bnevin@CCH.BBN.COM (Bruce E. Nevin) (06/26/88)
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 88 12:59 EDT From: Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com> Subject: the legal rights of robots To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu cc: bn@cch.bbn.com There is an article entitled `The Rights of Robots' by Phil McNally and Sohail Inayatullah in the Summer 1988 issue of _Whole Earth Review_. They work for the Hawaii Judiciary (inter alia). A more complete legalese version was submitted as a report to the Hawaii Supreme Court. A footnote to the article says you can obtain this report and related correspondence from the authors at PO Box 2650, Honolulu, HI 96804. The same issue has an article by Candace Pert of NIH about neuropeptides and the `physical basis of emotions'. This article suggests to me that the computer may be inappropriate as a metaphor for mental process, perhaps as inappropriate as the steam engine metaphor that Freud's thinking was grounded in. (Freud's libido, channelling, repression, release, all presumed passive neurons as pipes and valves, no metabolism: the neurophysiological wisdom of the day.) Bruce Nevin bn@cch.bbn.com <usual_disclaimer>