it would be able to learn, it just wouldn’t be able to learn anything requiring rationality. because rationality requires what, on this thread, we’re calling a soul.
I think that you should read C.S. Lewis’s book, “Miracles”. He doesn’t disprove materialism but he shows how it is an impossible view to hold from a rational perspective.
Are you telling me that a computer can’t do calculus?
I would really recommend you go search out Smart’s paper. Regarding Aquinas - could you give a reference? I’d like to take a look at his argument.
Rev 6
i’m telling you that a computer does only what we tell it to do. it’s a stimulus-response machine and is not acquainted with any kind of mathematical abstracta.
Again, that was not my question. How would we go about figuring out whether Susan (presuming we don’t know if she’s A or B) was really thinking about calculus or merely performing mechanical transformations on given (name removed by moderator)uts?
it comes down to this:
this is the application of a rudimentary (and utterly false) epistemology; the statistical math doesn’t actually come out the way he claims. not necessarily, at any rate (i.e. not in principle, which is what he argues).
i think you’re missing my point…
So is your argument then that since human brains have not been constructed in the same way that a person might go about constructing a robot which behaves rationally (but is not actually rational), human brains cannot provide for the (illusion of) rational behavior? If that’s the case, I wonder what basis you have for so asserting - that the human brain is not “constructed” (i.e. produced by genes environment etc) so that it can produce rational behavior.
I’ve specifically stayed away from stipulating something like that, because you’re right - the question would be trivial and uninteresting.
yes.
because, at a minimum, rationality requires acquaintance with abstract objects. and a concrete entity cannot have such an acquaintance. nor can any concrete entity produced solely by other purely concrete entities (like genes or the environment).
So how a thing was designed takes precedence over how it is? That is, if, through absurd accident - a tornado blows through a junkyard - a robot is thrown together by random forces, and this robot happens to be structurally identical to another robot designed by an intelligent designer to mimic rational behavior, the accidental robot would not actually mimic rational behavior? Is that what you’re saying?
more or less.
by the by, i would also probably be inclined to believe that, in such a case as the one you describe, the evidence favors not randomness, but intelligent design.
Doesn’t that seem like Bomb-Shelter Theology?
What do you think of groups such as this who claim that parrots can learn mathematic and linguistic concepts? I’ve seen some documentaries on primatology which suggested that they can also understand basic commands and even arithmetic–though I suppose alot of that could be simulated and/or induced, especially considering that these groups have vested interests. Besides, if I tell my dog to roll over and he does so, does that mean he understands english? Or if I tell him to add one plus one, and he barks twice, is he a mathematician? Animals can be ‘programmed’ in a sense, to respond to stimuli, much like computers; but they do not demonstrate the independent, creative, and analytical intellect of human beings. Anyway, food for thought.
no.
well, i disagree. as i said, that will be better evidence to me, not that the soul has got nothing to do with rationality and free will, but rather that the entity displaying such properties has a soul.
i disagree. for one thing, the so called principle of falsifiability has been far too often uncritically accepted as the sine qua non of meaningful science. it isn’t. not by a long, long shot.
i think they’re wrong. pardon the pun, but “parroting” sounds that happen to resemble linguistic phenomena isn’t evidence of rationality - it’s evidence of mimicry. which itself does not (necessarily) involve rationality.
well, no. and that’s my point: it’s much more reasonable to believe that your dog is behaving in the manner your repetitive instruction caused it to behave, than it is that it actually has some kind of linguistic or mathematical facility.
exactly.
Well… what if the designer of that robot could say, “Well, look, here’s the algorithm which we designed, and here’s all the material parts which instantiate that algorithm, and we can explain every single action taken by the robot by looking to those material parts…” Would you still hold that the thing must have a soul?
yes. because there’s no physical evidence that could be presented that there isn’t a non-corporeal principle of intellection present, a principle required by reasons for which i currently lack any defeating reasons.
well, i’m neither a dualist nor an idealist, either. and i may believe in the robust theology of the “soul” as a result of my catholicism, but i believe in a non-physical component of intellection purely from the “light of natural reason”.