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The idea of a thinking machine is an amazing one. It would be like humans creating artificial life, only more impressive because we would be creating consciousness. Or would we ? It's tempting to think that a machine that could think would think like us. But a bit of reflection shows that's not an inevitable conclusion.
To begin with, we'd better be clear about what we mean by "think". A comparison with human thinking might be intuitive, but what about animal thinking? Does a chimpanzee think? Does a crow? Does an octopus ?
The philosopher Thomas Nagel said that there was "something that it is like" to have conscious experiences. There's something that it is like to see the colour red, or to go water skiing. We are more than just our brain states.
Could there ever be "something that it's like" to be a thinking machine? In an imagined conversation with the first intelligent machine, a human might ask "Are you conscious?", to which it might reply, "How would I know?".
http://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-think-and-could-a-machine-ever-do-it-51316
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Friday January 08 2016, @05:18PM
Magnetic field polarization patterns on a metal disc=data
Electrical signals read by hardware=data
Bytes in JPEG format=data
Signal to monitor=data
Pattern of transmitted photons=data
Stimulus pattern in eye=data
Optic nerve signal=data
Analysis of signal in terms of image feature detectors=data
Association of image features to recognizable subjects =data
My private reality of viewing an image=magic
If you're a dualist, the best you can say is that the last step in that sequence is really weird. However, historically, trying to reason about the world based on that weirdness has been a losing bet.
The hardcore materialists by many accounts seem to be backing the winning horse, but it's somewhat intellectually dishonest to not own up to the fact that the last step in the sequence doesn't seem the slightest bit less weird with all of the intermediate details filled in.
So you have two camps, one that tries to pay attention to all of the details, but tends to screw things up when it tries to define its argument, and another that better defines its argument, but basically tries to change the subject when it comes to this one little problem.
Consciousness being something not needed to explain the physical universe but being wedded to it seems like an out, but if that's the case, how do I think that consciousness is weird? How do I observe its weirdness?
(If I posit a mechanism, I'll probably be a crackpot.)
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @05:51PM
Well said. People like Dennett use words like "magic" to show disdain for the attitudes of the dualists. Really though that word is just a shorthand to say that this is an extraordinary and significant enough phenomenon that it deserves further research or investigation. Of course, such research can be intensely frustrating due to thousands of years of little to no progress.
Yes, absolutely. If the purest physicalist honestly does not believe that there is any important difference between the first person and third person experience, then why do they perform any selfish actions at all in their lives. Is it purely out of altruism? If however they do believe there is an important difference but are simply afraid to admit it, then yes, that's intellectually dishonest.
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