The bugs which attacked Flandry at the beginning of CHAPTER SIX were still not the bad dream objects that Djana and he had seen from orbit. These bugs, with purple enamel over metal exoskeletons around electronic interiors, quickly succumb to Flandry's blaster because its heat raises the temperature of components designed for a cold environment. Their feelers are very precise magnetic, electric, radionic and thermal sensors. Since they also have optical and audio systems, Flandry says that:
"'...it's a semantic quibble whether to call them robots or artificial animals.'" (p. 240)
Not a quibble. Animals are differentiated both from inanimate matter and from plants by consciousness. If these bugs remain unconscious mechanisms, then they are merely elaborate toys whereas, if their sensors generate sensations within the bugs, then the bugs have become conscious and therefore can be described as artificial animals. An inanimate object or a plant is hot and a sensor detects and registers heat whereas an animal feels hot. Thus, its inner workings have been qualitatively transformed from mere sensitivity into conscious sensation. See also:
The Artificial Intelligence Question In Use Of Weapons
Flandry contrasts his artificial animals with, by implication, unconscious "robots" but, of course, Isaac Asimov's robots have artificial (positronic) brains and thus are conscious.
The one exception that Flandry makes to classifying the bugs as artificial animals is that they lack nourishment, repair and reproduction and therefore do not comprise an ecology. But, if they did, then he would categorize it as "'...a robotic ecology...'" (ibid.) Thus, judging by the fact that he contrasts robots with artificial animals, this robotic ecology would not involve consciousness?
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And in "Epilogue," we see Poul Anderson speculating about robotic machines evolved to become a strange new kind of life which fits your definition.
Ad astra! Sean
It's dubious whether our insects have anything analogous to the consciousness of mammals or birds. They don't have brains, just ganglia: it'd call them more like organic machinery.
Insects organic machines? Wow and interesting!
Mr Stirling,
What do you think is the status of fish?
Paul.
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