On the Distinction between Humans and Machines: A Response to Wittgenstein

Abstract

In this paper, I address the question of whether humans and machines are distinct. This is approached by answering two questions: in §1, I evaluate whether machines can think; in §2, I evaluate whether machines can feel pain. With regards to the first question, I first defend the idea that there are two conditions for thinking to be possible: 1) abstracting information and 2) synthesizing information. With these two conditions, I argue that machines can indeed think just as humans do; then, I defend this argument against three objections. With regards to the second question, I first defend the idea that there are two conditions for feeling pain to be possible: 1) thinking and 2) embodiment. While machines do have the capacity to think (as justified in §1), they are not embodied in the same way that human beings are embodied, and therefore, cannot experience pain. Following these two analyses, I conclude that the fundamental distinction between humans and machines is that the former is embodied whereas the latter is not. However, I also acknowledge that machines are simply not currently embodied due to the limitations of contemporary technology; and hence, in the future, machines may still have the capacity to attain embodiment and close the presently intractable gulf between our forms of life.