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What Does it Mean to Think and Could a Machine Ever Do it?

posted by n1 on Friday January 08 2016, @08:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the something-to-think-about dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @05:51PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Friday January 08 2016, @05:51PM (#286727) Homepage Journal

    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.

    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.

    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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