'Mayfly' By Watts And Murphy: Article Analysis

This paper will argue that in “Mayfly,” by Watts & Murphy, it is morally wrong for Stavros and the Goravecs for force Jeannie to animate the body of the Goravec’s child. This is because Jeannie exhibits behaviours akin to a person, and under this assumption, she is deserving of the moral standing/rights of a person. These rights were violated in the non-consensual act of Jeannie animating the child’s body.
To begin, Jeannie needs to be considered a person for her to be deserving of rights that would be violated, in effect, making the situation morally wrong. To be a person, according to Sparrow, a robot must be a moral agent. There are a few aspects to take into account in assessing moral agency. One of these is that a robot must be held morally
In this “prison” Jeannie does not fully understand the situation, what she is being forced into, because her intelligence is being demoted to that of a four-year-old brain’s capacity, yet “she dreams.” (Watts&Murphy 13) It sounds torturous, to be blunt. Inferencing from her self-harm, her fits of rage, her clear discontent, and her descriptions of her time in the body as nightmarish it is safe to assume that given the choice, she would not be there. Yet she is subjected to this. This is what seems to be a punishment, for something that she had no control over, her being
This argument is invalid because a biological brain is irrelevant, what matters is the display of the sophistication of the “brain”. Again, it would be important to note Searle’s point that mechanical brains and biological brains alike function similarly in that there is not any control over how either functions. Additionally, Heil’s functionalist point of view can be synthesized, that the relationship between minds and brains is analogous to the relation programs have to hardware. Hence, Jeannie showed the standing of a person, with a mind, one that functions much like a person’s, and a conscious that was discussed