At 10:24 PM 2/10/00 -0800, Joel Z Bandstra wrote:
>Ladies and Gentlemen
>
>Glen Morton mentioned defining humans by their behavior. I am hoping to
>elicit some elaboration on this point either by Glen or by some one else
>who feels like doing a little elaborating. I mean to ask, What do you mean
>by behavior? If a machine was made to act like a human (like some sort of
>AI thing) would it be behaving like a human, or, what is the difference
>between acting and behaving? It seems to me that the basis for the
>definition ought to be a spiritual one. Is behavior a spiritual basis?
Yes I am advocating a sort of Turing test for the image of God. If someone
who doesn't look like me, acts human, prays, speaks, uses tools, and other
things like this, then he is human regardless of how differenly he looks.
If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck then for
goodness sakes it is a DUCK!!!
The problem with trying to define the image totally in a spiritual sense is
that I can't know if you have the image. What exactly is it I am looking
for? Without some guideline as to what this 'spritual' image is, I am free
to ascribe it to whom I please and deny it to whome I please. And if you
can't clearly define it, you have no basis upon which to deny it to my cat
who is quite an intelligent kitty or to deny it to the machine. What is it
that you are denying the machine and kitty?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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