I did read this a long time ago actually, but recent research lead me to re-visit the work of eccentric yet genius Masahiro Mori [森政弘], perhaps Japan's most widely recognised roboticist. In fact Mr. Mori (currently 93 years old) was among the leaders and pioneers on the fields of robotics and cybernetics for quite some time, within an international scope; his name was as intrinsically bound to the topic as to earn him the Japanese nickname of ロボコン博士 [Robocon Doctor, Robocon being robot tournaments]. Endowed with a talent for wood carving and crafts since childhood, Mori would then get interested in electricity and radio systems, leading him to manufacture his own shortwave receivers. Once he got into college he began daring investigations and experiments, such as creating artificial organs (lungs, hearts, kidneys) as soon as 1959. His enthusiastic and imaginative approachs were the result of his fundamentally optimistic vision of the nature of technology, and its beneficial potential for a better civilization. From the 80s and 90s onward, he also focused on androids (that is, human-like robots) and their improvement. His achievements were very much applauded by the general public, perhaps more deeply linked with the concept of robotics than many others, as some contemporary modern critics point out (and documentaries such as Tokyo Noise (2002) report). The historical backgrund of Japan also invokes the fascinating Karakuri puppets [からくり人形], premodern wood androids capable of surprising feats.
But Mr.Mori displays other talents, which also invoke a merge between tradition and modernity. He has been involved in Zen Buddhism (given that you don't belong to Zen) since 1970, writing introductory books on the subject and being a particularly strong advocate for the non-discriminatory mind, or no duality [非まじめ]. He also plays the flute, and has been a performer at the Philharmonic Orchestra of Nagoya. His vision encompasses arts, religion, humanism and technology in such a daring way that many younger engineers simply look unimaginative in comparison. Yet, this does not put Mori among the wildest ''futurologists'' of the nineties (many of them California new-age dreamers) given his practical and austere approach to the subject, mainly based on praxis (a feat not only valued by actual engineers but also Zen monks). At his late age, he is not only deeply appreciated within Japan due to his robot works and his hosting and promoting the amateur creators in many competitions, but he is also known worldwide due to his coining a much talked-about concept, the Uncanny Valley. In fact this term came to existence as 不気味の谷, which translates quite literally into his English counterpart. As it is known, the Uncanny Valley represents on a diagram the point at which the human likeness of an artifact becomes unsettling and spooky, as ''something trying to become human or steal the appearance of an actual living being''. It displays some variables such as stillness or movement.
This useful definition of a pretty specific feeling, one robot engineers are still trying to overcome (and not without precedent if we account for Freud's essay on the Unheimlich), granted Mori lots of attention, as the wave of futurism is again blooming as it did in the nineties. However, The Buddha in the Robot isn't really a book on artificial intelligence, aesthetics or even robotics for that matter. This particular work of Mori deals with the metaphysical, using ordinary situations and meditations on how the status of both the inanimate and the animate are really close in the Buddhism worldview, and in modern physics alike. It is a divulgative essay on Buddhism which meditates on 非まじめ, which as I mentioned constitutes Mori's biggest concern within Mahāyāna:
The Buddha, with his superior vision, recognised this, although the world is one, it is not a homogeneous blob, but an integrated network of phenomena linked together in an infinite variety of ways (...) What happens when we substitute people for robots? What are people's bodies made of? In the final analysis, they are composed mostly of carbon or hydrogen atoms, as can be seen from the fact that when we die and are cremated most of us goes up the cremetorium chimney in the form of carbon dioxide gas. Only ashes are left. We are prone to think of the carbon dioxide gas as being our own, but it is obvious that we ourselves did not create it
This statement, although it could be seen as physical reductionism of the kind our modern scientific usually works under, it is not exactly the same. Mori is comparing such perspective with the Buddhist recognition of the kernel of all existence as being void, nullified or lacking identity. That is, words and names are the only boundary-creating agents which separate an ''inside'' or an ''outside'', a ''self'' and a ''world'', and utterly distinguish anything from its constitutive components. While, of course, reality is a-differentiated, and a whole big phenomena with manifold aspects, and no actual metaphysical differentation can be made between ''my body'' and its nutrients/components, which I eagerly ingest everyday and are inanimate and inert by themselves. We even idealize the life of the mind to the point of the mind ignoring the physical aspects of its own body, its bacteria, its unbalances; to the point of needing the assistance of a professional doctor to understand basic facts about our own existence and destiny.
Thus, Mori compares an android and a human being not as a way of downplaying the sentience of living organisms, but as a way of elevating what we see as lowly functions of nature, as ''background noise'' out of our mind's eye to our same status, and in fact blur the distinction between the two. Existence as interdependence or process instead of enduring substance is not only a scientific fact but also the only metaphysical perspective which allows for change and transformation (since nothing is itself in the first place). This built-in existence in which everything is 'via' or 'sive' other thing is also the key to understand that which modern Buddhism considers 'nothingness' or 'void' [Śūnyatā] to be: to be nothingess is 'to never be something concrete, to remain in change, to be in state of composing or dissolving; that is, to stay between being and nothingness, to be dependent'.
From this standpoint, not only robots and humans are alike, but also rivers and mountains. This 'universal sympathy' has in itself nothing supernatural for Mori, and is fully reminding of the scientific or technological framework of the modern world (something other Buddhist scholars would debate, if sympathising with Heidegger's or Adorno's thesis on the technological worldview). His approach is quite laid back, and the book itself does not go out of its way to enquire in scholarly quotes or references; in this aspect is fully readable to anybody interested in grasping a better understanding of the Buddhist worldview from a Japanese Zen perspective. Many chapters also deal with the overcoming of suffering and the understanding of change; in this also Mori reveals himself as a different kind of writer from those peddlers of ''positive thinking'' and decaffeinated oriental-ish feel good sensibility. His no-nonsense and layman approach to Buddhism as a science man is reminiscent of Carl Sagan actually, and his being a certified practiser of the religion also takes him deep within the scriptural ascetic nature of Zen: 'We don't care about mind and body. We don't mind happiness. We reflect on The Way'. The easy going and short chapters make for a comfy read, and one that perfectly links the characteristics held in common between non-subtantial metaphysics and the technological enterprise.
The Buddha, with his superior vision, recognised this, although the world is one, it is not a homogeneous blob, but an integrated network of phenomena linked together in an infinite variety of ways (...) What happens when we substitute people for robots? What are people's bodies made of? In the final analysis, they are composed mostly of carbon or hydrogen atoms, as can be seen from the fact that when we die and are cremated most of us goes up the cremetorium chimney in the form of carbon dioxide gas. Only ashes are left. We are prone to think of the carbon dioxide gas as being our own, but it is obvious that we ourselves did not create it
This statement, although it could be seen as physical reductionism of the kind our modern scientific usually works under, it is not exactly the same. Mori is comparing such perspective with the Buddhist recognition of the kernel of all existence as being void, nullified or lacking identity. That is, words and names are the only boundary-creating agents which separate an ''inside'' or an ''outside'', a ''self'' and a ''world'', and utterly distinguish anything from its constitutive components. While, of course, reality is a-differentiated, and a whole big phenomena with manifold aspects, and no actual metaphysical differentation can be made between ''my body'' and its nutrients/components, which I eagerly ingest everyday and are inanimate and inert by themselves. We even idealize the life of the mind to the point of the mind ignoring the physical aspects of its own body, its bacteria, its unbalances; to the point of needing the assistance of a professional doctor to understand basic facts about our own existence and destiny.
From this standpoint, not only robots and humans are alike, but also rivers and mountains. This 'universal sympathy' has in itself nothing supernatural for Mori, and is fully reminding of the scientific or technological framework of the modern world (something other Buddhist scholars would debate, if sympathising with Heidegger's or Adorno's thesis on the technological worldview). His approach is quite laid back, and the book itself does not go out of its way to enquire in scholarly quotes or references; in this aspect is fully readable to anybody interested in grasping a better understanding of the Buddhist worldview from a Japanese Zen perspective. Many chapters also deal with the overcoming of suffering and the understanding of change; in this also Mori reveals himself as a different kind of writer from those peddlers of ''positive thinking'' and decaffeinated oriental-ish feel good sensibility. His no-nonsense and layman approach to Buddhism as a science man is reminiscent of Carl Sagan actually, and his being a certified practiser of the religion also takes him deep within the scriptural ascetic nature of Zen: 'We don't care about mind and body. We don't mind happiness. We reflect on The Way'. The easy going and short chapters make for a comfy read, and one that perfectly links the characteristics held in common between non-subtantial metaphysics and the technological enterprise.
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