Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Robot pain (was: Experience (was Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument)) Keywords: experience Message-ID: <337@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 16 Mar 89 19:17:44 GMT References: <3369@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <330@esosun.UUCP> <1989Mar4.152943.10902@cs.rochester.edu> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 24 In article <1989Mar4.152943.10902@cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >I agree. Of course, the same thing applies to robots. Suppose an >humanoid robot walking next to you stubbed his toe and said "That >hurts!". Would you respond with "No, you're just programmed to say >that when you damage yourself!" Sure. Why not? Maybe I happen to know that the robot *is* programmed to say that. After all, all you've said about the robot is that it's humanoid and that it says "that hurts" when it stubs its toe. But suppose you tell me lots more about the robot. Maybe it passes the LTT and the TTT, and so on. However, if it does pass the various Turing Tests, then it follows that you can't tell me all that much about it's programming -- because right now we have essentially no idea how to program anything that can pass those tests. Maybe, when we know a lot more about such robots (assuming they're possible at all) and about ourselves, it will be pretty clear that that robot does feel pain. But maybe it will instead be clear that it's just programmed to behave as if it feels pain. How do you know it won't turn out that way?