During this week of class, we had discussed themes of slavery, parallels between human and robot and briefly discussed metaethics. What was most interesting about the topics of slavery were the ways in which slaves had originally try to be on par with their richer, whiter masters. They had either dressed and looked like them, begged for their freedom, or were ready to take to violence for it. A lot of these ways in which former slaves desired freedom and to be equal to white people are similar to the way Andrew fights for his freedom in The Bicentennial Man. Asimov has themes in both The Bicentennial Man and The Caves of Steel that are very similar to themes of slavery and judging others based on appearance. One interesting aspect contrast between both stories to me was that both Andrew Martin and Elijah feel some sort of fear from the other coexisting form of life; Elijah fears he will lose his job to Daneel, a robot, and Andrew fears he will never be on par with humans.
Another interesting aspect of this week’s classes was the Metaethics article, more specifically the idea of speciesism. Over the past few hundred years, humans have come a long in way in learning to be more socially accepting towards others. For example, people began to see the error in their ways when discriminating against others simply based on their race, gender, and now currently, their sexual orientation. We are in an era where we are judging each other more on each other’s character and morals than we are any sort of physical characteristic, although outdated ideologies tend to surface here and there. But perhaps the new “social barrier” to break is to start thinking about how we deem sentient life, and do we allow it rights simply based on respect of consciousness, or do we base it on how similar to humans that form of life would be? The discussion on Thursday of the argument of whether or not we should allow robots into society now was very intriguing. The knee-jerk reaction is probably no, as our greatest sci-fi fears of robot revolution or creepily identical human A.I. seeps into our minds at the thought. However, if we compare our ways of thinking now to just a few years ago, the people of 1817 would be completely estranged. We are more tolerant than ever of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.;most of us base our judgement on character of another fellow human in our species. In the next few hundred years, perhaps we will have to extend those means of acceptance to behavior that isn’t simply just “human” or like us. We may have to be open to even stranger ways of thinking that will give the respect that conscious life may deserve. So, as for now, most of us are probably hesitant to accept androids/robots into society. As we grow more and more comfortable with the pace of technology however, we may be ready to address the subject of what constitutes life outside of speciesism and human boundaries, which could be in the very distant future.