Functionalism and Artificial Intelligence

Week 6

This brings back memories of a true story written by John Colapinto, “ As Nature Made Him.”  This is a story of a young boy who because of a freak accident lost his identity and was brought up as a girl as part of a cruel experiment. We are made to believe from childhood that we are who we are. We are being taught to do every task as a women would do or as a man would, as a women we are told that it is ok to show emotions and man are told that they should show strength and not emotions (cry), we teach our children how to talk, walk, dress and so on.  We are given the opportunity to decide what is best for us.  Sometimes our decisions may be wrong by other people’s standards, but are correct for us.  We can also make wrong decision right,

Intellectually, we are similar to computers they are programmed to do exactly what the programmer has intended it to do, as humans we are also programmed to do as our parents intend.  If computers are not programmed they are just metal objects without data .  Can the computer have the ability to think, love, and to feel on its own? I can only say that they do not, in order for a metal object to love it must have a human heart and a human mind. As humans we know that we are capable of many things, we have freedom to do as we wish, even if what we do is not right in the eyes of our society.