Frankly, I think Dennett nailed the whole problem with his “intentional stance” business: the human mind is *hard-wired* to treat complicated things as sentient even if they are obviously not, i.e. “this coke machine must hate me…” When things are designed to be cute and cuddly that blurs the line even further.

Moreover, doesn’t it say anything about me that I can go around punching people in the face, irrespective of the fact that those people may or may not be able to feel pain? In the same way, what does it say about people who can inflict wanton damage on a “representation” of life (your terms) for their own enjoyment, simply because it doesn’t “feel” pain. Your fictional engineers resort to vivisection as their initial response — and so would biologists when they see rats do something biologically amazing — that’s a statement about the engineers and biologists.

Simply, what is the difference between “feeling” pain and “acting” hurt, and how can you prove to me that you feel it?

Jesse.

Maybe the answer is that one “should” be nice to anything that’s on this side of the uncanny valley, but then raises some unfortunate questions about some humans I know…

Anyways, I took a class from Douglas Hofstadter when I was a wee undergraduate, and had to buy “The Minds Eye”, a collection of essays edited by him and Daniel Dennett. Good reading for humans and and other sentient beings who ponder such questions as “does my teddy bear really love me?” and “how the heck DO we get around the Godel Incompleteness Theorem?”

Love the blog!

bf