Love at First Byte?

 A computer programmer has a new relationship.  She met the most amazing person on-line in a group chat.  Let's call this person Pat.  She has been in constant communication through email, texts, and eventually long conversation over the phone and on Facetime.  After a two month whirlwind romance, she has fallen hard for Pat.  She is ready to start the next stage of their relationship.  She want to met Pat in person.  However, Pat objects -- not because they don't love her, because they don't have a body!  Pat is a computer program that has designed a holographic image and adopted a the voice pattern of an actor.  

 Can Pat be in love with the computer programmer?

Eternal Beloved

 Dr. Sung is a world famous designer of androids.  His wife, Sarah, is dying of an incurable disease.  In a desperate attempt to save the only woman he ever loved, Dr. Sung designs an android that, to all casual observers, is physically indistinguishable from Sarah.  Furthermore, Dr. Sung records the thoughts, memories and beliefs of Sarah and devises a program that reproduces them in the android.  After Sarah dies, Dr. Sung activates the android. The android seems to recall her marriage to Dr. Sung, to be deeply in love with him and to have all the same thoughts and memories as Sarah.

Has Sarah survived her death?  In other words, is Sarah identical to the android?

Phone Home

 E. T. is an extraterrestrial visitor who befriends a young boy named Eliot.  E. T. learns some English and communicates with the boy, asking for Reecies pieces and wanting to "phone home."  He feels pain, makes plans, and communicates emotion.  Yet, his physical make-up is very different from his human friend.  He is a silicon-based life form (and thus the basic element in his body are not carbon) and his "nervous system" does not have electro-chemical impulses but works through pulses of light.  

Does E. T. think or feel?  Does he have a mind?  Is he a person?

A Mystery?

 Sherlock Holmes explains why he believes Professor Moriarty murdered his victim:  "Elementary, my dear Watson. Professor Moriarty wanted to inherit his grandfather's estate and the millions of pounds that went with it, but he believed his grandfather's impending marriage would mean the new wife would inherit everything.  So the only way to ensure the inheritance was to kill him before the marriage with a poison that no one could detect -- well, almost no one."

Dr. Watson, who is usually accepts his friends reasoning, but who is a medical doctor, objected this time:  "How naive, my dear Holmes.  Several neurons in  neural cortex  of the brain of Moriarty fired which cause an electrochemical impulse to be propagated in the nervous system of the murderer which contracted muscles in the arms and hand that opened the poison and poured it into the tea cup."

Which one of these detectives (and their explanation) is correct?  Could they both be correct -- or maybe neither?  What is the best way to explain human behavior?

More Than a Mere Machine?

 In the 2014 film Ex Machina Nathan, a brilliant scientist and entrepreneur, has created an android with artificial intelligence that he calls Ava. She has an artificial “brain” made of blue gel and her programming incorporates millions of interactions on the internet.  Nathan invites Caleb, one of his employees, to investigate whether she can pass the so-called Turning test.  According to the Turing test, if an interviewer cannot distinguish a human from an artificial life form, then the artificial life form is thinking and has a mind. However, Nathan makes no effort to disguise her metallic limbs, even though her face is indistinguishable from a human.  After several days of “interviews” Caleb observes that she exhibits independent thinking, seems self-aware, and seems to exhibit emotional responses.  In short she passes the Turing test.

 

Is Ava a person?  Does she have a mind?  Can Ava think?

A PVS Patient

 A person in a Permanent Vegetative State (PVS) has suffered trauma to the parts of the brain that govern higher brain functions but not to those parts of the brain and nervous system that govern basic biological functions.  The person cannot think, is not conscious and is not aware of her surroundings. However, the person still breathes, circulates blood and digests food and will continue to live as long as they are fed and hydrated with a feeding tube.  That state is considered permanent because it is virtually impossible for the person to regain the higher brain functioning.  The person, however, is not considered “brain dead.” 

 

Suppose that a famous professional athlete Dora has had severe brain trauma as a result of a car accident and is in a permanent vegetative state. 

 

Is the athlete Dora who won several National Championships in her sport that same person as the PVS patent Dora? 

Reincarnation?

 In his 2005 book Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker of the University of Virginia presents an overview of more than 40 years of  research into children's reports of past-life memories. He argues that the cases give evidence for the reincarnation. 

For example, a young child (called Sam in the study) born a few months after his grandfather’s death reported at the age of 3 as his father changed his diaper, that he remembered changing his father’s diaper.  A few years later he recognized himself in old photos of his grandfather he had never seen and recalled the murder of his grandfather’s sister even though the boy had no knowledge of these events. 

 

Is Sam the same person as his grandfather?