Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
In the April 1959 issue of
Analysis
, the same philosophical journal
in which Ziff 's original article appeared, the Australian philosopher Jack
Smart questioned both Ziff 's premises and his conclusion. Smart fo-
cussed on Ziff 's distinction between a living thing and a robot, a distinc-
tion employed as the foundation for the claim that only living things can
have feelings. Smart talks of self-reproducing mechanisms and asks
In what sense would descendents of such a mechanism be any the
less living creatures than descendents of Adam and Eve? We could
even suppose small random alterations in that part of them which
records their design. Such machines could evolve by natural se-
lection
15
and develop propensities and capacities which did not
belong to the original machine. [12]
And Smart went even further, accepting the physicalist
16
belief that living
creatures are just “very complicated physico-chemical mechanisms.”
One of Ziff 's other arguments with which Smart took issue was that
“a robot couldn't mean what it said any more than a phonograph record
could mean what it said.” Smart replied with the supposition that a
complex learning robot “might even become a philosopher, attending
conferences and developing just as human philosophers do. Why should
we not say that it meant what it said? It would not be at all analogous
to Ziff 's machine with a phonograph record inside.” Remember that
Smart's response was written in 1959—nowadays there is nothing new
in the idea of a robot attending a conference.
17
Another broadside was fired at Ziff 's article by the Kings College
philosopher, Ninian Smart.
18
Ziff had maintained that the way a ro-
bot acts depends primarily on how it is programmed to act, but what is
wrong, asks Ninian Smart, in saying that the way a man acts depends on
how nature programs him to act? He refers to subtle programs operat-
ing in humans “that are much subtler than computer programs, but the
subtle cell circuits still determine the way I act.” Should we reject this
analogy on the basis that biological programming and computer pro-
gramming cannot be equated? I think not. These may be different forms
of programming, but programming is what both of them are.
An additional flaw in Ziff 's reasoning is found in his assertion that
“We can programme a robot to act in any way we want it to act”, em-
15
Here Smart anticipates the invention of genetic programming.
16
The view that all that exists is ultimately physical in nature.
17
See the section “The Grand Robot Challenge” in Chapter 8.
18
King's College, London.
