Assignment #5

For the midterm, I'm planning to write about prompt #3, Robots  and  Artificial  Intelligence, using the imaginative source Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  I think whether or not robots can achieve genuine consciousness is interesting topic to think about. We ourselves are not certain about the definition of this subjective feeling. I could say that I have genuine emotion because I could be angry, happy or sad. Yet it is difficult to explain why I function to feel these emotions. All I can say is because I feel so.

In the short article, Dream-Logic, The Internet And Artificial Thought, David Gelernter provides many good insights about consciousness and thought. He notes that thinking and reasoning are not the same abilities. While reasoning specifies thinking logically and rationally, an ability to think covers all our brain activities, and especially, what Glernter calls "free-association" is one of the unique qualities of humans (239 Gelernter). An ability of "free-association" is what makes humans creative. He claims that what we overly use reality is a creation of our thoughts and exists only in our mind. Our emotions, thoughts, mind and reality are all "blended together," and this integration of association of ideas is called consciousness (260 Gelernter). But for computers, reality is one thing, and it's not created by its own thoughts. Unlike humans, all thoughts-association functions separately.  

In the graphic novel, Rachael, an android with highly advanced AI, acts and speaks like a genuine intellectual being, a human. She is presented as expressive throughout the story. She smirks when she learns that Rick only has a sheep and wishes to have an owl. She upsets when she is declared that she is an android. Besides that, she displays various face expressions.

I want to argue that she is not a real genuine being since she fails the emotion test. I'm going to support my argument according to the definition of consciousness provided by Gelernter. Rachael's reality and her thinking activity are separated. This can be seen when she calls the owl it as thought the animal is an object. Her remarks about the owl in other scenes show that she understands the importance of the owl,  the fact that owls are extinct. Yet, her thinking doesn't recognize the owl as life. This small contradiction can be the proof of her superficial consciousness.

Another proof would be the scene when she overly reacts the apparent cruelty to livings, while she doesn't notice when the cruelty is presented in indirect way in the emotion test. This proves that she reacts according to what she is programmed, but not her thoughts or mind. She can detects cruelties when they are directly addressed, but she can't extend her thought to find indirect cruelty like "BEARSKIN RUG" and "BOILED DOG" (316-317 Dick).  Gelernter says that what one's perception about things should be a creation of one's thoughts and should agree with one's mind and emotions. However, Rachael's incoherent reactions toward cruelties show that her responses are not based on what she feels.

These two points can be proofs to support that she is not a genuine thinking being.