Mindshaping a Self-Knowing Machine: Could a Robot Know Itself?
摘要
This closing chapter asks whether the conditions that yield human self-knowledge could, in principle, be artificially instantiated. It treats a socially embedded robot as a test case for the theory. If normative self-knowledge depends on analogues of noetic feelings that are accessible and action-guiding, and sustained embedding in practices that interpret, challenge, and correct those feelings, then a carefully designed system might develop capacities resembling justificatory self-regulation. The chapter articulates observable markers—norm-sensitive use of psychological predicates, reason-giving under challenge, self-correction for the right reasons—and stresses that only behaviors grounded in accountable learning processes count as evidence of self-knowledge. The result is a cautiously optimistic conditional: if an artificial agent can be mindshaped within transparent, socially normative scaffolds, then something like artificial self-knowledge may be possible. Whether such agents would merit forms of care is left as an open and serious moral concern.