## Metadata - Author: [[Meghan O'Gieblyn]] - Full Title: God, Human, Animal, Machine - Category: #books ## Highlights - In 1995 the philosopher David Chalmers called this “the hard problem” of consciousness. Unlike the comparatively “easy” problems of functionality, the hard problem asks why brain processes are accompanied by first-person experience. If none of the other matter in the world is accompanied by mental qualities, then why should brain matter be any different? ([Location 293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=293)) - Chalmers’s hard problem is merely the most recent iteration of the mind-body problem, a philosophical dilemma that is typically blamed on Descartes. In fact, in the narratives of disenchantment, Descartes is often positioned as the serpent in the garden, the devil who sundered the world. Before him, most of the classical and medieval philosophers believed the soul was an animating principle that could be found in all forms of life. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=299)) - I find it difficult to believe that the mind can be reduced to purely unconscious processes—the firing of neurons, the flow of information—just as I find it unlikely that a robot will ever achieve the rich inner life we enjoy as humans. Is this in fact a holdover of my religious past, a longing to believe there is some essential and irreducible self where my soul once resided? Or is it because, conversely, I have come to accept the premises of disenchantment all too well, such that I can no longer understand matter as anything but passive and inert? ([Location 334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=334)) - A couple years ago the psychologist Robert Epstein challenged researchers at one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes to try to account for human behavior without resorting to computational metaphors. They could not do it. The metaphor has become so pervasive, Epstein points out, that “there is virtually no form of discourse about intelligent human behavior that proceeds without employing this metaphor, just as no form of discourse about intelligent human behavior could proceed in certain eras and cultures without reference to a spirit or deity.” ([Location 350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=350)) - While we have a tendency to define ourselves based on our likeness to other things—we say humans are like a god, like a clock, or like a computer—there is a countervailing impulse to understand our humanity through the process of differentiation. And as computers increasingly come to take on the qualities we once understood as distinctly human, we keep moving the bar to maintain our sense of distinction. ([Location 394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=394)) - As late as the 1950s, the scientific consensus was that chimpanzees—who share almost 99 percent of our DNA—did not have minds. When Jane Goodall began working with Tanzanian chimps, her editor was scandalized that her field reports attributed an inner life to the animals and described them with human pronouns. Before publishing, the editor made systematic corrections: “He” and “she” were changed to “it.” “Who” was changed to “which.” ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=413)) - Descartes, the genius of modern philosophy, concluded that animals were machines. But it was his niece Catherine who once wrote to a friend about a black-headed warbler that managed to find its way back to her window year after year, a skill that clearly demonstrated intelligence: “With all due respect to my uncle, she has judgment.” ([Location 423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P45CY86&location=423))