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Articles

Dan Dennett and the Conscious Robot

Roger Caldwell discusses Descartes, Darwin, Dennett & dogs.

For Descartes there was an absolute distinction between men and animals. Animals were mere automata, having bodies only. Mankind alone possessed a mind as well as a body. Even to his contemporaries this doctrine of the bête-machine must have been a hard one to swallow – is not a dog wagging his tall, one of his critics asked, much the same as a man nodding his head? With Darwin what last vestige of plausibility the doctrine had was lost. If we are descended from animals, if we ourselves are animals, it seems impossible to deny all mental attributes to our closest relatives at least.

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