Brain simulation and personhood: a concern with the Human Brain Project (original) (raw)

Abstract

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a massive interdisciplinary project involving hundreds of researchers across more than eighty institutions that seeks to leverage cutting edge information and communication technologies to create a multi-level brain simulation platform (BSP). My worry is that some brain models running on the BSP will be persons. If this is right then not only will the in silico experiments the HBP envisions being carried on the BSP be unethical the mere termination of certain brain models running on the BSP will be unethical. To assess the possible personhood of certain brain simulations I consider John Searle’s critique of strong AI. In arguing that Searle’s critique fails I conclude that the HBP must tread carefully and devise strict rules on how research using the BSP ought to proceed.

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Notes

1. I realize, of course, that an influential line of response given by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971) denies this. She has made plausible the claim that there are instances when it is morally permissible to kill a person. It may be argued, however, that the situations in which such killings are morally permissible are few and far between so the force of the overall argument still applies in the majority of situations.
2. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.
3. For an interesting discussion about the remarkably stable trends of quantifiable progress in information and communication technologies see Kurzweil 2012, ch. 10.
4. For more contemporary defenses of this view see Dennett (1985) and French (1990).
5. See French (2000) for more on this and Harnad (1994) for a dissenting opinion.
6. Similar thought experiments can be found in Pylyshyn (1980).
7. I realize this term is vague and some may consider the artificial hearts that have recently deployed to be successful. An artificial heart, however has not yet been able to sustain the life of a human being for more than a year.

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1. School of Philosophy, Renmin University, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Beijing, 100872, China
   Daniel Lim

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Lim, D. Brain simulation and personhood: a concern with the Human Brain Project.Ethics Inf Technol 16, 77–89 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-013-9330-5

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• Published: 20 October 2013
• Issue date: June 2014
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-013-9330-5

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