Psychologists from Harvard University have reported
on the results of a study of 2,000 people who answered a list of
questions about the following entities: “a 7-week-old fetus, a
5-month-old infant, a 5-year-old girl, an adult woman, an adult man, a
man in a persistent vegetative state, a frog, the family dog, a wild
chimpanzee, a dead woman, God, and a sociable robot.” They gained
some interesting new insights into how humans perceive the idea of mind.
Rather than the tradional view that we perceive mind as a continuum, the
researchers now believe we perceive mind along two distinct dimensions:
“agency, an individual’s ability for self-control, morality and
planning; and experience, the capacity to feel sensations such as
hunger, fear and pain.” The project is searching for answers to
questions such as whether or not a robot could have a mind; or whether a
machine could do something morally wrong. If you’d like to try the
survey yourself, they offer an online version.