I feel very similarly about this. I would also blur the lines by saying that the means of production of a "machine" isn't important in terms of what rights the machine has.
A human machine can be produced in the common way of daddy planting a seed in mummy's tummy, or conception can happen in a test tube. One day it may be possible for a life to exist without ever having been in a human womb. Maybe even it could be built from scratch as a fully functioning adult, cell by cell, and so never have been an infant. People would agree that if it's a person it deserve a person's rights. That kind of thinking is what I was challenging.
What if it's a person with a prosthetic leg. Do they deserve fewer rights? What about a fully prosthetic body and only a human brain? What about a human body and a prosthetic brain?
It's an area that people have a gut instinct on simply because they've never had to think about a machine as complex as a human, or conversely that they and all other humans are merely machines.
I agree with both yours and Mando's posts, dealing with the right here, right now, it's difficult to argue for machine rights. But things advance all the time and perhaps we should think about it, even though it seems vaguely ridiculous to do so.
IIN to wonder if machines will ever be given rights?
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I feel very similarly about this. I would also blur the lines by saying that the means of production of a "machine" isn't important in terms of what rights the machine has.
A human machine can be produced in the common way of daddy planting a seed in mummy's tummy, or conception can happen in a test tube. One day it may be possible for a life to exist without ever having been in a human womb. Maybe even it could be built from scratch as a fully functioning adult, cell by cell, and so never have been an infant. People would agree that if it's a person it deserve a person's rights. That kind of thinking is what I was challenging.
What if it's a person with a prosthetic leg. Do they deserve fewer rights? What about a fully prosthetic body and only a human brain? What about a human body and a prosthetic brain?
It's an area that people have a gut instinct on simply because they've never had to think about a machine as complex as a human, or conversely that they and all other humans are merely machines.
I agree with both yours and Mando's posts, dealing with the right here, right now, it's difficult to argue for machine rights. But things advance all the time and perhaps we should think about it, even though it seems vaguely ridiculous to do so.