Image: iStock/Valerie Loiseleux
Can a lobster ever truly have any emotions? What about a beetle? Or a sophisticated computer? The only way to resolve these questions conclusively would be to engage in serious scientific inquiry—but even before studying the scientific literature, many people have pretty clear intuitions about what the answers are going to be. A person might just look at a computer and feel certain that it couldn’t possibly be feeling pleasure, pain or anything at all. That’s why we don’t mind throwing a broken computer in the trash. Likewise, most people don’t worry too much about a lobster feeling angst about its impending doom when they put one into a pot of boiling water. In the jargon of philosophy, these intuitions we have about whether a creature or thing is capable of feelings or subjective experiences—such as the experience of seeing red or tasting a peach—are called “intuitions about phenomenal consciousness.”
The study of consciousness (see here and here) has long played a crucial role in the discipline of philosophy, where facts about such intuitions form the basis for some complex and influential philosophical arguments. But, traditionally, the study of these intuitions has employed a somewhat peculiar method. Philosophers did not actually go ask people what intuitions they had. Instead, each philosopher would simply think the matter over for him- or herself and then write something like: “In a case such as this, it would surely be intuitive to say…”
The new field of experimental philosophy introduces a novel twist on this traditional approach. Experimental philosophers continue the search to understand people’s ordinary intuitions, but they do so using the methods of contemporary cognitive science (see also here and here)—experimental studies, statistical analyses, cognitive models, and so forth. Just in the past year or so, a number of researchers have been applying this new approach to the study of intuitions about consciousness. By studying how people think about three different types of abstract entities—a corporation, a robot and a God—we can better understand how people think about the mind.
The Mental Bottom Line on Corporations
In one recent study, experimental philosophers Jesse Prinz of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and I looked at intuitions about the application of psychological concepts to organizations composed of whole groups of people. To take one example, consider Microsoft Corporation. One might say that Microsoft “intends to adopt a new sales strategy” or that it “believes Google is one of its main competitors.” In sentences such as these, people seem to be taking certain psychological concepts and applying them to a whole corporation.
But which psychological concepts are people willing to use in this way? The study revealed an interesting asymmetry. Subjects were happy to apply concepts that did not attribute any feeling or experience. For example, they indicated that it would be acceptable to use sentences such as:
• Acme Corporation believes that its profit margin will soon increase.
• Acme Corporation intends to release a new product this January.
• Acme Corporation wants to change its corporate image.
But they balked at all of the sentences that attributed feelings or subjective experiences to corporations:
• Acme Corporation is now experiencing great joy.
• Acme Corporation is getting depressed.
• Acme Corporation is experiencing a sudden urge to pursue Internet advertising.
These results seem to indicate that people are willing to apply some psychological concepts to corporations but that they are not willing to suppose that corporations might be capable of phenomenal consciousness.
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37 Comments
Add CommentWhat about "Trained Empathy"? Part of the difficulty in coming up with a unified theory here, is that our patterns of empathy may be due in part or all to cultural conditioning. Cartoons, literature, and marketing all influence how we see robots, animals, insects, etc. For example, in America we have great attachment to our dogs and cats and impose many human emotions on them, but in other countries people have no problem cooking them for dinner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought that emotion was squirts of hormones, and this definition precludes machines or supernatural beings - but includes lobsters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, I hear all the time "the stock market reacts to irrational fears; this I suppose is the human hive that controls it is influenced by squirts of hormones. Would this be the same for a corporation that is "optimistic" about its performance next quarter?
Wouldn't evolutionary biology be the best candidate for tackling this problem? As the new research suggests, we have a dedicated circuitry for recognizing human faces. There must be some huge evolutionary advantage in taking much needed processing power from some other function just so we could tell two faces apart in a sufficiently short amount of time. So, it wouldn't unreasonable to propose that there is a built-in mechanism that allows us to quickly differentiate a fellow human from the rest of the world. This mechanism looks for cues that match or invalidate the stereotype of a human. As soon as it perceives nuts and bolts (a robot), it yells "non-human" as a response. This affects our subsequent judgment of the robot in the form of a cognitive bias no matter how much time we end up spending on the investigation of its behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, it's nice to see philosophers finally spending some time in the labs. Conversely, the scientists should engage themselves in 'philosophy workshops'. Some of them seem to suffer from tunnel vision, they need to philosophize a little :)
(1) Insects are not aware (intuitively understood)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(2) There is no proof that God exists other than faith so the question is rhetorical. If God exists and he/she is the prime mover the answer is self-evident and a waste of intellectual energy
(3) Robots by definition(current) do not have cognitive circuits and therefore are without feelings etc.
Simple debate of life and non-life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a very long comment. Rather direct you to my blog post http://whisper-in-the-breeze.blogspot.com/2008/05/life-if-any_24.html
In simple my idea is that "life" is a macro-scale illusion and "intelligence" is purely perceptive and imaginative. We think the machines that we program are not "concious", but we're unaware whether we're indeed devices programmed by someone else [be it as per Matrix, Bible, Theory of Evolution or otherwise].
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very important feature of conciousness is the inability to figure out the imaginative existence of it. i.e. a human would say, "hey, I do exist. I'm not a program written for nearly four billion years upon amino acid and proteins." May I say "Yeah true. Humans exist." But then dont laugh at a computer program "concious" for just being able to print out "I do exist on my own and feel my conciousness".
Question is not whether lower order life, synthetic intelligence and supernatural imaginative beings can or can not be "concious". But the true issue is, "whether there is a meaning or definition of conciousness". It is implicitly bound to the question, whether there exist an elementary speciality called life ort not. Both these questions, to me, do not have an answer literally possible.
Being aware is a meaningless statement. I can imagine aliens coming to earth and thinking humans were no more aware than cars, statues and insects because they fully understand the process of our thought, much as humans understand the elctronic circuits of a computer. "Awareness" is just a holistic term to describe what we humans experience about our own cognition. My opinion is that anything with the ability process and store information is, to some extent, aware. From there, increased complexity increases the "level" of awareness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello. Robots are interesting because we use them many different branches . They are systematical works and if a good production sometimes beter than human workers.Especialy after 19 .century new technologies and industry revulation changed many things on human life.Transportation ,communication,industry,agriculture ,daily life...every all traditonal lifestyles have changed.Easy and assorted new products especialy now 21. century.China,Japan and other countries improve by new modern technologies like this robots.But if compare by creation this new and all technological products ther are big differencies.Best computer can't be like human brain.We can add other animals and ecosystems to this list.I'm a Jehovah witness (our site:www.watchtower.org)and believe Creation are amazing and science never arive to this perfect Godly wisdom.Scientists use self brains maximum %5 .We apricate them but not compare with Almighty God and His wonderful creations.Deep regards.John Bardakch
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think this article is accurate. For example, "God was pleased at the progress the humans had made," doesn't "feel" odd to me at all. Also, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: "There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only one for the corporations I really didn't "feel" was right was this one: "Acme Corporation is getting depressed."
I don't have any issues attributing emotions and such to robots either. I think these findings are largely the result of one's environment. If people described corporations as happy when they were doing well, for example, I don't think people would have any issue with that phrase.
Does an insect feel? I don't know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes God or god exist. I don't know.
Is the universe more strange than I understand or can understand. Yes.
(I know the word queerer is in the original quote, but as this word has taken on an unfortunate connotation, the word strange must suffice.)
Is anything possible? According to the mathmatics of physics, yes.
Do I care? No.
I remain,
Jacomus d'Paganus-Fatuus
P.S. God may well exist, however, it is beyond annoying how so many fundamentalists in various religious traditions put so much energy into making God over in their own image.
P.P.S. Say, kids, let's start a God Liberation Front! Let us free Him, Her or It from the depradations of the self-aggrandizing and the true believers who flock along after them! I'm sure God will be grateful, wouldn't you?
--
Edited by jacomus d'paganus-fatuus at 06/25/2008 12:28 PM
The study is grammatically flawed if the test sentences were anything like the examples. A sentence such as "The Acme Corporation is pleased to announce..." would be perfectly acceptable to almost anyone (and in fact is in common use) even though it attributes a subjective human feeling to the corporate entity, something the researchers say their study revealed to be incongruous. Also, the sentences which illustrate acceptable concepts all have objects to Acme's feelings: "...intends to release," "wants to change", etc. The unacceptable examples lack such objects of Acme's "feelings" except the last, which is a clumsy way to present idea. If that sentence read "Acme urgently wants to pursue..." it would be fine, even though the meaning would be the same. Noteworthy also is the fact that the unacceptable examples are framed in the present continuous tense and are therefore odd. "The team is now experiencing great joy" is also odd-sounding, even though humans are having the feelings
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChristianity believes that God so loved the world that he gave his Son...
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I read in the article that some people ascribe human qualities to machines. I read the unsupported premise about God (whoever or whatever that is). I read the question: What if something does not have a body?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article seems to be going nowhere and I do not want to follow.
There is a real world, and in our minds there is an imaginary world of meaning we give to human-invented symbols. The symbols do not mean anything to computers or robots. The symbols represent instructions for performing binary logic, which again is human-invented symbols to which we assign meaning.
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Edited by Bradley at 06/28/2008 9:37 AM
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by Bradley at 06/28/2008 9:38 AM
Please consider this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA fly lands on a table in front of you. You attempt to hit the fly with a copy of Scientific American, moving in from the right; the fly flies away to the left.
The fly lands again in same spot. You attempt to exterminate it with SCIAM, this time moving in from the left; the fly flies off to the right.
The fly lands a third time in same spot. You tear your copy of SCIAM down the middle binding so that you now have two weapons to exterminate the fly. You move toward the fly from each side such that the fly sees most of its field of vision occupied by SCIAM. The fly just sits there until you smash it.
On each three tries, the insect was aware of the danger coming its way. It reacted with the best reasoning its tiny brain could muster.
What else must the fly be aware of before you can accept that the fly shows awareness?
LOL, God knows ALL and he is omni present!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.FireMe.To/udi
[i][b]Fascinating[/b][/i] - the article itself and the variety of responses! Thank you, SciAm, for carrying all of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI observe that there is a lack of agreement as to what precisely this characteristic of [i][b]'awareness'[/b][/i] may be and what kind of entities may be deemed to possess it.
It seems to be generally agreed that human beings are fully deserving of being described as [i][b]'being aware'.[/b][/i]
But what about:
-- that irritating fly?
-- those coming robots?
-- the corporations that already exist?
-- God (or gods)?
One reader came up with a rather a nice demonstration that the fly is surely aware that it is in danger (because someone intends to utterly crush it out of existence [and awareness] with a copy of SciAm - not that the fly knows about that 'someone'!)
Maybe we can grant that fly a limited kind of *awareness* - that it is in immediate danger of ...what? Of death? Could that fly possibly be aware of its death in the way that I am of mine some time in the future and that you, my reader, are of yours? Tricky. But nope, doesn't seem quite right...
What about the *awareness* of corporations, of robots?
Could the corporation, those robots, that fly ever become *aware* that God even sent His only son to save the world? Or do they not care at all because He sent His son to save [i][b]only[/b][/i] GW Bush and Gang along with those subsets of US citizens who within properly-designated Christian denominations believe in Jesus Christ, Creationism, Intelligent Design and so on? [i][b][And to Hell with all the rest of us including yours truly who certainly does not believe and that goddamned flywho probably does not believe...)[/b][/i]
What about the *awareness* possessed by God (or gods)? (Can He or they be aware without possessing a human body? Or are we being too presumptuous in discussing this and will we be doomed to everlasting hellfire for doing so?)
Now here's a question that's probably not relevant to the *awareness* of various kinds discussed in the article, but [i][b]is[/b][/i] probably relevant to the to the *quality* of this and other discussions at SciAm[b]:[/b]
Is SciAm *aware* that some postings at these forums are wastefully (and somewhat irritatingly) repeated two, three or more times? Is there any *intention* to correct such anomalies? (Or is such *awareness* and such *intentions* beyond the scope of that article and this discussion?)
(But check out the 'Discussion' [b]'How can we improve SciAm Community?"[/b] where it was bravely announced: "Scientific American stands for quality, whether we're making magazines or producing a limited edition cheese food product only available at participating newsstands. Help us do it better". (Not much seems to have happened in that direction of enhanced quality).
-- GSC
When people say a corporation believes it's ready to do blah, they are referring to the board of directors, management, etc. That's why statements like "the corporation is depressed" don't make sense. It's apples and oranges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question should not be whether we think that something has consciousness. The question is whether it is conscious. The human world is full of too many unsubstantiated opinions (e.g., the first reader response re: God knows all). Often it is our human hubris that leads us to disregard the experience of others and to the total disregard for other life. We are clearly seeing the effects of this in the environmental catastrophes that are manifesting themselves with increasing frequency.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSerious study of subject may well lead to expansion of our practical curiousity into spiritual realms. It's about time!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder whether you will get the same results from the robot experiment if you repeat it on a sample of Japanese citizens. Japan is known for their anthropomorphic tendencies, particularly with respect to robots. My understanding is that much of Japanese society wants robots to have and exhibit feelings. So, when asked whether a robot can be mad, perhaps the Japanese might respond by saying "yes, we designed them to be that way."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am aware that this website community blog will disappear on July 1, per the editors. So the problem of unintended repeated postings will disappear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> I am aware that this website community blog will
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> disappear on July 1, per the editors. So the problem
> of unintended repeated postings will disappear.
Very true, Bradley. However, I'm pretty certain that the underlying quality control problems (system problems) that led to the multiple postings have not been addressed at all. There will for sure be some other manifestation of lack of quality in the new redesigned website (even if postings are not unnecessarily repeated).
In fact, the sudden decision to extinguish this community by July 1st (without adequate discussion of the issue with those community members affected by it, and without getting their OK in the matter) is itself a startling manifestation of lack of quality on SciAm's part. The major contributory factor to the quality problem being a lack of ability (or perhaps it was just a lack of interest) to listen to members of the community. This is a common deficiency in a very sizable number of human-made systems - it is relatively rarer in what I may call "nature's systems":
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Edited by gs_chandy at 06/29/2008 8:34 AM
I think the medical education has to change its mission first. All M.D.s should be non-surgical endocrinologists. Maybe we will understand what the word "love" really means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> I think the medical education has to change its
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> mission first. All M.D.s should be non-surgical
> endocrinologists. Maybe we will understand what the
> word "love" really means.
Chemically or Metaphorically??
I think that some scientists are trying to interpret this chemically. Metaphorical interpretation is more to do with Art than Science.
I agree that medical sector should be taught of being "human" instead of being "treating machines". BTW, only a few of the docs are such machines, we can still be proud of our doctors.
But if you meant that instead of analytically exploring the human anatomy and its chemical reactions, we should teach doctors how the soul gets connected to god or something, then we'll end up turning the hospitals into praying houses.
Sorry if I missed the point here.
I for one would never equate emotion with consciousness. I know my dog experiences fear and happiness but I would hesitate to state that he is self-aware. As a matter of fact, The only real evidence I have for human consciousness is the similarity of construction with the only model I have some certainty about, which is myself. Other than that i am not certain I could ever be convinced that any non-human entity is conscious, no matter what behavior it displayed. I am certain that others feel the same way. There will no doubt always exist a body of humans who will never be convinced of machine consciousness. This will have extremely serious ramifications in the future, of that I am certain. -Illya
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is extremely arrogant to assume as a Human that you are conscious and another being is not. I am fairly certain that my dog is self aware - experiments with mirrors tend to suggest the level of awareness as opposed to consciousness - I have even waved at a jumping spider who waved back - and after saving a sparrows chick from death by cats - the mother came into my garden and sang to me. I think people who do not accept that biological entities are consciously aware are way behind the times - one only has to watch the documentaries on Cephalopods to see that they are an alien intelligence - dolphins and chimps are obviously aware. Please see members.fortunecity.com/templarseries/zombie.html - and other pages on my links on that page about consciousness.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr Jenkins - what Christianity believes is a belief - not a truth - in all of physics no one has uncovered any signs of any such being. Metaphysically he only has significance in the same way as Hindu gods or Nordic Gods or Roman and Greek Gods. They are entities which are metaphors for some ill-understood aspect of the universe at the time or a convenient outside the universe perspective - as the article suggests,our views about what can or cannot be conscious or aware says more about us than about what we ascribe those parameters. Bradley is totally on the mark with his 6/26/08 comment about the realm of ideas and reality.
Gods are ideas not realities. A fly has awareness because it moves when you attempt to kill it. If God was aware,then he would do something about all the injustice in the world - the fact that he is noticeable by his absence suggests he is a concoction of the human mind - the fact that some human qualities are credited to him further suggests he is a fabrication.
Leonov seems given to the myth that because something is smaller or different it cannot have abilities like a human - using his/her reasoning great whales and elephants ought to be supremely intelligent.
The fact is many creatures do not respond to the world like us - bees for instance see wavelengths that we cannot.
Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex the parrot shows that he was spacially and contextually aware - knowing that the red square object was behind or in front of the green circular object - this clearly demonstrates that Leonov is not as aware as he/she believes.
http://www.geocities.com/Omegaman_UK/beasts.html
http://www.geocities.com/templarser/metro3.html
http://www.geocities.com/templarser/atheism.html
http://leebor2.741.com/belief.html
http://leebor2.741.com/atheism.html
I dont know about Robots.. But human Corporates ranging as they do from 'nuclear families' to Nuclear Arms Programmes are most certainly 'living entities' with 'Body Mind & Soul' and they as the 'total representations of each of the human members therein'. Hence any damage to any of these vital factors may it be 'physically' as in any of the human workers therein or 'spiritually' as in any of the 'Believed In or Oathed for Principles'... the result is a sure damage to one and all concerned - the humans and the caorporate in toto.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the function-functionaryand the functionalvalue are indeed 'One and the Same' in any human enterprise of value.
Vedpushpa
social anthropologist
Bangalore -India
vedapushpa@gmai.com
While I do not disagree that other organisms may be self-aware, I feel that people take it a bit far when personifying certain things; such as your example of a spider waving at you or the bird coming to sing for specifically for you. In terms of the spider, perhaps a simple act of mimicry was involved, but to say a spider is capable of the complex ideas of being social and greeting is pretty hard for me to swallow. I think we as humans take our simple understandings and apply them to animals, when the animal is in a world of its own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe humans have one very big obstacle to overcome when evaluating animals' self awareness. Anthropocentricism! We keep expecting them to behave the same way as we do. A good example is that we study animals to see how they react with a mirror, expect them to admire themselves in it, when the truth is that they are not interested in this activity. I have a parrot that spend a lot of time close to the mirror (the pile of towels in the bathroom, his favorite perch, is right next to the mirror), but pays no attention to it whatsoever. A scientist studying him would conclude that my parrot is not aware of his own image or does not recognizes himself, is not aware of himself etc. Whem my parrot was a baby and saw the mirror for the first time, he did exactly what I expect a bird to do: He ran toward the bird in the mirror and hit him hard on the beak. In a series of incidents over the next three days he tried to understand this mystery bird, he would ran toward the edge of the mirror and look behind it, return to face the bird again, walk slowly this time and observe what the mirror bird is doing, look quickly behind the mirror, look slowly behind the mirror, ... On the third day I saw him standing in front of the mirror and posing, swaying his head from side to side, lifting his right wing, lifting his left wing, bobbing his head, sticking his tongue out, mowing it to the right, to the left, ... I have no doubt that he knew that it was himself in the mirror! Then he lost interest in mirror and never pays any attention to it. We humans are probably the only species that show repeat interest in things that we have already seen, heard, or experienced in any way. We would go the museum and look at the same piece of art for the umpteenth time (Yes, Venus has a marble but, now get over it and go do something usefull!). For some unknown reason we do expect animals to do the same thing. Hello?!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJano Mladonicky, Houston, Texas
yezz
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo robots feel?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyezz
There is a great survey of all accepted theories of the mind developing, including a measure of consensus by experts at
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23
Knobe makes the rather baffling claim that "Philosophers did not actually ask people what intuitions they had. Instead each philosopher would think the matter over for himself or herself and then write something like: 'In a case such as this, it would surely be intuitive to say...'" This is entirely untrue. Philosophers talk to one another, to trained scientists and other specialists, and to ordinary folk (remember, most professional philosophers teach, and thus engage daily with students of all persuasions). Furthermore, when a philosopher actually publishes his or her work, there is a tacit invitation to the reader to consider whether he or she shares the philosophers. From Thales and Socrates to modern professionals, the discipline has always been about dialogue, though Knobe appears to be ignoring this entirely. Of course we must grant his point that most philosophers do not get such precise survey data as he is describing, but the fact that "Even when researchers controlled for whether the creature had a CPU or a brain, subjects were more likely to ascribe phenomenal consciousness when it had a body that made it look like a human being" strongly suggests that such data is of little use to serious philosophical investigation. Sociological data may be worth gathering for its own sake, but not all intuitions count equally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find the results of the study by Gray, Gray and Wegner regarding people's intuitions about the emotional ability of God rather bizarre. Only using Christianity as an example, emotions of God run the gambit. First he is an angry God, driven to kill lots of people, even babies and children. Next he is a jealous God and you better not worship any of the other Gods before him. (does that make it OK to worship them after?) Then he is a loving God. Sounds like emotions to me. So why weren't the emotional possibilities for God not a given? It just seems to me that if the majority of the US believes in Christianity of some flavor (which other studies show), then why do so many say that God doesn't have emotions, similar to a corporation?
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