Human Projections and the Varieties of Transcendence

One of the many interesting aspects of the Robopet responses this year was the degree of consensus. Nearly everyone wrote that, whatever their first intuitions, their ultimate conclusion about human attachment to robopets was that it was both understandable and acceptable. Similarly, nearly everyone thought that decisions about cyborg and robot "students" should be made according to the norms/principles we apply to decision-making about human students. This consensus, along with the last chapters of Robot, inspired several questions, including:

• Is there any emotional quality exhibited by an animal pet which you are sure is not a mere projection of your own emotional state/expectation? If so, is it important to distinguish these sorts of qualities in an animal pet (or a human being) from analogous qualities in a robot? Is there anything valuable about the fact that we interact with "others" we cannot fully determine (in theory or practice)?
• What does Moravec mean when he uses the word "transcendent" and how does this meaning compare/fit with other meanings of the word?

Moravec' ROBOT, chapter 4-7

Let's begin with Aaron's and Kyle's presentations, and make our way to the claims about consciousness and "mind fire" in the final chapter. About consciousness, I would eventually like to return to Aaron's metaphor of the house in his Robopet response.

Reading Arendt's The Human Condition

As I mentioned last week, Arendt's book may be the most difficult text you've ever read. This isn't (just) because it is a work of philosophy, but rather because the text is so dense: Arendt uses language very self-consciously and you'll find that it's impossible to skim the text (as you probably could/did with Moravec) and not find yourself lost. Here are some suggestions for making your way through the first two chapters if you find it slow-going:

• Read with a notepad or note-taking program handy, and whenever Arendt makes a distinction (e.g. labor vs. work, or Aristotle's three ways of life), note it and see if you understand the difference(s) in the distinction.
• At the end of each chapter, see if you can summarize (in your head or on paper) the relationship between the chapter title and the points/arguments/distinctions made in the text of the chapter.
• If you prefer to read the text of the chapters without reading the footnotes (which are extensive and make reference to texts you're not likely to have read), do so. Afterwards, however, go back and read the notes, see which sentences they refer to, and try to remember what the heck those sentences were about.
• The first 78 pages consists of 2 chapters, and 10 sections. As you finish each section, write a sentence or two about the point(s) it made, or a question or two about what you would need to understand in order to know the point(s) it made.

For Next Time:: Read pages 1-78 of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition.

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