Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights?

holy_calamity writes "Hot on the heals of a UK government report that predicted robots would demand citizens rights within fifty years, an Arizona state lawyer has suggested that sub-human robots should have rights too. Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical — would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog? And can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"

Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights?

[jlp2097]

I'm not sure whether this is common geek knowledge or not - The title of this story most likely alludes to Philipp K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [wikipedia.org] This novel was the basis for the motion picture Blade Runner [wikipedia.org], a movie that every self-respecting geek ought to see (IMHO of course).

My two cents :-)

Re:Unavoidable?

[Chris Burke]

Seems like a logical argument to me. There's no strictly rational reason why a person born without a functioning higher brain should have more rights than a German Shepherd; that they do is mostly a testament to our emotional attachment to members of our own species.

A person without a functioning higher brain is going to be way below a German Shephard in performance, and practically is going to have basically no rights worth mentioning that their necessary care-givers don't enforce, other than the right to not be murdered. A German Shephard isn't all that bright compared to a normal human, but it still lives a normal dog life, whereas this severely crippled human isn't going to have any life at all.

If you're talking about the merely handicapped, Down's Syndrome or autistics or what have you, then it is very dangerous to try to draw a line and say "people beyond this point are sub-human and should have the same rights as a dog". Many are capable of living semi-normal lives, especially if given treatement, especially as our understanding of our brains and these disabilities improves, lives that no dog could ever have because a dog doesn't have that potential.

The non-hypocritical solutions, as I see it, are to either treat low-functioning homo sapiens as animals, or treat high-functioning animals (by which I mean certain species of marine mammals, chimpanzees, great apes; probably not really GSDs) as we would mentally-impaired humans.

Well outside of true vegeable non-functioning-brain cases there is no justification for treating the mentally impaired as sub-human, hypocrisy be damned. As far as our treatment of marine mammals and apes, I do think we should treat these species with respect, though saying "treat them like mentally impaired humans" again misses the point that they are not human impaired or otherwise, they are chimps or dolphins. Treat them like chimps or dolphins. Chimps and dolphins shouldn't have the rights we give humans, they don't live in a way where they need them. The only right they need granted by us is the right to be left alone. It is not hypocritical to recognize that this is so.

It's a dangerous line to be walking, deciding which humans are worthy of the title based on performance, which is surely not going to be a neutral metric, treading close to eugenics. I don't think that's where you intended to go, I just want to point out that there is a clear line between human/not-human completely devoid of value judgements or invocations of God, whereas human/not-a-good-enough-human is a line whose enforcement has caused untold misery throughout history.

Re:What the FUCK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in Canada; you're thinking of the American Constitution.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."

Then again, getting mauled by a firearm-toting bear is about as fundamental as justice can get, so that would seem to be allowed.