

Anything But Human - danso
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/anything-but-human/?hp

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Jesse_Ray
Articles like these are annoying/depressing.

They begin with strawmen, such as "scientists and even fellow philosophers are
telling me that I'm a machine or a beast." No, they argue that humans are
animals, not beasts. The terms mean different things: "frogs are animals" is
true and "frogs are beasts" is false. Further, the claim that humans are
animals is true by definition. The technical definition is complex, but it
should suffice for anyone versed in biology to know that humans are living
organisms with nervous systems and that all such organisms belong to the
kingdom Animalia, which means that humans are animals.

Then they follow the strawmen with pomposity, such as "it would take more time
and space than I have here to refute these views." How would the author know
how much time and space it would take to refute them? He presumes that such a
refutation not only exists, but that he knows it. This presumption is
preposterous because there cannot be a refutation of them. You cannot refute
linguistic arguments without proving that there is a One True Definition for a
given word or phrase, which would require proving that some form of Linguistic
(non-mathematical) Platonism is true, and that has yet to pass the threshold
of being a coherent concept.

Then they rewrite to shroud their pomposity with an excuse, such as "while
[insert previous quote], I'd like to suggest..."

Ugh.

------
danso
Note: I disagree entirely with the OP, or at least with his reasoning. This
essay basically reads like, "I think computers can never think/experience like
humans because humans are special, somehow"

