Suppose technology has gotten to the point where there are machines that are intelligent, and where a mind can be transferred into a machine, and where people can be implanted or upgraded with mechanical parts. Firstly, can an intelligent robot feel emotion or is it programmed? Does the robot have no soul because it is a machine? What rights does a robot with intelligence, emotions or not, have? If it has no soul, is it entitled to any rights since it may be safer to err on the side of caution since the definition of a soul is unclear and give them no rights? If they do have emotions, does this mean they deserve rights? Or does it mean that since they are robots, unaccustomed to emotions like anger and fear, they are too dangerous to hold rights? Do intelligent robots count as people since they can supposedly learn and comprehend knowledge, and perform other intelligent actions? Is it ethical or legal to manipulate a robot/machine's thinking power for such things as science then? And what about people who have their minds in robot bodies? Do they count as human any more? Do they have a soul? Could consciousness-transfer be seen as degradation of spirit and mind or something like that (humans will find something wrong with everything), and following the pattern of previous questions, would they have freedoms or would they be mistreated? And would the same go for cyborgs? Dehumanization, as it would probably be termed by extreme opponents, could be banned or punished, and freedoms denied. Plus, would it be ethical to create a copy of a prisoner's mind and transfer it to a machine so the data could be methodically extracted or combed through? After all, you'd be interfering with the thought process of what would consider itself a human being. And the creepy part is they likely are. Would it be ethical to create such intelligence or to use memories to create a sort of digital child or duplicate? There are so many questions...

Sorry if this is unallowed or offensive, I was just wondering about this for a while so I blogged it. I'll take it down if it's against the rules.