Disposable darlings
A few notes about gynoids, A.I., and consciousness.
Your skin is like vinyl
The perfect companion
— Roxy Music (For Your Pleasure, 1973)
The Blue Book (Wittgenstein, 1958)
[A] queer kind of medium, the mind; and the mechanism of the mind, the nature of which, it seems, we don’t quite understand, can bring about effects which no material mechanism could. Thus e.g. a thought (which is such a mental process) can agree or disagree with reality; I am able to think of a man who isn’t present; I am able to imagine him, ‘mean him’ in a remark which I make about him, even if he is thousands of miles away or dead. “What a queer mechanism,” one might say, “the mechanism of wishing must be if I can wish that which will never happen.
The Blue Book (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 16)
There is an objection to saying that thinking is some such thing as an activity of the hand. Thinking, one wants to say, is part of our ‘private experience’. It is not material, but an event in our private consciousness. This objection is expressed in the question: “Can machines think?” […] “Can a machine have toothache?” You will certainly be inclined to say: “A machine can’t have toothache?”. All I will do now is to draw your attention to the use which you have…
