I Am A Philosopher, Not A Scientist,

I Have Shown That Those Who Deplore Artificial Intelligence Are Also Those Who Deplore The Evolutionary Accounts Of Human Mentality: If Human Minds Are Non-miraculous Products Of Evolution, Then They Are, In The Requisite Sense, Artifacts, And All Their Powers Must Have An Ultimately Mechanical Explanation. We Are Descended From Macros And Made Of Macros, And Nothing We Can Do Is Beyond The Power Of Huge Assemblies Of Macros.

For More Than A Century, People Have Often Thought That The Conclusion To Draw From Darwin's Vision Is That Homo Sapiens, Our Species - And We're Just Animals Too, We're Just Mammals - That There Is Nothing Morally Special About Us. I Myself Don't Think This Follows At All From Darwin's Vision, But It Is Certainly The Received View In Many Quarters.

I Listen To All These Complaints About Rudeness And Intemperateness, And The Opinion That I Come To Is That There Is No Polite Way Of Asking Somebody: Have You Considered The Possibility That Your Entire Life Has Been Devoted To A Delusion? But That’s A Good Question To Ask. Of Course We Should Ask That Question And Of Course It’s Going To Offend People. Tough.

Words Have A Genealogy And It's Easier To Trace The Evolution Of A Single Word Than The Evolution Of A Language.

Is He A Dread Genetic Determinist, Or A Dread Environmental Determinist? He Is Neither, Of Course, For Both These Species Of Bogeyman Are As Mythical As Werewolves. By Increasing The Information We Have About The Various Causes Of The Constraints That Limit Our Current Opportunities, He Has Increased Our Powers To Avoid What We Want To Avoid, Prevent What We Want To Prevent. Knowledge Of The Roles Of Our Genes, And The Genes Of The Other Species Around Us, Is Not The Enemy Of Human Freedom, But One Of Its Best Friends.