Descartes

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Preview: 

• Monday we will talk about field trips
• and go on to our next classic authors

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Rene Descartes (1600s)

• ra-NAY day-CART
• possessive: Descartes's (Day-CARTS)
• Animals in western thought (reading)
  
  
  

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Back up to some fundamental questions

Suppose I am in a room full of people and animals and I ask....

1. Am I conscious? (easy)
2. Are the other people conscious? (harder)
3. Are the animals conscious? (harder)

How can we make progress on 2 and 3?

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Reflecting on "automata" (self moving things)...robots (para 15)

• But wait...why is Descartes talking about robots! 
• Based on mechanical garden statuary, he was able to imagine some day people creating robots!

Robot reflections (para 15)

1. Imagine robot-dogs with the "same organs and outward form"
2. "We could have no means of knowing they were in any respect of a different nature from these animals" (para 15)

1. Imagine robot-humans, with the "same organs and outward form"
2. There would be two tests whereby we could know they were not really human

• The language test

para 15

• the general intelligence test

para 16

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Descartes's robot arguments (hinted at)

1. If animals can be perfectly simulated by mindless machines, then they ARE just mindless machines.
2. But they could be perfectly simulated by mindless machines.
3. So animals ARE just mindless machines

1. If humans can be perfectly simulated by mindless machines, then they ARE just mindless machines
2. But they could NOT be perfectly simulated by mindless machines.
• humans pass the language test, but mindless machines will always fail it
• humans pass the general ability test, but mindless machines will always fail it
3. So we can't draw the conclusion that humans are mindless machines

What is open to question here?

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Now let's set aside robots...how are animals and humans different?

Para 17 -- "by means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and brutes"

The language difference -- all humans have SOME language, but  animals have NO SIGNIFICANT language, even the most impressive animals lack language

• exceptions that are insignificant: parrots, barking dogs, singing birds...true language gives you the liberty to express a wide range of thoughts whenever you wish ... in this sense there is no true language in animals 

The second test:  the general intelligence difference (para 21)

• the extreme abilities of some animals don't carry over to other things, which shows they aren't based on "reason"
• the extreme abilities of humans do carry over to other things, which shows they are based on "reason"

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The bottom line

• I have consciousness, reason...I know it introspectively
• You do too, because you pass the two tests
• But animals fail the tests
• Therefore...
• animals have no reason at all (para 19) .... they are "destitute of reason" (para 21)
• the soul of animals is different than ours (para 23)
• Descartes's contemporaries interpreted him as saying animals were unfeeling machines like clocks, so you could do anything to them. 
• They used his ideas to defend vivisection -- experimentation on live, awake animals