Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Frumple]

Wait, wait. Why is it impossible to create a program that could value? There's nothing particularly special about meat, in any substantiative sense. If human brains can do it, so can something else. We just haven't found or made the something else yet, so far as I'm aware.

[Shadowlord]

If I understand correctly what you are trying to say, being comprised of atoms, which are comprised of hadrons, which are comprised of quarks does not mean that the molecule has three different identities. Molecules are groups of atoms which are groups of hadrons which are groups of quarks (and the binding forces, but that is irrelevant detail). It’s just too expensive and unnecessary for human beings to refer to every single quark and the relationship between them, and we usually can’t detect the individual components anyway, so we refer to clusters of quarks as “chairs”. There are still only quarks (or whatever is left when the division stops, but we refer to them as one.

The chair I am sitting on has the following natures or identities: It is wooden, it is brown (with some kind of finish on it), it is made from pieces of wood which slot into holes in the other pieces of wood, it could be easily broken with enough force, and those are only some of the most obvious ones. I have a 24" 1080p HDTV. I identify it as both a TV and a monitor and a thing to play sound through or connect headphones to. A widget is not just a widget. It's also a paperweight, if we need it to be, or whatever else. All identities are assigned by observers, and there can be many, and they can differ from person to person - they're not innate to the object or anything.

Even if you consider "a specific nature or identity" to only refer to innate properties of a thing, verifiable by everyone, I could still point out that all substances undergo phase transitions, e.g. water freezing into ice, or boiling and turning into water vapor, which changes their properties and how they behave and appear.

Illusions and simulations exist, they just aren’t what the deceived think they are, so the definition still stands.

The definition I was using (from my own mind) was 'everything that is in the real world,' which excludes things in simulations (the code and data would exist, what that creates would not) - This makes sense to me because you would not talk about the people in your computer game existing, because they don't. Wikipedia gives a variety of possible definitions, from "the world we are aware or conscious of through our senses, and that persists independently without them" (which seems similar except it would consider the existence to consist of a simulated world if you were simulated, rather than the real world). Another definition is "everything."

I'm a big fan of the chinese room thought experiment, so I would dispute this and say that since one can value something one can be certain that you are an entity and not a computer simulation. Furthermore, we cannot know the true nature of reality, but we can perceive all that is apparent and that that must suffice because we are incapable of truly knowing reality.

I am aware of the chinese room thought experiment, and Searle's viewpoints, but think it is kind of a silly argument. How can you argue that there is something in brains which creates consciousness and that this will prevent the creation of artificial consciousness, when you have no proof or evidence or understanding of what creates consciousness in humans? It certainly may make it difficult, if the goal was to replicate the way the brain worked, and if we were talking about the reality we experience. But if we're referring to a hypothetical reality which is running ours as a simulation, the Chinese Room thought experiment has no bearing on the cause of human consciousness. Searle may think that it is because of something in the brain which we have not found. Other people may think it is because of qualia. It may be that we were programmed to have consciousness. If we are a simulated reality, we cannot know what those in the reality containing our simulated reality are capable of.

I think I responded to this in my last note, but I would say that the sensations you refer to are still acceptable substitutes because they do not change the fact of reality, they just make the data easier for one's consciousness to interpret.

However it is impossible to write a program that can value, it is only possible to create a simulation that approaches an asymptote at perfection. I previously referenced the Chinese room thought experiment and I hold to that again in that function is not equivalent to "essence," for lack of a better word.

Say what? For theoretical AI in a theoretical world running ours as a simulation, we would be unable to say definitively "they can't possibly have made AI that could think" because we don't know the natural laws of that universe or how advanced they are, how capable their computers are, etc. For our reality I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_ai.

To quote from quite some distance down that article:

The term "strong AI" was adopted from the name of a position in the philosophy of artificial intelligence first identified by John Searle as part of his Chinese room argument in 1980.[50] He wanted to distinguish between two different hypotheses about artificial intelligence:[51]

• An artificial intelligence system can think and have a mind. (The word "mind" has a specific meaning for philosophers, as used in "the mind body problem" or "the philosophy of mind".)
  
• An artificial intelligence system can (only) act like it thinks and has a mind.

The first one is called "the strong AI hypothesis" and the second is "the weak AI hypothesis" because the first one makes the stronger statement: it assumes something special has happened to the machine that goes beyond all its abilities that we can test. Searle referred to the "strong AI hypothesis" as "strong AI". This usage, which is fundamentally different than the subject of this article, is common in academic AI research and textbooks.[52]
The term "strong AI" is now used to describe any artificial intelligence system that acts like it has a mind,[1] regardless of whether a philosopher would be able to determine if it actually has a mind or not. As Russell and Norvig write: "Most AI researchers take the weak AI hypothesis for granted, and don't care about the strong AI hypothesis."[53] AI researchers are interested in a related statement:

• An artificial intelligence system can think (or act like it thinks) as well as or better than people do.
  

This assertion, which hinges on the breadth and power of machine intelligence, is the subject of this article.

Interesting question - what if there is no end to the nesting? We can't argue that it's impossible, because the simulated reality above us doesn't have to abide by our physical laws, and so on for it's parent, ad infinitum. In fact, we can prove this by looking at the variation possible in our own universe - a thing is not necessarily a ball, but it's easily conceivable to make a simulation in which everything is balls. In the Ball-Universe, the existence of Cat is impossible, even in thought - we can think of something cat-shaped and cat-behaved if our physical dimensions are the same, but it wouldn't be an actual Cat. Can we still say we exist for certain when the requirements for the nature of our parent universe are arbitrary?

Turtles all the way down!

Edit: One of the lists was misformatted.

[Fenrir]

The chair I am sitting on has the following natures or identities: It is wooden, it is brown (with some kind of finish on it), it is made from pieces of wood which slot into holes in the other pieces of wood, it could be easily broken with enough force, and those are only some of the most obvious ones. I have a 24" 1080p HDTV. I identify it as both a TV and a monitor and a thing to play sound through or connect headphones to. A widget is not just a widget. It's also a paperweight, if we need it to be, or whatever else. All identities are assigned by observers, and there can be many, and they can differ from person to person - they're not innate to the object or anything.

So, by using your HDTV as a paperweight, you're making it unlike itself and therefore A is not necessarily equal to A?

The definition I was using (from my own mind) was 'everything that is in the real world,' which excludes things in simulations (the code and data would exist, what that creates would not) - This makes sense to me because you would not talk about the people in your computer game existing, because they don't.

Then I would be mistaken because they do exist, and they are not people. They might look like people and generally represent people, and, if I call them people, that is probably what I mean.

[Bauglir]

The chair I am sitting on has the following natures or identities: It is wooden, it is brown (with some kind of finish on it), it is made from pieces of wood which slot into holes in the other pieces of wood, it could be easily broken with enough force, and those are only some of the most obvious ones. I have a 24" 1080p HDTV. I identify it as both a TV and a monitor and a thing to play sound through or connect headphones to. A widget is not just a widget. It's also a paperweight, if we need it to be, or whatever else. All identities are assigned by observers, and there can be many, and they can differ from person to person - they're not innate to the object or anything.

So, by using your HDTV as a paperweight, you're making it unlike itself and therefore A is not necessarily equal to A?

No, I don't think that's what is being gotten at. The claim Shadowlord is making is that A = A, and also B, and also C, and so forth, depending on the identity A happens to be being assigned at the moment, even though A never undergoes any changes other than being assigned a different identity by an observer. The claim being argued against is that A = A, and only A, because to equal anything else would make it not A.

Put another way, the original claim is A = 2, and there is no other correct answer. Shadowlord is arguing for the validity of 4/2, 8/4, (2^1/2)^2, 2.0, 2(e^(2pi*i)), and so forth.

At least if I understand correctly.

[Fenrir]

In that case, I think he would be misunderstanding the terms used in the argument, as, in philosophy, "identity" is synonymous with "sameness", which would make more sense in context; A = A does not seem to be stating that things have only one property or use, rather, it's saying that things are like themselves.

Further, the statement he is trying to refute is making assertions about stuff, not the number of ways we can classify or represent stuff.

[alway]

The Chinese Room argument is entirely BS. If you examine it closely, you realize it is circular reasoning.
1. Assumption: People are not like the Chinese Room.
2. ...
3. Therefore, the Chinese Room can never be like people.

In order for the argument to stand up, you first need to accept that people themselves are not a collective of parts which process data without having a high-level understanding of the entire process. Which aside from being circular reasoning, as it asserts 'people are different, and thus a Chinese Room cannot be like people,' is flat out false. And not just false in a 'I think it is so' way, but false in that if it were true, it could be shown to be true, and would show up experimentally.

We are the meat in our heads; a Chinese Room made up of billions of neurons, each of which individually does little more than give simple electrical and chemical outputs under specific input conditions. If this were not the case, if we were more than the meat in our heads, it would be detectable.

Everyone here will agree that any sort of muscular impulse is activated by electrical signals sent through the neurons stretching from our brains to the muscles. Easy to test, easy to prove, and as such it was all the way back in the Victorian era, when people starting poking dead bodies with electricity and making them twitch. It was thus hypothesized that there would be a sub-unit in the brain, whose function was communication between the brain and the 'soul.' Such functionality was never found.

As for how it would be found; it would show up as either violations of known physical laws or as obvious statistical 'impossibilities.' If people did indeed have some sort of non-physical control unit, interaction between it and reality would, by necessity, violate physical laws. Else it is exactly the same as it not existing at all, since without violating physical laws, there could be no meaningful interaction with the real world outside of that which would happen without it.

So, it was then thought that perhaps this functionality existed, but was somehow distributed more evenly throughout the brain. No such functionality was found. Dualism is dead; Searle's circular reasoning is entirely unconvincing.

Or more to the point, the multiple replies to the argument; one in particular which is similar to my reasoning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Other_minds_and_zombies:_meaninglessness
And more to the point:

Searle disagrees with this analysis and argues that "the study of the mind starts with such facts as that humans have beliefs, while thermostats, telephones, and adding machines don't ... what we wanted to know is what distinguishes the mind from thermostats and livers."[58] He takes it as obvious that we can detect the presence of consciousness

There's the basic assumption from which his circular reasoning springs. His conclusion is his premise.

[Bauglir]

Aw, c'mon. I can believe in a sort of dualism, in that the mind is a pattern arising from the brain without being the brain itself, without believing in supernatural phenomena. And I can still believe that the Chinese Room argument is circular silliness

EDIT: Oh, right. Could I more reasonably say, "I think, therefore I must be."? Very slightly different meaning from, "I think, therefore I am." in that "I must be" would then be a necessary prerequisite for thinking, which is a little closer to the meaning of cogito ergo sum as I understand its intent than the literal translation.

[Montague]

I think the discussion is touching on something similar to what is coined 'Eliminative Materialism' sort of the (anti) philosophical assertion that human thought and all ideas, are fundamentally flawed. As the brain is basically a fundamentally flawed meat-based computer that is incapable of truly understanding such things. Basically that logic as we know it is an artificial, arbitrary non-concept as the human mind perceives the world through a warped lens. Human behavior is mechanistic, simply blind machines going about what they were programmed to do. So there really is no such thing as morality or truth, if you consider people actually have no control over what they think or do.

Consider that there are thousands of contradictory philosophic ideals, schools of political thought and religions that are all wildly different and even highly contradictory within themselves. This is exactly what you would imagine species with partially evolved brains to do.

This is similar to some of the ideas Kant and Descartes asserted, a sort of counter-point to pure logic and Ayn Rand absolutely despises Kant more then anybody else, considering an attack on the validity of the mind to understand logic to be something of threat to freedom. If people can be convinced that their actions are not under their control and they cannot understand the world, then they are basically sheep and subject to exploitation and whatnot. Which is why she associates Kant with collectivism and totalitarianism so much, I suppose.

[Vattic]

EDIT: Oh, right. Could I more reasonably say, "I think, therefore I must be."? Very slightly different meaning from, "I think, therefore I am." in that "I must be" would then be a necessary prerequisite for thinking, which is a little closer to the meaning of cogito ergo sum as I understand its intent than the literal translation.

Not really you are still starting with the conclusion. "There are thoughts, therefore I must be/am" is a whole let less certain. Keep in mind that the original argument admitted to the problem of knowing where the thoughts came from. Descartes got around it by saying that God would never allow such an underhand trick.

Edit: bah I got some things mixed up here. It's been a long time since I read this.

[Fenrir]

Aw, c'mon. I can believe in a sort of dualism, in that the mind is a pattern arising from the brain without being the brain itself, without believing in supernatural phenomena.

How, Bauglir? It's like saying that you can believe in a kind of software that is of the hardware but not on the hardware. If your mind isn't neurons interacting (or whatever they do), then "because magic" seems to be pretty much the only other option.

Montague, is that something with which you agree? I don't, but I won't bother explaining why if you already disagree with it.

[Nadaka]

Perhaps what he is saying is that the software may be device independent. The algorithm is not just the array of gates that implements. Just because his mind runs on his brain does not mean his mind can only run on his brain or that his brain can run nothing other than his mind. The technical details of transferring to another media are problematic, but not necessarily impossible.

[Fenrir]

When we talk about Bauglir, aren't we talking about this particular implementation? You implement Bauglir on something else, that copy would not be Bauglir, would it?

[Nadaka]

Not if Bauglir is an algorithm. The  integral of 4*x*x -2x + 12 is independent of the calculator you use to solve it.

[Montague]

Montague, is that something with which you agree? I don't, but I won't bother explaining why if you already disagree with it.

You mean the stuff about Eliminative materialism? I tend to think that it's probably true, our understanding of neuroscience demonstrates that the brain is basically a biological computer. That said, while the philosophy sort of intellectually debunks 'folk psychology' and the ideas of free will and everything, with hard science, even, it does not seem to matter. It definitely seems that I have free will, logic and perception, self-awareness and everything (of course, Eliminative Materialism asserts this is due to the brain being fundamentally flawed in the first place) so it doesn't matter. Eliminative materialism is irrelevant because 'folk psychology' works and the human mind isn't able to perceive the world any other way. The brain might be an awkward, flawed, partially evolved meat computer, hard-wired in it's actions, but it seems to work well enough, so it doesn't matter.

However, it does lend credence to the idea that superstition, religion, philosophies, political ideologies and psychology itself are probably all bullshit on par with other whimsical ideas like alchemy and humorism, but I've basically suspected that was the case anyways.

Philosophies are obviously flawed, otherwise equally intelligent or knowledgeable people would all arrive at the same conclusion and could proof it, like with hard science. Philosophy and politics, religion on the otherhand are entirely matters of opinion, vapor, insubstantial and are probably thusly equally all bullshit.

I think it's an interesting philosophy, because it's really an 'anti-philosophy' that nullifies everything else by voiding the very basis that human thought and logic is built on (It even invalidates it self when you think about it). However, it's not exactly a philosophy you could base a political campaign on, you know?

[Bauglir]

Not if Bauglir is an algorithm. The  integral of 4*x*x -2x + 12 is independent of the calculator you use to solve it.

This. I am not my body, I have a body.