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Dear Marcio, Thanks for your thoughtful response to my note on embodied judgment. While I can see that it may seem that I link our ability to project and judge to the notion of human mortality, the relation is simpler than this, but more subtle. Our ability to judge and to project is a function of being embodied. Our bodies are mortal, and in this respect, empathy, understanding, and many other aspects of what it is to be human are predicated on mortality and empathy for the sufferings and pleasures which all mortals experience. If we had immortal bodies, then the forms of empathy, understanding, and what it might be to be human would be predicated on immortality. It is interesting in a speculative sense to wonder what forms of suffering and pleasure we would experience as immortals. I agree with you completely that our human ability to think, to project, and therefore to design depends on our embodied connection with the world. Other forms of creatures may think in other ways. If they do, however, we can’t know this – these creatures exist in the realms of speculation or fiction. Any creatures we know who think live in bodies. These bodies condition their relations with the world, therefore determining who they are, how they think, and what they think about. Further, the unique embodiment and unique experiences of each individual bears a relationship to what specific experiences occur in his or her life-world, and therefore in the thinking he or she does. (This applies retrospectively to those who lived in human bodies in the past.) Moravec is right: computational algorithms for certain kinds of delimited mental processes are easy indeed compared to the immense complexity of the complex adaptive system of an embodied human mind interacting with the world. In my view, only an embodied mind can design in the full sense of the word because only an embodied mind can have preferences. I’d argue from experience that dogs can design in that they can choose preferred future states over current states, using tools and processes to achieve their goals. Dogs, like humans, undergo experiences and learn from them to form preferential judgments. In contrast, a computer can learn from experience, but it cannot form independent preferential judgments. Lacking the ability to select among appropriate goals, a computer cannot design. And then there are the problems of creative, innovative, or generative thinking. Since dogs lack language and hands, dogs can't think about the same kinds of things we think about or design the things we can design, but I'd say they think and design, and I have seen dogs create and innovate to solve problems. I've also seen dogs engage in what I'd call generative thinking, but I'm willing to agree that this may only be my interpretation. This may be a bit too speculative for the list, but it addresses the range of reasons I have for arguing that computers cannot think or design as humans can. In this respect, they are not likely to replace us in doing human things. Where it comes to work, of course, we have always used human beings for tasks that are mechanical and repetitive. Many of the human beings engaged in these tasks can be replaced by machines, computers, or automated systems. In an era before we could design appropriately sophisticated machines and systems, this argument was valid mostly in principle. Now it is increasingly valid in fact. In this respect, Terry raises concerns that may well be valid for some occupations. It is unlikely that machines will ever replace dogs: the difference between an Aibo and a dog is that dogs can play in the genuine sense of the word. This fact leaves some hope for designers. Warm wishes, Ken -- Marcio Rocha wrote: —snip— If I understand you correctly, you seem to suggest that part of our ability to project is conditioned to the notion of human mortality and our ephemeral condition. What makes this a strong philosophical question, especially considering design and project as fundamentally a thinking about the future in some ways. If I’m not wrong, another question that seems implicit in this comment is that part of our human ability to project (and to think, act, etc.) depends on our embodied connection with the world. (And externalism versions to philosophy of mind and computationalism). This reminds me of the Movarec’s paradox, and his historical influence on artificial inteligence thinking about how important are the bodies (and therefore Sensimotor apparatus, etc.) for the development of machines that may seem or simulate the behavior of human beings in efficient way. As Moravec said: “it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.” Paradigms about manipulating symbols are historically faced by the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences, which can be traced back since Craik, Alan Turing (and Turing’s Machine) until the present, with new theories, that include the Chinese Room Experiment, among others. —snip— Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design