Robots do not love anyone
Love and the Post-Modern Predicament: Metaphysics Matters
In the first two chapters of Love and the Post-Modern Predicament, DC Schindler explains the quandary that our modern view of the human mind has placed us in. Under that view, we don’t interact with the outside world. Instead, the outside world interacts with our senses which are then received by our mind which interprets the data received. We don’t know that we are seeing an apple; all we know is that our senses are telling us that they are experiencing something that they or we interpret as an apple.[1]
Perhaps, our senses or our minds are wrong. Or maybe they are being tricked by an evil demon or an alien intelligence.
Under that view, we have the idea that our mind exists as a kind of homunculi riding around in our head observing the world through screens as if we were the pilot of a giant robot of the kind that fights Kaiju in the movie Pacific Rim.
The fact that I have already referenced two movies is some evidence of how far this modern view has soaked into the public’s mind, or, at least, the kultursmog that creates the substratum of how we unconsciously think.[2]
The quandary is that this presumed protocol of human understanding means that we are not in contact with reality. We are sitting behind screens observing unreliable instruments reporting to us about what they claim to sense. We have no assurance that the instruments work or are accurately reporting to us about what is out there. We are only in indirect contact with reality, if at all, and we may not be in contact with reality at all.
Specifically, we are tempted to doubt that there is an existence — that there are any beings — outside of our mind. If we are limited to our senses, and we do not interact directly with outside beings, then we have reasons to doubt that such beings exist.[3] This would imply that what we perceive as external beings doesn’t exist for their own sake. Our best inference is that they exist for our sake, and, therefore, they have the value we assign, not a value in and of themselves by the sake of their existence.[4]
From Dr. Schindler’s perspective, this view leads to a complete breakdown of philosophy, which means a complete breakdown of human reason, since denying that there is an external being that exists independently from us means that we cannot know or discuss the things that “being” is convertible with, such as truth, goodness, and beauty.
This tendency is not helped by the primitive virtual reality that we have created with computer and cell phone screens.
All of this tends toward solipsism. Want to be God? Virtual reality is probably as good as it gets since in the virtually real we are no longer subject to the harsh strictures and constraints of true Reality. Think you are a different gender from your “gender assigned at birth”? That’s no problem in virtual reality where you can download an avatar of any gender you want, and no one can look behind the screen.[5]
The disconnect from reality gets even worse. As Dr. Schindler explains in the third chapter of his book, “Goodness and the Gift of Self,” the modern view reduces the scope of the human will to the limits of the human body. The difference seems like a small disagreement in an obscure metaphysical doctrine. However, I have just finished reviews on a science fiction novel, Blindsight by Peter Watts, and a literary critical review of the ideas of the Human Extinction movement, and it seems clear that this dispute is about nothing less than the importance of human self-consciousness.
The classical position of the human will — going from Aristotle to Aquinas — was that human will was in direct contact with the thing will throughout the process of willing. Do you want to eat an apple? The reason that you want to eat the apple is there is something good in the apple that really exists and appeals to your appetite. The goodness is the nutrition or flavor, which impels you to reach out your hand and take the apple. Your will consents to this goodness, but it could refuse. All through the operation of eating the apple, your will is engaged in reality with an objective good that exists outside of you and in the apple being consumed. You and the apple are metaphysically connected by the good of the apple which is working with your will.
Dr. Schindler explains that after John Locke, the idea of the human will became more reductionist. Locke’s view of the will limited the action of the will to what the will could control, i.e., the willing person’s actions.[6] Dr. Schindler explains:
In a word, rather than acknowledging that the will is directed to — and indeed into — a reality in the world, which would imply an extension of the will beyond itself, Locke shrinks the will, so to speak, and limits its reach. It now no longer stretches out beyond the agent, but extends only as far as the boundaries of the self: “the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but our own actions; terminates there; and reaches no further.”101 This limitation of the will’s scope corresponds to the definition of will Locke sought to establish. If we think of the will specifically as an active power, which manifests itself by being the “unoriginate” first cause of some external change, it does not make sense to say that I will some thing, some object outside of myself. Instead, I have to recognize that the only thing I have direct power over, the only change I can make immediately through the exercise of my will, is in myself, or more specifically: in what I do.
Schindler, D. C.. Love and the Postmodern Predicament (p. 54).
It is almost as if in the modern sense, the homunculi sitting behind the screens of the Kaiju-killing giant robot pushed a button to reach for the apple. The giant robot isn’t involved in this decision. The human makes a decision. Once the button is pushed, then the involvement of the human is over. Dr. Schindler offers this explanation:
To go back to the apple example: for Locke, the decision to eat the apple comes from myself alone, I move myself to eat through an act of will, and, if all goes well, if the external world cooperates, the apple gets consumed in the process. This may seem like I am making intimate contact with the world — I am taking the apple into myself after all, and transforming it into a part of my body — but in reality this contact is extrinsic and accidental: the spiritual act of any exercise of will begins in myself and ends in myself, and the apple just happens to be, as it were, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Schindler, D. C.. Love and the Postmodern Predicament (p. 58).
Is this what we really think? Do we think we are robots going through a motion without regard to the object of the motion? If we remove the object of the motion, we also remove ourselves from the motion. We might as well go on autopilot. The motion will be successful or not without regard to our involvement.
As self-conscious human beings, I suspect that we think that we are actually involved in every stage of an action. We don’t start indifferently to the good of the apple; we want the apple. We want that apple. All through our actions, we continue to want that apple because it is good for our appetite. We are involved in the act of getting and eating that apple because it satisfies our appetite because it is good for the satisfaction of our appetite as it is presented to us.
To say that all we are doing is willing our action seems to wildly misconstrue our experience.
However, it would not misconstrue our experience if we lacked self-consciousness. This is where the speculation of Blindsight and The Revolt Against Humanity come into play.
Blindsight is a science fiction story by Peter Watts about first contact in a future not that far from our own. The contacted aliens are beings that lack self-consciousness. They are simply very efficient Turing-Test passing automatons. Because they are unburdened by self-consciousness, they are more efficient at adapting to new circumstances while carrying out their basic programming of colonization of new environments. The author concludes with the idea that self-consciousness is an evolutionary experiment that will have to be abandoned if humanity wants to survive.
The Revolt Against Humanity features the thinkers of the Human Extinction movement. These people fear the ecological destruction of the Earth. They are quite happy about the prospect of human extinction. In their view, the universe does not need and will not miss whatever human consciousness provides, which is mostly new ways of destroying the environment.
Both of these texts would fit quite well into Lockean metaphysics. Robots do not will the good; machines do not will the good. They follow programming. The aliens in Blindsight don’t reflect on problems; they follow a program that directs their actions. We could rig up our Kaiju-killing giant robot with a random decision generator to push buttons for certain actions. We wouldn’t say that either the decision generator or the robot was willing anything.[7]
The net result of Lockean metaphysics is to reduce human beings to the level of machines. That seems a high price to pay.
This insight may offer a perspective into the conundrum of freedom. For modern people, freedom is the power to choose. You are free to choose an apple or an orange. But for pre-moderns, such as St. Augustine, freedom was the power to do good. Dr. Schindler describes freedom as making a gift of the self. Dr. Schindler explains:
From the perspective of classical philosophy, by contrast, freedom is seen as an intrinsic participation in the goodness that belongs to reality in its very being. Freedom in this respect is always a kind of involvement in reality. It has its paradigm in total, irrevocable gift of self, by which the self also comes to its proper perfection. The self is a gift we give and at the same time a gift we receive. The most complete human instance of this exchange, of course, is in marriage, by which two people make vows — an act of the will — by which they bind themselves together forever, in a way that is fruitful and so never ceases to call on them to renew the gift of self and to find it renewed.
Schindler, D. C.. Love and the Postmodern Predicament (p. 61).
Dr. Schindler’s explanation doesn’t seem to correspond to freedom as we understand it, but let’s reflect for a second on our Kaiju-killing giant robot. Presumably, we could rig the robot to respond to external stimuli, or to make random decisions, but would we say that the robot is free? Probably not. Robots rigged in that way are under the control of their program.
Only humans are free. They are free insofar as they can choose to consent to the good or refuse such consent. Humans give such consent or refuse such consent as a function of their response to the perceived goodness of the desired being.
As Dr. Schindler points out, this necessarily involves the person in a relationship with the willed object as a thing separate from the person. It involves the person in a relationship with reality.
According to Dr. Schindler, the paradigm of such involvement is “love.” Love involves total involvement with an external object such that the lover gives himself totally to the beloved and receives back himself from the beloved.
The relationship of love is metaphysical or spiritual. It is more than willing an action. It is a desire to know the essence of the beloved.
Robots cannot love. Watts’ self-consciousness-lacking aliens cannot love.
Humans can love.
And know what a beautiful sunset is.
Footnotes:
[1] Credit for this idea largely goes to John Locke. See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
[2] The power of a philosophical proposition is its ability to be turned into a science fiction movie.
[3] Rene Descartes, call your office.
[4] Does this seem like wonky metaphysics? Then, consider the phrase “gender assigned at birth,” which implies that gender has no value apart from what someone subjectively assigns it. We are already living in this world.
[5] Of course, when such a person comes out from behind the screen it is a different story. Then, such a person must resort to the violence of threats, police force, and intimidation to make True Reality conform to virtual reality.
[6] Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, §30 (p. 331) as cited in Schindler, D. C.. Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (p. 63)..
[7] In one of Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker short stories, the human hero programs his computer to stall an alien death machine by eliminating losing moves from its options. The computer wills nothing and has no involvement with external reality as a matter of will or appetite, except by analogy. The Berserkers themselves are machines with a primitive instruction to kill all life. Do they will to kill? Are they involved with reality? Would they be just as “happy” following their directive in a virtual reality?
