That was weird enough, of course! Animals are pretty intuitive and have needs similar enough to ours for me to think they wouldn’t be entirely useless as buddies in a tight spot. How often does your cat bring you a dead mouse to eat? Or conversely: how long could you live on mice?
As far as robots go I really have no idea. Which I guess places me well off-topic - sorry. Before I go I should relate the story Mark Lamarr told of being raised by lions in Africa, but of finding himself pretty much left out of the hunt whenever the younger lions got up to full speed.
So he took to driving a small red car. That got him expelled from the pride. Sad, huh?
About those wild children:
We learned about them in a sociology course called “Society: Challenge and Change”. Of course, it is near impossible to verify if a child has been raised as a monkey, for if someone had been around to see it happening, they would have put a stop to it. The teacher provided us with several articles about incidents- a pair of girls from India, “Victor the wild boy” from Europe (possibly Germany), and children from central Africa whose parents had been killed in the civil wars of the last few decades, and lived alone for a few years before their rediscovery. I’m having trouble finding references to these on-line.
Either way, they’re not the point. The topic of concern is a hypothetical human who raised him/herself from childhood as a machine (not BY a machine), abandoning humanity’s culture and mannerisms. Such a person would not have developed any but the reasoning parts of her/his intelligence, andwould have nearly eradicated emotion, and any habit or identifiable thought pattern that could be deemed illogical.
Such thought patterns include:
“My favourite colour is…”
“I don’t like that person…”
“I prefer to…”
“I wish…”
“I’m proud of myself because…”
Computers don’t think like this. Our person would have self-taught to avoid such patterns. So, in light of this and the Original Post, is s/he human? Could s/he become human? Should s/he?
Well, I’m tempted to say that since the child is biologically human, a mechanism like that which dteremines language developement is at work here. As long as kid X is exposed to language before a certain threshold age (2 or 3 years), he/she will be able to speak; language is genetically hard-wired. It’s probably the same deal with symbolic-self-awareness, the main thing that makes us human. Hell, language is a function of symbolic self-awareness. But then we get into the question of whether someone like Genie is “human”. But I suppose that’s besides the point. If the little brat was raised by a computer programmed to spew out human language, then yeah, the kid’s okay. They may not be very well-adjusted psychologically, but they’d definitely be human. Take “that” Philip Dick!