tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post1624465516966143697..comments2024-02-26T03:25:06.471+00:00Comments on Stephen Law: Could a Machine Think?Stephen Lawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-47446881852941026172020-09-15T20:44:54.153+00:002020-09-15T20:44:54.153+00:00Thinking is an essentially conscious affair. It in...Thinking is an essentially conscious affair. It involves a subjective world that we do not begin to understand, and which seems extremely unlikely to be explainable either by computation or by any other strand of physical science as we have it today. Any such explanation would be functional and operational in nature; but it is implausible that such processes could span the space of my conscious awareness and thoughts, whatever the complexity or sophistication of their arrangement. On this view, neither Brain-o-matic nor the Chinese super-parser would be possible constructions on anything like today's science. So the use of 'intuition pumps' such as these presupposes an implausible present-day-science claim about the explanatory base of conscious thought - even when in Searle's case one such device is being used to argue against it! Thus, if Brain-o-matic is used to try persuade us of thinking machines on more-or-less present-day lines, then the question is begged.<br /><br />Chalmers sees 'future physics' as a way forward in this arena. He frames his modal arguments in the standard way, using 'metaphysical possibility', but is of course aware that future physics would be a matter of natural necessity. However, he doesn't think that is a problem of any weight (private conversation, c.2012).<br /><br />Penrose's mathematical/Platonist arguments are also material to the case. Again, future physics is looked for. It may seem defeatist and unsatisfactory to point to knowledge we yet have no inkling of, as a placeholder for the domain of future explanations; but we have no reason to think that complete physical understanding is just around the corner, and strong reasons to think that any scientific way of dealing with the problem of mind would involve a paradigm shift or two.Chris Humphrieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14717432421271702825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-87846859634306658582012-07-10T22:30:15.595+00:002012-07-10T22:30:15.595+00:00Instead of a woman being in a Chinese room, you co...Instead of a woman being in a Chinese room, you could imagine her miniaturized and put in a submarine that was injected into a Chinese man's brain, a la Fantastic Voyage. The woman accidentally injures a neuron, so she then stops the sub, and floats by it. When her instruments detect a signal of sufficient strength, she fires a signal to the appropriate neuron(s) in lieu of the injured neurons. <br /><br />In other words, the Chinese room is equivalent to a human brain, not just a mechanical one. And the woman is a smuggled in version of the soul. <br /><br />But I don't Searle even thought out his own image properly. In my head for several years now I've been writing a short story. It starts, "As Normal walked past the seedy building, a woman's hand appeared at a third story window, throwing something white. It fell at Norman's feet. He saw it was a crumpled piece of notebook paper. He opened it, smoothed it, then read: "HELP, I am being held prisoner in a Chinese room!"S Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11610068751705809284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-68195530524945402032012-07-10T17:47:59.044+00:002012-07-10T17:47:59.044+00:00@Steven Carr
You're insisting that the questio...@Steven Carr<br />You're insisting that the question of the presence or absence of understanding is settled by an appeal to the subjective experience of the man in the room (or the demon in the head, or whatever).<br /><br />But what is the nature of the man's perspective on the room?<br /><br />A perspective on a thing is either first personal or third personal in relation to that thing. If Searle says the man's perspective is first-personal here, then there's a problem: pretty much the whole point of the argument is that there just is no first personal point of view when it comes to a Chinese Room. At least, I don't see how it makes sense to imagine being something as part of an argument to the effect that there is nothing that it is like to be that thing.<br /><br />On the other hand, if we say the man's perspective on the room is third personal, then all that's going on is that we're looking at a thing from a third personal perspective and failing to find first personal properties, which is just what we'd expect whether the thing has first personal properties or not (just as when we lookat a human being from a third person point of view).<br /><br />In short, I don't think there's any way of characterizing the relationship between the man's perspective and the room that delivers Searle's conclusion. <br /><br />[also: ironic that the captcha here requires me to prove I'm "not a robot". I guess a simple behavioural test settles the question after all...]Mercherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09437566087883421733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-9205606782733198062012-07-10T13:52:55.746+00:002012-07-10T13:52:55.746+00:00You seem to also be rehearsing Chalmers' Fadin...You seem to also be rehearsing Chalmers' Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia paper as well? I do not remember Searle ever getting into the replacing neurons one-by-one. In fact, Searle seems to think that ONLY biologically evolved systems could have consciousness, contra Chalmers.Wholeflafferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03923122826431229024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-55233831274577634732012-07-10T11:33:50.214+00:002012-07-10T11:33:50.214+00:00I think Searle's point is that if there were a...I think Searle's point is that if there were a busy little demon inside his head, pushing the chemicals around and stimulating the synapses, then no matter how well this demon simulated the natural working of the brain, moving the chemicals and stimulating the synapses perfectly, the demon would not understand what Searle was thinking.<br /><br /><br />Here is another analogy to Searle's thought experiment. <br /><br /> I can put on any of Bach's organ works requested by somebody.<br /><br />The person just gives me the number and I put it on my CD. <br /><br />That person would be outside the room listening to the organ music and would be fooled into thinking I could play the organ.<br /><br />But I can't. All I do is put on disc number whatever.<br /><br />But why would anybody ever claim I really could play the organ just because they can hear perfect organ music coming from my room?<br /><br />Which I imagine is Searle's point. <br /><br />You can't claim to be able to play the organ just because you can create perfect organ music on a machine, and you can't claim a machine thinks just because it produces perfect human behaviour.Steven Carrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11983601793874190779noreply@blogger.com