AI and Personhood

1
AI and Personhood

• AI proponents
• a machine as complex as a brain would be as
  intelligent as a person
• maybe it would be a person.
• Hidden assumptions
• intelligence I/O, storage, and processing
  capabilities
• the brain a machine whose function can be
  duplicated by other machines (and function is
  what matters)
• a person an intelligent hunk of meat

2
What makes a person?

• Is there anything to being a person besides
  intelligence?
• Consciousness is it an epiphenomenon or can
  it affect the body?
• Will do we make real choices, or are they
  determined by the laws of physics?
• Affections is there a love algorithm?
• Spirit is there a human capability to know God
  beyond the five sense?
• Moral responsibility what are you doing when you
  kick your computer punishment?

3
What are these views called?

• all the world (including the brain and mind)
  operate according to physical laws
• Materialism or metaphysical materialism
• There is a part of the mind (or soul or spirit)
  that is outside of nature, exempt from physical
  laws
• Dualism or Cartesian dualism
• The mind is the program running on the
  wet-ware of the brain
• Functionalism or non-reductive materialism

4
Non-Reductive Materialism

• Characteristics
• there is no non-physical part of a person
• mental processes can be localized in the brain
• consciousness, will, etc. are real, but they are
  an emergent property of brain function
• Questions
• How could there be a real will or moral
  responsibility?
• Where is the intensionality or meaning? In a
  pattern?
• Both body-identity and program-identity seem
  problematic
• What then can a verse like Matt. 1028 mean? Do
  not be afraid of those who kill the body but
  cannot kill the soul.
• What about the existence of angels, God if there
  is no second substance?
• What of church history and doctrine?

5
Cartesian Dualism

• Characteristics
• The soul is a second substance, created by God,
  like the Angels
• The mind is a faculty of the soul, and it can
  affect the body
• Whatever the brain does, it is not the mind
• Questions
• A second substance is messy
• Where does this soul come from? How does it
  affect the body without breaking the laws of
  nature?
• It seems that current research is localizing more
  and more mental processes in the brain
• What does this do to the science of AI?