Could artificial intelligence be granted a soul?

[Anim8]

Hitetlen

The problem with your reasoning is that you (as do many scientists) assume that because electrical activity occurs in the brain at the time of thought processing, it therefore is the cause of the thought process (or is the thought process itself). Sort of like post hoc reasoning. Although there is no evidence to prove that our thought is a result of this electrical activity, you assume it to be so merely because the things happen at the same time. With the same evidence I could claim that the electrical charges are a result of thought, not the other way around. If my hand twitches every time I am in pain, does that mean that the twitching causes the pain? Or that my hand twitching is pain?

What is the difference between “real” and “artificial” intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is man made… like artificial light.

How does one differentiate between two responders, one of which is human and the other one is not, if the answers themselves do not reveal which is which?

You cannot tell when you only look at the answer. If I ask a computer right now what 2 + 2 is, it will say 4. And so would you. Are computers now intelligent? No. But how do we know that? Because the computer didn’t “think”. It was given two variables and gave me back what it was told to give me back.

If I tell you do jump every time I say jump, then does it require you to think about what to do? Granted you could think about weather you actually wanted to do it or not but it doesn’t require any thought on your part to just jump when you are told to.

AI has become increasingly complex, but no more intelligent.

 

[Anim8]

Hitetlen:

Yes there is. The operation I described exists. Its result is two persons due to the two different and independent half-brains. Their difference in behavior can be observed. Are there now two different “souls”?

Yes, every person has a soul. Not every brain.

Hitetlen:

We can bring the problem even further. One of the half-brains can be removed from the skull and kept alive artifically. It would be a miserable existence without I/O organs, but the brain activity could be detected. So the existence of two separate persons is undeniable. What about their “souls”?

Each person has thier own soul, regardless of thier physical state.

Hitetlen:

Going into science fiction now. Theoretically the half-brain could be connected to the body of a brain-dead person, thus even giving body to the brain. Will this newly created person have a “soul”?

It is not a new person, it is the same person (same soul) with a new body, just like if you were to get an organ transplant.

Hitetlen:

No matter how you twist it, the assumption of the “soul” results in such insurmountable problems.

I have yet to see one.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

The problem with your reasoning is that you (as do many scientists) assume that because electrical activity occurs in the brain at the time of thought processing, it therefore is the cause of the thought process (or is the thought process itself). Sort of like post hoc reasoning. Although there is no evidence to prove that our thought is a result of this electrical activity, you assume it to be so merely because the things happen at the same time. With the same evidence I could claim that the electrical charges are a result of thought, not the other way around. If my hand twitches every time I am in pain, does that mean that the twitching causes the pain? Or that my hand twitching is pain?

That is not convincing. The “post hoc ergo propter hoc” could be a valid argument in some cases, but not here. Measuring electrical activity does not tell us (yet!) what the thoughts are, but introducing electical stimuli will produce certain thoughts. Here is the cause-effect relationship for you. Just like introducing chemicals will trigger thoughts. Not for nothing are those drugs called: “mind-altering drugs”.

Anim8:

Artificial intelligence is man made… like artificial light.

That is not very “deep”.

Anim8:

You cannot tell when you only look at the answer. If I ask a computer right now what 2 + 2 is, it will say 4. And so would you. Are computers now intelligent? No. But how do we know that? Because the computer didn’t “think”. It was given two variables and gave me back what it was told to give me back.

Have you ever heard of self-modifying programs? Where the data processed induces random modifications in the program, and the resulting version will be better, faster and more efficient than the original one?

And of course you forget that the conversation with the two partners does not stop at such simple questions. I ask you again: after a sufficiently long conversation, including many topics, if the answers do not give you a hint which partner is a human and which one is a machine, on what grounds do you assert that the machine is not human or not intelligent?

Anim8:

AI has become increasingly complex, but no more intelligent.

You still did not define just “what” intelligence is.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

Yes, every person has a soul. Not every brain.

The separation of the two halves creted two persons. It can be verified. They act differently, they talk differently.

 

[freesoulhope]

Hitetlen:

That is not convincing. The “post hoc ergo propter hoc” could be a valid argument in some cases, but not here. Measuring electrical activity does not tell us (yet!) what the thoughts are, but introducing electical stimuli will produce certain thoughts. Here is the cause-effect relationship for you. Just like introducing chemicals will trigger thoughts. Not for nothing are those drugs called: “mind-altering drugs”.

It Produces thoughts against your “will”’ it is not you who wills the thought, but a drug loosens your control, and is replaced by somthing else to produce them. This however doesn’t prove that thoughts are physical, only that you can munipulate people, or alter the mind state. But the “will” the ability to comprehend reality, act towards and munipulate it, is a matter of you and not a drug or any natural chemical or eletcrical reactions in the brain.

The Brain turns “human thought” in to Physical reality, thats all it is there for. It releases certain chemicals to make you “emotionally feel” within Physicall reality, what your soul is thinking.

If your angry it is not just a matter of your brain releasing chemicals, how does the Brain Know that your angry? Your brain translates the pysical reality through your eyes and your awareness, and coverts them, so that your mind can comprehend it, and then we react. Are minds, with know effort from us, then starts Converting reactionary thoughts in to eletrical and Chemical stimululas, causing us to have the feeling and the expression of anger.

 

[freesoulhope]

when we pretend to be angry, Why do we not have the same feeling when we are trully angry. How does the brain know if you not trully angry?

Why not release the same stimulus as when we are feeling trully angry? Maybe the brain works by its self organically “Apart” from are minds?. And maybe the brain only reacts to what “i” (The soul) react to?

Now tell me how the mind feels, when its the brain that infact causes the feelings. The brain is a sophisticated translation device, that transmits the feelings of the soul, in to Physical feelings. The latest in devine technology.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Whosebob,

You post an excellent question.

First, we must recall that Catholic reading of Scripture follows the literal historical sense, but is not, as some Fundamentalists are, “literalist.” There may be room in Scripture to read a form of theistic evolution, provided the historicity of Adam and Eve are respected and Original Sin is acknowledged.

Second, to the heart of your question: Could God have taken a fabulously formed computer and infused a soul in it, assuming He created Adam from the “slime of the earth” directly. Not would He, but could He? I guess my answer would be based on asking where God got the computer. If He instantly created such a being out of the “slime of the earth,” and made the soul the substantial form of such perfectly organized matter, then it would not be much different than the process posed by the literalist reading of Genesis. On the other hand, were He to be using a “pile of parts” from a previously made human artifact, the problem arises as to just how these parts, each with its own physical nature, would suddenly be transformed substantially into a single being whose substantial form is that of a rational animal.

This question reminds us that we must settle basic questions first. We find ourselves in a world in which organisms have arisen naturally as substantial unities whose natures demand explaining in some sort of matter-form schema. The living things around us, then, are not mere atomic patterns, but really existing substantial unities which are specified and made real by their unifying substantial forms. Given this context, we may then speculate about such issues as A I devices and whether they might have a soul, but such “speculation” is just that – a mental exercise engaged in “posterior to” accepting the real world as we find it. That world is one primarily of whole things which are substantially one. In other words, if the scientist did not exist first as an individual person to theorize about the cosmos, there would be no one to come up with any theories about atoms. We know the larger substances first, and hypothesize about the smaller units later.

But again, you state your question well.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[freesoulhope]

This post is for Hitetlen.

This is my last post to this thread, i know ive posted many that people may have or havent read, But i get passionate about things. Im like somebody who has found a portal to another dimension, i want to tell everyone about it, hating the fact that i was once ignorant of it. But its Good to take in things, rather then give, and assume i have the anwser

But this is one topic on which i feel i can most definetly say… that “God” can infuse a soul in to a machine because God gives laws to how certain meterials should act, otherwise all it is, is “matter”. With out Gods law, no Physical matter is different from any other kind of matter. It there Given “workings” (for lack of a better word) that defines them.

God may have created us to be “spheres” but he would have only put us in that world that would support are ability to be spheres.

Materials have no law other then what God gives them, they have know law by them selves, and do not exist by there own power.

God created a dependent universe to make us dependent humans. If you where dependent on your own being to exist, why would you care about sombodys law? we are given death, so we can speculate about it and fear it. God has created a world where we would feel dependent on him. The devil fooled adam and eve to think they could be dependent on them selves. We do not live by bread alone, So yes, we could have all been robots in a robotic world.

But humans never will create A.I, as in a robots with a soul, simply because that kind of technology isnt tangeble in this reality. Nither does this reality fairly support such workings. What kind of evil would put a human mind that is adapted for organic experince, in a robotic machine, how will it feel? how will it interact with the world on an emotional level with other human beings? It would have to be a robotic soul living in a robotic enviroment. Which in my opinion, is imposible.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen

This thread is expanding faster than my time to participate!

First, a side issue. Indeed, animals and men both have emotions. Emotions are movements of the sensible appetites. Since animals have senses, they have emotions. That is not to say that the human experience of emotions is not intellectively enhanced.

The problems you raise concerning Siamese twins and brain division resulting in dual “persons” can be handled by proper understanding of the relation of soul to body. The intellective soul is the substantial form of the human body. It operates in and through the various organic faculties of the body, such as central sense, imagination, memory, motor power, etc. These organic faculties in turn depend on the condition of the body, especially the brain and CNS. Hence, the condition of the body and brain do affect the activity of the intellective soul indirectly (by what is called “extrinsic dependence”). The key insight here is that the soul is the form of the entire body, animating (making alive) it as a unified whole. The soul explains why this matter actually has this nature (man, bat, celery), is one being, and exhibits activities proper to said nature.

Organic defects in the body can make it impossible for the intellect to act fully or at all, since the intellect depends indirectly on the sense data fed to it via the sense faculties which in turn depend on bodily organs. This explains why brain injuries inhibit the proper function of the mind and personality. Siamese twins may be understood as two persons sharing some common bodily parts. This does not divide the souls, but rather affects the ability of the soul to interact with various portions of the body. While it may be daunting to determine exactly which person’s soul actualizes which portion of matter in these cases, it does not undo the fact that substantial form is still active, unifying a large portion of a shared body. The case of the brain dividing surgery does not prove the existence of two “persons,” but two “personalities.” The same person has had, in some instances, many personalities – as the history of psychiatry often demonstrates. Again, substantive brain defects can severely affect intellective function, but this does not prove the materialist thesis. The same answer applies to the impact of chemicals on brain function and, indirectly, intellective activity.

You write: “As a mathematician I understand the abstract concepts just fine. You seem to confuse intellectual abstractions and conceptualizations with “visualizing” something. There is no way to visualize a tesseract, but I have no problem of understanding it.” You make my point. Understanding is NOT visualizing. The abstract concept is not “under the conditions of matter,” which means “extended in space.” That is how we know that thinking is not mere “picturing,” but an immaterial act utterly outside the conditions of matter.

Life is not measured merely by what biologists used to recount as nutrition, growth, and reproduction, but even more by the common thread of self-perfective activity. All the parts act for, not their own good, but the good of the whole. (Give thanks to your feet after a hard day walking.) The key here is that there must be demonstrated that a “whole” exists which activity perfects. I realize that materialists would try to explain all life activity as “other oriented” transient activity, but the existence of unified wholes above the atomic level is again at issue here. If a cow or man is a unified whole, not just a bunch of atoms acting together, then these organisms, as “open systems”, take in nutrients to perfect and maintain their whole existence, feeding off the environment to do so. This is immanent activity or life. The positivist denies substantial unities above the atomic level, leaving all activity the role of one thing acting on another. But living organisms above the atomic level are one because all the parts serve the good of the whole, and hence activity is self-perfective. You may not easily draw the dividing line between life and non-life, as in the case of a virus – but everyone knows that a rock is non-living and a frog is alive. Let the scientists wrestle with the dividing lines. Either activity is genuinely self-perfective or it is not. If the former, it is alive.

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

Siamese twins may be understood as two persons sharing some common bodily parts. This does not divide the souls, but rather affects the ability of the soul to interact with various portions of the body.

That is subject to the extention of the conjoined parts. If the brain is joined, then there is a question of having one “person” or two.
Dr. Bonnette:

The case of the brain dividing surgery does not prove the existence of two “persons,” but two “personalities.”

Not at all. It is totally different from having two (or more) personalities. Those personalities are not physically disjointed, they are just the symptoms of a damaged (or incorrectly functioning) brain. The two half-brained persons have two, physically separate brains, and their respective minds. Unlike the multiple personalities, they can be separated.
Dr. Bonnette:

The same answer applies to the impact of chemicals on brain function and, indirectly, intellective activity.

It does not. If the thinking process would not be physical, it would not be affected by electrical or chemical stimuli.
Dr. Bonnette:

That is how we know that thinking is not mere “picturing,” but an immaterial act utterly outside the conditions of matter.

No, we don’t know that at all. The materialistic explanation is sufficient, there is no need to go beyond it, especially, since the proposed “explanation” is anything but an explanation.
Dr. Bonnette:

Life is not measured merely by what biologists used to recount as nutrition, growth, and reproduction, but even more by the common thread of self-perfective activity. All the parts act for, not their own good, but the good of the whole.

Just like a cancerous growth, which will kill the organism? What you say is of course true, in a sense, but irrelevant. The coordination of the different organs is important, be it a “living” being or an automobile.
Dr. Bonnette:

You may not easily draw the dividing line between life and non-life, as in the case of a virus – but everyone knows that a rock is non-living and a frog is alive.

As I showed, you don’t “know” that the rock is not alive, you just assume it. And since the definition of “life” is what you base your argument upon, it is of central importance.

 

[Anim8]

I mistook this question to mean would God ever grant AI a soul. Can God do it? Of course, He is God, He can do anything. The debate is whether or not he would.

Now back to the debate at hand.

Hitetlen:

That is not convincing. The “post hoc ergo propterhoc” could be a valid argument in some cases, but not here. Measuring electrical activity does not tell us (yet!) what the thoughts are, but introducing electical stimuli will produce certain thoughts.

Imagine for a moment our brains were invisible, and we couldn’t detect them. When my brain tells my heart to pump it sends electrical signals to my heart. The movement of my heart and the sending of electricity happen at the same time, and if you send an electrical shock through my heart it will move all on its own. But is the cause of the movement electricity? Or does it start with something before that? Such is the case with our souls, because it is hidden, few believe it to exist. But is the brain itself the beginning of the thought process? Or are we just intercepting signals half way through?

Hitetlen:

Here is the cause-effect relationship for you. Just like introducing chemicals will trigger thoughts. Not for nothing are those drugs called: “mind-altering drugs”.

To use my analogy again,

Sending that electrical signal will cause my heart to beat, an you can have it beat in a slightly different pattern then normal (such as when you are trying to jumpstart someone’s heart with one of those electric thingy’s, please excuse a 17 yr olds ignorance but I don’t know what they are called), but does that mean that electricity is the root cause of my heart beat? Or is there something deeper? All you are doing is short-circuiting me.

Hitetlen:

That is not very “deep”.

Erm… so? Since when does depth dictate truth?

Hitetlen:

Have you ever heard of self-modifying programs? Where the data processed induces random modifications in the program, and the resulting version will be better, faster and more efficient than the original one?

It may make it faster, it may make it more efficient, but that doesn’t mean that it is intelligent.

Hitetlen:

And of course you forget that the conversation with the two partners does not stop at such simple questions. I ask you again: after a sufficiently long conversation, including many topics, if the answers do not give you a hint which partner is a human and which one is a machine, on what grounds do you assert that the machine is not human or not intelligent?

When you ask a computer a question. One that has not been programmed, one that it has absolutely no familiarity with. And it can carry on an intelligent conversation about this topic, when it can form its own opinion on a topic, when it can reason out the morality of actions based on no former instruction. Then I might believe that it is intelligent.

The objective is not to prove that its not intelligent, but to prove that it is intelligent. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

Hitetlen:

You still did not define just “what” intelligence is.

You didn’t ask. I believe that intelligence is the ability to comprehend, to reason, and to think abstractly.(keep in mind this is a general definition off the top of my head, there are probably much better ones out there)

Hitetlen:

The separation of the two halves creted two persons. It can be verified. They act differently, they talk differently.

Wrong, they were two persons to begin with. They just shared a body.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anim8:

Imagine for a moment our brains were invisible, and we couldn’t detect them.

Well, let’s be precise. The signal traveling through the nerves is not like the electricity in a wire. It is not a “pure” electric signal, it is an electro-chemical signal, much slower than old-fashioned electricity. It causes the heart to beat at a regular pace.

Anim8:

But is the cause of the movement electricity? Or does it start with something before that?

The signal is caused or initiated by the brain, in the white part (not the grey cells).

Anim8:

Such is the case with our souls. Or are we just intercepting signals half way through?

Intercepting “what”? Why assume some mysterious, immaterial substance, when there is no need for it? The “soul” is considered to be immaterial, therefore it cannot interact with anything material. If it could, then it could be detected, measured and analyzed.

Anim8:

Sending that electrical signal will cause my heart to beat, an you can have it beat in a slightly different pattern then normal All you are doing is short-circuiting me.

The device is called defibrillator to regulate irregular heartbeat, or “jump-start” the heart, like a booster cable.

Anim8:

It may make it faster, it may make it more efficient, but that doesn’t mean that it is intelligent.

I did not argue that it was real AI. It was just an example, that even today’s very simple computer programs can do things that they are NOT programmed to do, which they arrive on their own.

Anim8:

When you ask a computer a question. One that has not been programmed, one that it has absolutely no familiarity with.

Come on. Try to conduct an intelligent conversation with someone who has never heard of the subject you try to bring up.

Anim8:

And it can carry on an intelligent conversation about this topic, when it can form its own opinion on a topic, when it can reason out the morality of actions based on no former instruction. Then I might believe that it is intelligent.

Again, if you do not know who is on the other end of the phone line, and you are unable to decide if it is a human or a machine, you MUST assume that it is a human. What other choice do you have? What criteria are you going to use? The old saying goes: “The proof of the pudding is that it is edible”. There is no other proof.

Anim8:

The objective is not to prove that its not intelligent, but to prove that it is intelligent. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

Undoubtedly. Today we have no real AI programs, that is true. But the whole computer techology just started about 50 years ago (less than the blink of an eye, historically speaking), and see the incredible progress we made. About 10 years ago I was absolutely sure that a computer will beat the chess world champion, but I also believed that I will be long dead before it happens. Was I ever wrong! It already happened. The Deep Blue computer beat the living daylight out of Kasparov.

But here we conduct a thought experiment. We imagine a computer which can emulate the behavior of a human being, so it’s performance makes it indistinguishable from that of a human. Obviously it has no “soul”, whatever this “soul” may be. The conclusion is obvious: humans don’t need the hypothesis of a “soul” either.

Anim8:

You didn’t ask. I believe that intelligence is the ability to comprehend, to reason, and to think abstractly.(keep in mind this is a general definition off the top of my head, there are probably much better ones out there)

That is not a bad definition. All those words you used are just a different way of putting what we call “conceptualizing”, of being able to see beyond the surface, the obvious. And there is nothing mysterious about that.

Anim8:

Wrong, they were two persons to begin with. They just shared a body.

Were they? You forget that we started with ONE person, ONE brain, ONE mind. Then the brain is split into two semi-identical parts, which produce TWO minds, and therefore TWO persons. As an example: do you know what happens if a film containing a holographic image is ripped into two halves? The result is amazing, I will let you research it, but if you can’t find the answer, I will tell you.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen:

The difficulty with determining the significance of psychiatric research and surgery results is that they themselves may be conditioned by the philosophical presuppositions of the researchers involved. As they say, the devil is in the details – and the validity of the inference that two distinct minds result from such surgery is crucial. If you have read the book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” you realize that pathology to the brain can result in forms of dissociation that defy belief.

You reveal your own philosophical presuppositions when you say, “If the thinking process would not be physical, it would not be affected by electrical or chemical stimuli.” On the contrary, I have shown above how physical changes in the brain can indirectly affect intellective activity, even though the intellect is not identified with the brain. The intellect uses data from the sense faculties, which in turn depend on brain function. Hence, damage to the brain function impairs the intellect’s operation without in any way proving that thought is merely brain activity. It is much like a computer that cannot operate without data being fed into it, but still exists in its own right and has operations proper to it which do not depend on the (name removed by moderator)ut data for its existence.

I have more to say, but the web site tells me my answer is too long, so I will post the rest of it as soon as this one posts!

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hitetlen:

It might be well to examine the epistemological limitations of the materialist perspective which you defend. Metaphysically, your position is materialism; epistemologically, it is positivism or scientism. You appear to reduce all valid knowledge to natural science. But the limitations of your approach are easily demonstrated. Although natural science provides us with valid knowledge, not all valid knowledge is natural science. The methodology of natural science presupposes a number of principles derived from metaphysics, including the principles of (1) non-contradiction, (2) sufficient reason, and (3) causality – none of which are demonstrated in natural science itself. To make sense of your empirical data, you must presume that contradictions do not exist, or else whatever you affirm could be simultaneously denied. You assume that there are reasons for things, or else physical phenomena could occur with no reason to even look for an explanation. And you seek the causes of the effects you observe when something happens, or else you would be out of business as a scientist. I recall when the Challenger exploded in 1987 that a commission was immediately appointed to determine the cause of the tragedy. Note that a commission was NOT formed to determine if there WAS a cause, since all the experts involved knew there must be a cause. The only question was what the cause was. As a chemist in a laboratory, were I to add an oxidizing agent to potassium permanganate and note that the purple color instantly cleared, but then claim that there is no reason why all this happened, I would instantly be fired for incompetence. Scientists all know that apparent contradictions must be explained and that observable phenomena and occurrences demand explanation. Still, such assumed certitudes are not proven within the natural scientific disciplines themselves. So, if your knowledge is secure, how do you know these things? If all knowledge is either by empirical science or merely the product of faith, and if these first principles you rely upon are not the product of natural science, then does this mean that your natural science ultimately rests upon faith? I don’t think you want to go there! As others have already said above, there is a third way of knowing that is neither natural science nor faith, and that is the rational methods of philosophy.

One more point. Since all natural science depends on sense observation of natural phenomena, how do you know that you can trust your senses? How do you experimentally demonstrate that your sense knowledge is reliable enough to base your scientific observations upon it? You are caught in a vicious circle. To prove your senses you must presuppose your senses! Philosophers are well aware of the epistemological extreme naiveté of positivism or scientism. We deal with such epistemological questions as the validity of sensation in the disciplines of metaphysics, philosophical psychology, and epistemology. But materialists who depend on the “omniscience” of natural science are left trying to hold themselves up by their own bootstraps.

This is the ultimate reason why your “science only” approach to philosophical questions will forever miss the central truths of reality. There are things we know, not by faith alone, and not by natural science either – but by the rational disciplines of unaided human reason: philosophy. And philosophy confirms what common sense tells us about the world in which we live, namely, that there are things above the atomic level, real unified living substances like cows and cats which need a principle of unity at the substantial level, substantial forms or souls. And that man is blessed with a spiritual intellective soul that enables him to understand universal concepts, form judgments about the very existence of things, and reason from premises to conclusions using metaphysical first principles which attain apodictic certitudes in demonstrating such truths as the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of the human soul. These latter claims I explore myself in two books: “Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence” (Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972) and “Origin of the Human Species” (Sapientia Press, 2003), which latter is explained on my web site at www.origin.youshoppe.com .

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Hitetlen]

Dr. Bonnette:

You reveal your own philosophical presuppositions when you say, “If the thinking process would not be physical, it would not be affected by electrical or chemical stimuli.” On the contrary, I have shown above how physical changes in the brain can indirectly affect intellective activity, even though the intellect is not identified with the brain.

You showed nothing of that kind The mind (or intellect) is the product of the brain, therefore the physical stimuli affect it.
Dr. Bonnette:

Hence, damage to the brain function impairs the intellect’s operation without in any way proving that thought is merely brain activity.

“Merely”? What else?
Dr. Bonnette:

It is much like a computer that cannot operate without data being fed into it, but still exists in its own right and has operations proper to it which do not depend on the (name removed by moderator)ut data for its existence.

The operating system makes the computer capable of working. What of it? If you don’t feed data into it, it will still operate in a very tight loop, checking its peripherals, and waining for an (name removed by moderator)ut. But even this does not apply universally. Most computers have progams which protect their screens by running screensaver programs, displaying pretty pictures and colors for our pleasure. That is of course not AI in sense of the word.

But it shows that even computers do not have to wait idly for some (name removed by moderator)ut data, they can “amuse” (not in a literal sense!) themselves, just like we can do when waiting at a terminal for the bus to arrive.

With building more and more sophisticated machines, there is no reason why they would not reach some theoretical threshold, above which they will “invent” problems for themselves to “pass the time”.

Just like none of the other posters you did not address the issue of the hypothetical conversation between the experimenter and the unknown other party on the other end of the phone. What method would you use to decide if the other party is human or not, if the conversation indicates that it “loooks like” or rather “sounds like” a human being? I am still waiting for anyone to tackle this problem.

I will answer your second post later.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

Just like none of the other posters you did not address the issue of the hypothetical conversation between the experimenter and the unknown other party on the other end of the phone. What method would you use to decide if the other party is human or not, if the conversation indicates that it “loooks like” or rather “sounds like” a human being? I am still waiting for anyone to tackle this problem.

this sounds like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: four blind men touch different parts of an elephant and conclude that the elphant is very like the part they touched - one thinks it’s like a tree because he felt the leg; the one touching the trunk thinks an elephant is like a snake, and so on.

hoping to determine whether or not something is human simply by means of a conversation is a lot like trying to figure out if something is, say, an elephant just by touching one part of it…

unless, of course, there’s some good reason to think that we ought to be able to determine humanity simply and solely by means of conversation, then i’m not sure what good your example is.

the simple answer is that even if i conclude that my interlocutor is (likely) a human person by means of a conversation, i would also say that i could be shown to be wrong when the rest of the data is included.

 

[john_doran]

“Merely”? What else?

well, i’m not sure i understand exactly what you’re getting at with this question, but as a matter of simple logic, the argument: “if damaging the brain results in damage to the thought process, then the thought process must reside in the brain”, is a bad one.

it is exactly like “if damaging the power cord of a TV damages the TV picture, then the TV picture must reside in the power cord”.

 

[john_doran]

Hitetlen:

But here we conduct a thought experiment. We imagine a computer which can emulate the behavior of a human being, so it’s performance makes it indistinguishable from that of a human. Obviously it has no “soul”, whatever this “soul” may be. The conclusion is obvious: humans don’t need the hypothesis of a “soul” either.

we’ve been down this road before and managed to get exactly nowhere.

the thought experiment yields two possible solutions:

1. because human rational behaviour requires acquaintance with abstract objects - the objects that make, for example, mathematical truths necessarily true - and acquaintance with such objects cannot occur with concrete entities, then your thought experiment is unintelligible because a non-ensouled concrete entity could never actually emulate all of human behaviour; namely it could not do math (i.e. it could not exhibit creative novelty in math, though it could obviously provide outputs that it was programmed to provide given certain (name removed by moderator)uts, and programmed to do so only by a being that ***is ***acquainted with abstract objects and thus is itself ensouled).
2. the computer does exhibit creative novelty in, for example, math, and thus does have a soul.

either way, an immaterial principle of intellection is required to account for all of the phenomena of human rational behaviour.

of course, you reject the idea of necessary truth and abstract objects, so this won’t be convincing to you now any more than it was when we discussed the subject before.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

John Doran has more than adroitly refuted the immediately prior claims by Hitelen.

The Turing test is simply a contest between a human software programmer and a human interlocutor – to see who is most clever. The issue is not what appears to be a genuine human being, but what a genuine human being actually is. I have long told my students that it would be entirely possible to run into a well-programmed robot whose appearance and behavior might be so deceptive that we would mistake it for a human being. Still, it would only be a pile of parts with no substance and no soul, but cleverly assembled by a real intellective agent. It would prove nothing about the actual constitution of organic substances, including intellective ones.

It is much like the little parakeets that someone has taught to “count.” It is a great tribute to the trainer, not so much to the “bird brain.” (If this kind of thing intrigues you, I refer you to my article on “Recent Ape-Language Studies” available in full on my web site. ( www.origin.youshoppe.com )

Dr. Bonnette

 

[Palamite]

I agree with Dr.Bonette, that “artificial intelligence”, however well designed is simply that - “artificial.”

I forget what the name of the philosopher of the mind was, but there was such a philosopher who put forward the following description to explain the nature of artificial intelligence.

Say you have a little Englishman locked in a room sitting at a table. In front of him is an elaborate book of symbols and instructions. Next to him is a door with a slot in it. Every once in awhile, a man outside slips a card through the slot with a bunch of symbols on it. The man at the table takes the card, and compares it to the big book he has. Following the book’s instructions, he issues his own card of symbols, and passes this through the slot in the door to the man outside. After awhile, the man passes another card full of symbols through the slot, and the process repeats itself.

Well, here’s the catch, the great “aha!” moment - the man outside of the room is Chinese, and those symbols on the card are Chinese characters. In fact, they’re entire sentences in Chinese. The man inside of the room does not understand Chinese at all, but following the elaborate details of his rulebook, can issue what appears to be a reasonable reply to the card he’s been given. For the Chinese man outside of the door, this whole process of giving and receiving cards has the aura of being a conversation - but the fact is the man in the little room has no comprehension at all, no conscious understanding, of what he’s receiving from or giving to the Chinese fellow.

This is exactly the same situation with artificial intelligence (AI). In fact it’s somewhat of a mistake to believe AI is some far in the future, weird sci-fi thing. It already exists, though in a relatively crude form, if we’re comparing it to the ideal of a machine which can consistantly and convincingly interact with human beings in a way that appears to be itself “human.” Honestly, it is really only a matter of “when” and not “if” something like an “android” will appear, which can receive and respond to highly complex information. What is a fantasy though, is that such a thing, no matter how complicated, could be called “conscious”. It would be no more biotic or conscious than my PC - just a heck of a lot more elaborate in it’s wiring and programming.

Despite what philosophical materialists would like to say, consciousness is as much of a mystery now as it ever was. While I think think there have been highly interesting finds that touch upon the relationship of the conscious mind to the body (and I think in some ways show the prudence of Christian asceticism/praxis and the importance of acquiring “good habits” through repetitous action…since part of this process is physical, including brain processes), scientists are no closer to “measuring the soul” now than they were in previous years.