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5 Savannah L. Rev. 13 (2018)
The Lion, the Bat & the Thermostat: Metaphors of Consciousness

handle is hein.journals/savanlr5 and id is 13 raw text is: AVANNAH VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1 THE LION, THE BAT & THE THERMOSTAT: METAPHORS ON CONSCIOUSNESS Brian L. Frye* Abstract Can robots have rights? It depends on the meaning of robots and rights.' Different kinds of robots can have different kinds of rights. Robots can already have the rights of things, and may soon be able to have the rights of legal entities. But it is unclear whether robots can have the rights of animals or persons. It probably depends on what theory of mind is true: dualist, reductionist, or agnostic. Under a dualist theory, robots can have rights if they possess a soul or other form of mental substance. Under a reductionist theory, robots can have rights if they are conscious, or at least functionally identical to a human or animal. And under an agnostic theory, it depends on how brains actually work. Philosophers often use metaphors to explore problems they do not understand, and philosophers of mind are no exception. I will describe three metaphors used by philosophers of mind-the lion, the bat, and the thermostat- and reflect on how those metaphors may illuminate our speculations on the possibility of robot rights. Introduction But we cannot reckon with what is lost when we start out to transform the world. Man shall be free and supreme; he shall have no other aim, no * Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law, University of Kentucky School of Law. J.D., New York University School of Law, 2005; M.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute, 1997; B.A, University of California, Berkeley, 1995. Thanks to Patrick S. O'Donnell, Andrew K. Woods, Charles Colman, and Katrina Dixon for their helpful suggestions. 'As David Gunkel observes, the question of whether robots can have rights is distinct from the questions of whether robots should have rights. Perhaps we should treat robots as if they have rights, even if they lack patiency or moral agency. David J. Gunkel, The other question: can and should robots have rights?, ETHICS INF. TECH. (2017), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9442-4. 13

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