Carter ’ s Cartesian Paraphrase and “ Operational Autonomy ” : The Carter - Bostrom Anthropic Principle , the Principle of Mediocrity , and “ Being No One . . . ”

This paper examines Yilmaz, Ören and Aghaee's outline of present research efforts into the development of simulations that " represent the behavior of active (human) entities in the world. " The paper argues that the Carter-Bostrom formulation of the anthropic principle provides a more functional set of theoretical, and pragmatic proposals to frame the issue of the simulation of human sociocognitive activity than the now standard conjunctive phrases " cognitive simulations, " " Strong Artificial Intelligence, " and " Strong Machinic Consciousness. " More importantly, the principle of " anthropic entity(s) " was, in its original cosmological form, developed within the global context of evolutionary theory. Consequently, as an evolutionary principle, it may provide a more comprehensive, explanatory context with which to frame the possible emergence of the first fully operational artificial simulations. In its present formulation, however, the anthropic principle is insufficient with respect to two interlocking issues that are of foundational importance to the successful development of simulations. These are the principle of " operational autonomy, " and a credible, theoretical response to two of the most generic, identitarian properties of (human) personhood: the folk psychological belief in " our " substantive, autonomous identity as persons possessing the property of being the person whom we experience as " me " or " I " ; and the autocentric preclusion of the emergence of the concept of personhood to other forms of emergent, anthropic entities. In particular, the work of Michel Foucault and Thomas Metzinger, Director of the Theoretical Philosophy Group at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, may provide for just such theoretical augmentations of the anthropic principle.