Conscious Robots
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Conscious Robots is a book exploring hard determinism written by Paul Kwatz and published in 2005. Kwatz argues that the illusion of free will can be dispelled by considering our personal experience and scientific knowledge.
The book intertwines three factors to reach its conclusion. Evidence from the biochemical and neurological composition of the brain; Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection; and our ability to learn through emotional feedback. This emotional feedback creates a hard-wired decision making scheme of pleasure and pain responses which can be likened, Kwatz contends, to a computer program. Drawing on all of these examples Kwatz concludes that free will must be an illusion.
The book considers the idea that our misplaced trust in free will is as instinctive as our initial belief that the world is flat. Given that our only proof for free will is this instinctive belief; Kwatz concludes that we must be mistaken. Conscious decisions are reducible to little more than evolutionary programming; and human beings are, as the books title suggests, little more than conscious robots.
The conclusions of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett on genetic and memetic predestination are both indirectly criticised by Kwatz. Dawkins particularly is seen by Kwatz as having rejected his own ideas at the end of The Selfish Gene. Ongoing debate exists as to whether this charge is justified. Dawkins and his supporters maintain that Kwatz has fallen into the trap of biological determinism.
See also
- Biological determinism
- Daniel Dennett
- Flat earth
- Genetic determinism
- Meme
- Richard Dawkins
- The Selfish Gene
- Technological Singularity
- Transhumanism
