“Sphexishness is an important property not so much because so many whole, simple animals— insects, worms, fish—exhibit it (though they do, in varying degrees), but because it gives us a term for the limited, robotic, myopic, competences out of which we can build fancier, more versatile, comprehending minds. The building blocks in any mind model had better be sphexish! Or, as I noted earlier, the building blocks should be sorta minds, pale shadows of our minds. Sphexishness is also useful to distinguish morally competent minds from morally incompetent minds. To the extent that a human being is sphexish, because of a brain tumor or brain injury or serious imbalance of neuromodulators or mental illness or sheer ignorance or immaturity, that human being could not have done otherwise in the relevant sense.”
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
