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| Sometimes my car talks to me .. |
Would you entrust your life to a car you couldn't talk to? I know most people would rather die than converse with their chauffeurs but how many professional drivers can discuss with equal ease philosophy, psychology and computer science (according to the module description)?
I say “They tell me you're like the human unconscious. Like me driving with my mind elsewhere. You're 'classify then do’ - with thousands of edge cases.”
The car says, “How long have you had a problem with edge cases?”
I say “When I drive, I can go for long periods daydreaming, on automatic. But then some tricky situation arises and there's a need to negotiate. That's when driving gets my full attention.”
The car says “Tell me more about driving.”
I say “The whole Skinner thing, the behaviourist black box, the input-output rules, the famous denial of intentionality. Dennett nailed it all, didn't he?”
The car says, “Tell me more about Dennett.”
“The thing is,” I say, “Without the intentional stance there can be no such thing as empathy. But who wants to be driven by a psychopathic car?”
“What do you mean by empathy?” the car asks.
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© Nigel Seel. June 2018.
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