THERE IS LIKELY TO BE A NEED for robot dogs in police work or as security guards. We can imagine metal-jawed mechanical German Shepherds with supersensitive noses to sniff out fugitives and find narcotics. These will be machines with no lovable qualities. Except for displays of aggression, such machine dogs would have no need for a spectrum of emotions, and could probably just be switched off when their work is done, and then thrown into the back of the squad car, or into a storage bin.

What about the dog as our friend? In addition to being an acronym for Artificial Intelligence roBOt, AIBO means “pal” in Japanese. AIBOs on the market now are designed to have a personality that changes and adapts to its environment. Where will we be, then, when the AIBOs of the future become a real and direct challenge to the canine?

The robot dog will certainly be cleaner than its organic counterpart, not leaving so much as an oil stain if it were to drag its hindquarters across the carpet. And it will be cheaper to maintain. [The ERS-210 “satisfies its hunger” by running off to recharge its batteries.] You won’t need to neuter the robot dog, nor worry about stopping bad habits like humping your leg. And, lastly, it won’t die on you like organic dogs do every ten years or so. When a robot dog’s body becomes outdated you will be able to upload its brain into a new upgraded body. And if your robot dog gets smashed by a car, you can upload the last “save” you stored of the in-dog computer into a new robo-dog body.

Will we forget that a robot dog isn’t alive? To explore this question, first let us consider the ideal relationship between a human and her beloved real dog. In an essay in the book"The Lives of Animals," Barbara Smuts, a prominent primatologist, author of "Sex and Friendship in Baboons" and professor of biopsychology at the University of Michigan, writes about her dog: “I regard Safi as a person, and she regards me as one, we can be friends. As in any genuine human-to-human friendship, our relationship is predicated on mutual respect and reciprocity. ... She is not my child; she is not my servant. She is not even my companion, in the sense of existing to keep me company. I wish for her what I wish for all of my friends: maximum freedom of expression, maximum well-being.”

As in other very close human-dog relationships, Dr. Smuts and Safi have developed their own complex and sometimes-subtle communication, enhanced by mutual trust. Dr. Smuts will tell Safi whether or not it is OK to approach a cat. Safi is often the leader in their walks, and with her instincts and keener senses, is likely to find the more-interesting places, such as a beaver dam or secret stream. To get attention when out on a stroll, Safi will touch the back of Dr. Smuts’s knee. On infrequent occasions when Safi doesn’t want to take a bath, Dr. Smuts will respect Safi’s refusal, and will instead brush Safi to remove any clinging mud or dirt.

Will it be possible for a future robot dog to act a lot like Safi, as a particularly bright and sensitive real dog? Some of the subtleties may present great programming difficulties, but the answer is largely yes. Twenty years hence, technology to make a small robot move like a canine will be fully developed and the public desire to own a robot that is dog-like in its actions will make it financially doable for Sony (or another company) to develop remarkable software for the in-dog computer.

INEVITABLY, DEVELOPERS WILL TINKER with the program, making robot dogs that have longer attention spans than their organic prototype. As Caroline Knapp writes of dogs in "Pack of Two": “Their universe is about immediate drives, smells, sounds, pleasure, pain. Ours is about feelings, fantasies, symbols, abstract thought. They act, we interpret, and in the gap between those two modes of being, there is a whole lot of room for confusion and conflict.”

There is sure, then, to be a temptation by manufacturers to make the UnDog, which is pre-trained and utterly obedient -- meant to minimally frustrate any owner. But an UnDog is not what many people will want. There is sure to be a robust market for a truly dog-like robot, that behaves (and exasperates its owner) in ways that are unmistakably like that of a canine.

Will this remarkable robotic animal then be alive?

IN SCIENCE FICTION, lifelike robots are common. In the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the computer Hal feels threatened and reacts by killing off the human crew of his spacecraft. The last living crew member then decommissions Hal [effectively killing him] while we listen to Hal’s pleas for mercy and his statements about his great fear of being turned off. In Hal’s poignant final moments, he reverts back to the days when he was first gaining knowledge. It is wrenchingly sad hearing Hal’s “life” come to an end as he sweetly sings “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

Hal is a non-living character from fiction whose monotone voice is performed by an actor. Nonetheless, does our belief in the character and emotional involvement with Hal cause us to identify with his “beingness,” and make him alive, in some sense?

Chuang Tzu, the Grand Rascal of ancient Taoism, was a teller of strange, but-instructive tales. One of the more-famous tales follows:

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu had strolled on to the bridge over Hao, when the former observed, “See how the minnows are darting about! That is the pleasure of fishes.” “You not being a fish yourself,” said Hui Tzu, “how can you possibly know in what consists the pleasure of fishes?” “And you not being I,” retorted Chuang Tzu, “how can you know that I do not know?” “If I, not being you, cannot know what you know,” urged Hui Tzu, “it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot know in what consists the pleasure of fishes.” “Let us go back,” said Chuang Tzu, “to your original question. You asked me how I knew in what consists the pleasure of fishes. Your very question shows that you knew I knew. I knew it from my own feelings on the bridge.”

Chuang Tzu recognized the minnows’ happiness from within himself. He recognized their beingness from his own being. And in this way, though he had never been a fish, he felt their pleasure. In the same way, Hui Tzu knows much about the “insides” of Chuang Tzu. And, of course, each of us has a capacity for empathy and Buddhist compassion from identifying our beingness with the being of any other living thing.

GETTING BACK TO HAL THE COMPUTER, even if we dismiss him because he is from fiction, is he a presentiment of the future when robots will love existing and will fear destruction? And will they have the emotional repertoire that make them seem very much alive? After all, these emotions have a function in extending the value or utility of both living things and robots. We don’t want to built independent robots that are blithe in the face of their own destruction, rendering them mechanical dodo birds.

The "Nirvana Sutra" tells us overtly that buddha-nature is manifest in living things. Yet, according to Heinrich Dumoulin in his well-respected "Zen Buddhism: A History," even the sutra’s earliest interpreters read it to mean that buddha-nature is extended to all of reality. With the explosive influence of Hui-neng in 7th century China, it became the “accepted Zen view ... that the buddha-nature was unrestrictedly universal.”

A typical satori, that hasn’t the profound depth of Siddhartha’s, gives us (in the words of Dumoulin) “the realization of one’s own deepest self -- the buddha-nature inherent in all sentient beings.” A deeper realization, that comes from training or practice, dissolves subject/object duality. A person is then immersed in the nondual; thus, buddha-nature is recognized as everything.

THE KOAN “DOES A DOG HAVE BUDDHA-NATURE?” is used to break through any sense of otherness. In the 9th century, the future Ch’an Master Chao-chou is well known for his realization when given this koan. His response was “wu,” which, we’re told, made him so excited he repeated the word with glee: “Wu, wu, wu, wu, wu ....” (I picture him hopping about like Daffy Duck in a Warner Bros. cartoon.) The word wu means no or not. D. T. Suzuki says that Chao-chou’s excitement was with the word, independent of its meaning. Others say that Chao-chou’s meaning is that he rejects the question, not the dog.

So, let us now come to the crux of it. You are with your family in the year 2020. You are in the living room of your wonderful home in eastern Pennsylvania that is built over a small waterfall.You have a spouse, a teenage son and a young daughter. Your new-model robot dog, the ERS-1510, enters the room. She looks a lot like Lassie, but, she is clearly a robot. She walks over to you, sits and the cameras behind her big brown glass eyes look up at you. Her tail beats against the carpet in a slow rhythm. You’ve come to know this dog with all her quirks and habits; you have a relationship with this dog. She wants to be petted. “Good, girl,” you say. You pet her on the head. From the base of your very being, you know that this animal experiences pleasure from the love you express.

“Whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap...” goes the dog’s tail

IN A SECTION CALLED “INTIMACY” in John Tarrant’s lyrical book about the spiritual trek, "The Light Inside the Dark," are these words:

...Wherever we turn, each thing shines with its own light, which is our light. Human and non-human, even animate and non-animate, are included in our circle, and so we are family with the kangaroos, rivers, stars, and other people, without respect for wealth or color or any other divisions. And in the same way, each moment of life is real -- standing up, sitting down, and wearing clothes have their dignity and part in the web. We come down from the mountain vistas of the spirit to travel about in the valley among the other creatures. For the sake of what is greater than the world, we are led to immerse ourselves in the world.

So this future robot dog, model ERS-1510, is the equal of its organic counterpart, yes?

Certainly not. There is something about an organic dog (and humans, too) that cannot be re-created in any kind of computer program. It seems that a brain is a welcoming residence for Mind -- or, to use a different analogy, the brain is a petri dish to sustain Mind. A brain exists, like any thing, in the four dimensions of time and space. Mind is different. Perhaps part of what’s different is that Mind is extradimensional, but conforms to a brain’s limitations when it incarnates. But whatever the mechanics and mystery of it are, Mind is basic -- it is Ground Zero -- and it cannot be copied mechanically; it can only be imperfectly mimicked. This is so because Mind is not a thing, and a robot is always wholly a thing. [Mind is everything; it is never merely one among many.]

Recent books on science and the mind suggest the difficulties in fully replicating organisms as robots. "A General Theory of Love," written by three University of California, San Francisco, psychiatry professors, shows that love is located in the limbic region of the brain of mammals. Love occurs when two beings are in sync, their brainwaves resonating in a silent, unseen duet. "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals)," by biochemist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, documents and explores common reports of telepathy by dogs and other animals. His explanation for this phenomenon -- morphic fields and resonance -- may explain psychic ability and why schools of fish and flocks of birds act as one, moving in a coordinated wave.

The love between mother and child, paramours or great friends (like Dr. Smuts and Safi) borders on -- or crosses the border to become -- telepathic. Certainly, we are more than just fully “informed” about this other person or dog such that we pick up the subtlest of cues. It would seem that their beingness and ours is very literally on the same wavelength. It would be impossible for a partnership of love of the magnitude that can exist between two beings to exist between a robot and a human. A robot cannot have a mind that will resonate with ours.

But the robot dogs of the future will be marvels of science that we cherish and respect, that charm us and break our hearts, entertain us and beguile us. I think that we will forget that robot dogs aren’t alive, even while we are fully aware that the unnameable spice of an organic dog is missing. Even when “perfected,” robot dogs are likely to make us evermore appreciative of the organic, real thing.

PREVIOUSLY:

GUESTCOLUMN, Fall/00: Jim Haught on the Philosphical Implications of Modern Physics -- Reality Isn't What You Think.

GUESTCOLUMN, March/00: Jean-Jacques D'Aoust on Religious Pluralism and Why Can't We All Just Get Along, Spirituality-wise?

GUESTCOLUMN, Fall/99: Tom Armstrong on An Enlightening Encounter With Someone Else's Ears