Many scientists are utterly loopy

I've just read the following Does Technology Have a Soul? which is an extract from the book God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning.

Incidentally, the author appears to be referring to a toy robot dog at the beginning rather than an actual dog; something I never initially realised.

The author says:

Today, as AI continues to blow past us in benchmark after benchmark of higher cognition, we quell our anxiety by insisting that what distinguishes true consciousness is emotions, perception, the ability to experience and feel: the qualities, in other words, that we share with animals.

If there were gods, they would surely be laughing their heads off at the inconsistency of our logic. We spent centuries denying consciousness in animals precisely because they lacked reason or higher thought. (Darwin claimed that despite our lowly origins, we maintained as humans a “godlike intellect” that distinguished us from other animals.) As late as the fifties, the scientific consensus was that chimpanzees—who share almost 99 percent of our DNA—did not have minds.

 

Wait... we spent centuries denying consciousness in animals? Scientists and philosophers maybe, but I doubt the average person denied that animals are conscious. The pernicious influence of an "education" can make people believe the most ludicrous things imaginable -- like computers are (or can become) conscious and animals are not conscious!

 

It is breathtaking that the scientific consensus was that chimpanzees don't have minds. Just think about that for a moment. How utterly crazy do you have to be to think this? This also explains their unquestioning acceptance of materialism. Most of them don't care how utterly loopy their beliefs are.