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Androids and Buddhism
ClayTheScribe
Veteran
Would Buddhism consider artificial life such as robots with artificial intelligence and maybe even feelings (ie, emotion chips) to be "sentient beings?" Would we have to approach them like we do all living creatures, even though they are actually machines? This is obviously not something Buddhists have ever had to consider (no doubt it didn't come to The Buddha's mind) and may not for another century, and I probably watch too much science fiction, but it does leave me wondering. If, for example, an android becomes malevolent and tries to kill you, can you kill it or not since it's considered a being?
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Comments
This kind of philosophical thoughts about robot is really well put in the book " Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", from Philip K. Dick. Totally recommended.
Also the distinction between machine and living creatures. These are also symbols in which we overlay meaning, etc.
We can believe and that will construct our perception of living and non living things. But other than our belief and perception, which is all on a basis of assumption, how can we know for sure?
Sure we can set up elaborate experiments and give meaning to symbols and collectively agree upon such symbols and experiments.
But they all require a mind do they not? So thats the basic flaw in any assumption. Its all perception and perception is automatically linked with naming and forming.
The differences are truly only symbolic in that sense. Beyond symbols is beyond same and different, or any designation for that matter.
And from that point, which I'll just call appearance-emptiness is the sentient being. The very functioning of the non local dependently arisen phenomena. Be it rocks, be it this body-mind, be it anything. Its all the configuration of the elements or in the subtle form of light.
This doesn't answer your question directly, but I suppose the functioning is to poke holes into the assumptions that lay between the letters. Just some thoughts.
I guess the answer is whether or not they have an internal world, the problem is that there's no test to determine if other people have consciousness or if they are just a philosophical zombie.
What makes something "alive" is a great mystery and possibly beyond human understanding. And there is something about calling man-made machines sentient that makes me uneasy. It feels like playing god, creating a kind of Frankenstein's monster in our own image and for the gratification of our ego.
I really have more questions where this is concerned than answers, but if indeed at least in psychology and the humanities we continue to have a strong presence of Buddhist thought, not to mention all the scientists who practice or align with Buddhism, I think in perhaps a century's time or sooner these questions will become very real. For the first season or two of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Starfleet and others really struggled with whether Data, an android, could identify himself as sentient, indeed there was a whole episode where they wanted to take him apart and study him and Captain Picard refused to let it happen and ultimately they proved his sentience and won. While I think we are quite a ways from having robots as complex as a Data, the time is coming. Based on my own feelings, I would think an android would be sentient if it had what makes up what we call sentience (free will, self-awareness, etc). I imagine there will be some agency to oversee this, but even then the moral and philosophical questions will be many.
I think may end up writing a short story or something surrounding this.