The Turing Test: Affirming the Consequent?

[inocente]

I don’t tell God anything. It is what I claim based on what intelligence is and what the physical facts about a computer are.

Suppose a materialist claimed that intelligence could emerge from a single electron. I think we would have to regard his claim as vacuous, because intelligence is not the sort of thing that would emerge from a single electron. Some theists might claim that it must still be possible, but I would disagree with them. That is another topic, but the short reason is that I would regard such impossibilities as falling under the idea that God cannot perform the logically impossible, and what an electron is may just not be the sort of thing that can be intelligent.

But then there are limits in principle on what intelligence can emerge from. The dispute is just over what they are.

Agreed that intelligence couldn’t emerge from one electron. But then how come previously you didn’t like the idea that complexity is a factor in intelligence?

Why do you believe the hardware makes any difference?

A further example: Take Quine’s underdetermination hypothesis. The argument is that the physical facts cannot absolutely determine one scientific theory to the exclusion of other incompossible scientific theories. It is impossible for the physical fact to do so, owing to the sort of things that physical facts are. God’s omnipotence does not entail that He can arrange physical facts in such a way so as to exclude all but one scientific theory; the idea is simply vacuous. No one is detracting from God’s power to say He can’t, anymore than no one is detracting from God’s power to say He can’t make a square circle.

50 Shades of Truth? Some philosophers have very strange ideas, but the notion of an Absolute Truth™ which exists independently in some dualist mystery land takes the biscuit.

The truth is just a piece of knowledge that accords with reality. As long as it accords with reality it is the truth, end of story.

This demands Fenyman’s joke: youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo

 

[polytropos]

If you reject physical evidence then I see no way by which to define what you mean by “we” - have you not ruled out DNA and every other measure of what it means to be “we”?

I mean beings like me. I know I have a mind. I suppose other humans do as well. I’m not really interested in engaging with skepticism on that point. I don’t examine others DNA to say, “He’s a human, so he has a mind.” He seems to be a human, so I figure he, like me, has a mind.

Suppose I sit down with someone and chat for half an hour. Then a scientist walks into the room and screws off the cap of my conversationalist’s skull: he was a robot all along. In that case I was just wrong; my judgment may be defeasible. Now that I know he wasn’t like me, my judgment that he had a mind is in question. If he was built from the ground up and there is no theoretical justification for believing that he has a mind, then I can’t believe he has a mind.

I don’t understand this supposed hard problem of qualia.

Suppose that, a la Terminator, all sense data was reported in the style of a heads-up display. So instead of sensing red, your visual system displays “light at 650 nm”, instead of hunger, a list of required proteins and so on flashes up.

That surely wouldn’t be thought inexplicable, so how does it change anything if the brain instead uses “user friendly” qualia to enable prioritization and avoid reams of unnecessary detail flashing up?

The heads-up display would be fine, if it were not dependent on there being a subject that the data is represented to. Consider a cam-corder. As I’m taping, there is a heads-up display on its screen. It can process visual data and (let’s suppose) display certain facts about it. But there being a heads-up display that I understand, as a conscious human with qualia, does not entail that the cam-corder is “experiencing” the world in the way I do.

Who sees the heads-up display? The fact that it’s meant to be a substitute for qualia like ours implies that no one and nothing “sees” it. Perhaps the “data” is there. But what determines the meaning of the data, rather than the functionally useful output that the technology has for its human users? The data are electrical pulses, flashes of 0s and 1s.

I think average intelligence of a species correlates with the number of neurons (excluding those needed for “body management”), and individual intelligence in humans correlates with number of synapses.

I agree with these.

Apologies then, I made an unwarranted assumption, you’re the first Catholic I’ve met here to say that.

No apology necessary. But, although Descartes was the father of substance dualism and was Catholic, Catholics tend not to be substance dualists, as it drives too thick a wedge between mind and man, which is a unity.

Science will sort it. Philosophers do very poorly at this kind of problem: they have no way to break it down, no way to check progress, and they compete rather than cooperate.

Well, you are free to wait for science, but the reason materialist philosophers engage this issue is that it’s the sort that can’t be determined by science. Science proceeds by ignoring subjective factors.

I’m having difficulty separating that from dualism. If “physical facts can’t beget intelligence” then surely you must be claiming there’s another realm which begets intelligence? Also by denying that the presence of thought can be settled by physical evidence? But Turing still gets you - if the non-physical begets intelligence in humans then there’s no logical reason why it can’t do so elsewhere.

Hm? It would just mean that there are necessary but not sufficient physical conditions. The theist doesn’t need to argue that it can’t happen anywhere else, just that having the same necessary physical conditions in two cases is not sufficient for saying that the cases are the same.

Now now. In a future age a machine which thinks will have moral value by virtue of being a person, not a machine who computes.

Well, whether a machine that can think is a coherent notion is what we’re discussing. If there were a machine that thought, then it would have moral value. But a machine still couldn’t be declared “thinking” because technical progress has allowed it to pass the Turing test.

You appear to be saying the hardware doesn’t matter, whereas you’ve previously argued it does.

Uhhh, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’m saying “hardware” might be necessary for thinking, but it’s not sufficient.

 

[polytropos]

Agreed that intelligence couldn’t emerge from one electron. But then how come previously you didn’t like the idea that complexity is a factor in intelligence?

Why do you believe the hardware makes any difference?

As I’ve said, I don’t deny that complexity is a factor in intelligence, I just deny that it is sufficient or that there is reason to believe that a complex computer is intelligent.

50 Shades of Truth? Some philosophers have very strange ideas, but the notion of an Absolute Truth™ which exists independently in some dualist mystery land takes the biscuit.

The truth is just a piece of knowledge that accords with reality. As long as it accords with reality it is the truth, end of story.

Is this supposed to be related to underdetermination? I honestly can’t tell.

I generally agree with correspondence theories of truth. But you are going to find that they are tough to square with the notion of artificial intelligence. What is “according” with reality if data is stored in a computer? I can define the same symbol (or broader data set) to mean the same thing on two different machines. Their outputs accordingly have different meanings. But then how does their internal “knowledge” correspond with reality? The data stored in a computer has no meaning without a human evaluator - even if you take Watson, its “intelligence” is contingent not on correspondence with reality but on its ability to quickly parse human text, search Wikipedia, etc.

 

[inocente]

Suppose I sit down with someone and chat for half an hour. Then a scientist walks into the room and screws off the cap of my conversationalist’s skull: he was a robot all along. In that case I was just wrong; my judgment may be defeasible. Now that I know he wasn’t like me, my judgment that he had a mind is in question. If he was built from the ground up and there is no theoretical justification for believing that he has a mind, then I can’t believe he has a mind.

Well, if you think he has a mind until you notice he’s not wearing approved clothing then
nothing could ever convince you otherwise.

Who sees the heads-up display? The fact that it’s meant to be a substitute for qualia like ours implies that no one and nothing “sees” it. Perhaps the “data” is there. But what determines the meaning of the data, rather than the functionally useful output that the technology has for its human users? The data are electrical pulses, flashes of 0s and 1s.

No, led you down the garden path. What I mean is you sense vast quantities of data every second which would require prodigious amounts of computing power if the system wasn’t heavily optimized. Qualia are a feature of the optimization. They are only mysterious to those philosophers who insist on never going near the engineering dept.

No apology necessary. But, although Descartes was the father of substance dualism and was Catholic, Catholics tend not to be substance dualists, as it drives too thick a wedge between mind and man, which is a unity.

Having been on threads about consciousness and souls and so on, I’d amend that to say Catholics on such threads are virtually always substance dualists even when that bit in the CCC about the soul being the form of the body is spelled out.

Well, you are free to wait for science, but the reason materialist philosophers engage this issue is that it’s the sort that can’t be determined by science. Science proceeds by ignoring subjective factors.

There used to be an article at Stanford on the history of the philosophy of consciousness since Descartes. It concluded that philosophers are still trying to define what they mean by consciousness, and will get around to explaining it once they do, but don’t hold your breath.

But of course the very notion of “consciousness” assumes substance dualism, it’s only ever been a problem for substance dualists.

Hm? It would just mean that there are necessary but not sufficient physical conditions. The theist doesn’t need to argue that it can’t happen anywhere else, just that having the same necessary physical conditions in two cases is not sufficient for saying that the cases are the same.

The theist in question would seem to want to have his cake and eat it.

Well, whether a machine that can think is a coherent notion is what we’re discussing. If there were a machine that thought, then it would have moral value. But a machine still couldn’t be declared “thinking” because technical progress has allowed it to pass the Turing test.

Sounds like your decision criteria are “humans magic, non-humans not magic”.

Uhhh, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’m saying “hardware” might be necessary for thinking, but it’s not sufficient.

Then “humans magic, non-humans not magic” fits like a glove.

 

[inocente]

As I’ve said, I don’t deny that complexity is a factor in intelligence, I just deny that it is sufficient or that there is reason to believe that a complex computer is intelligent.

Agreed, the complexity needs to have an appropriate kind of order. I’d say it cannot develop without environmental (name removed by moderator)uts, movement, survival, learning and the like, in other words there need to be driving forces for it to develop.

Is this supposed to be related to underdetermination? I honestly can’t tell.

Yes. I am saying the whole concept relies on not understanding what truth is.

I generally agree with correspondence theories of truth. But you are going to find that they are tough to square with the notion of artificial intelligence. What is “according” with reality if data is stored in a computer? I can define the same symbol (or broader data set) to mean the same thing on two different machines. Their outputs accordingly have different meanings. But then how does their internal “knowledge” correspond with reality? The data stored in a computer has no meaning without a human evaluator - even if you take Watson, its “intelligence” is contingent not on correspondence with reality but on its ability to quickly parse human text, search Wikipedia, etc.

Color me perplexed. We never needed to ponder our navels about whether reality is the world or is what we make of the world. Surely that’s a form of dualism of a particularly pointless variety. I’m a monotheist, if one god is enough then surely one reality is too?

 

[polytropos]

Well, if you think he has a mind until you notice he’s not wearing approved clothing then
nothing could ever convince you otherwise.

This doesn’t engage my point.

Say someone gives you two glasses of sodapop. They look identical. You take a sip of each. They taste identical too. You judge they are the same drink. But then it is revealed that one is actually the diet version, and contains aspartame rather than high fructose corn syrup - you didn’t notice the difference (and perhaps the difference was not even detectable for the human palette). You respond, “Ehh, I’m not quite sure, they taste very similar.” But then the results are confirmed: the person video-taped his pouring from two distinct bottles into the glasses, which he then brought to you. Chemists also analyze the two beverages and figure that they are, in fact, chemically distinct. At this point, it seems like we have to say that they are distinct - even if we judged that they were - since our judgments very well can be defeasible.

My judging that they’re different has nothing to do with “approved clothing.” It has to do with what they are. If we’re wrong about what they are - which is where the Turing test can get us - we aren’t required to hold onto the falsehood that the machine has a mind. It doesn’t seem like I’m the one who is refusing to be convinced in the face of evidence.

No, led you down the garden path. What I mean is you sense vast quantities of data every second which would require prodigious amounts of computing power if the system wasn’t heavily optimized. Qualia are a feature of the optimization. They are only mysterious to those philosophers who insist on never going near the engineering dept.

Qualia are not just efficient processing. No doubt, the brain does process sensory data quite efficiently. What of it? That is not what philosophers are referring to when they refer to qualia; qualia are the distinct, first-person, qualitative aspects of experience, ie. what the color red looks like to you. Those aren’t really related directly to efficiency; I could create a machine that plays an audio recording of the word “red” when it is struck by light with a wavelength of 700 nanometers; it doesn’t have qualia, even though it processes certain visual data pretty “efficiently.”

As for the remark about philosophers who don’t go near the engineering department, it only seems to belie an unfamiliarity with the problems facing materialism. Raymond Tallis is a neuroscientist who is aware of the fact that most materialists not only aren’t “mystified” by qualia, but flatly ignore them (Tallis is also no friend of the Catholic Church, theism, or even dualism). I’m assuming that at some point when he was getting his degree in medicine he went near an engineering department.

Having been on threads about consciousness and souls and so on, I’d amend that to say Catholics on such threads are virtually always substance dualists even when that bit in the CCC about the soul being the form of the body is spelled out.

I’m aware of one Catholic substance dualist on these forums (though there may be more). I did not think that the CCC spelled out a hylemorphic theory of the soul in much detail (though I could be wrong), although it’s visible in the writings of, for instance, John Paul II, as well as other Church Fathers.

There used to be an article at Stanford on the history of the philosophy of consciousness since Descartes. It concluded that philosophers are still trying to define what they mean by consciousness, and will get around to explaining it once they do, but don’t hold your breath.

Consciousness has, I think, been overemphasized and reified since Descartes, but its opacity is hardly a non-issue for materialists.

The theist in question would seem to want to have his cake and eat it.

Sounds like your decision criteria are “humans magic, non-humans not magic”.

Then “humans magic, non-humans not magic” fits like a glove.

If you aren’t willing to respond to my points seriously, then please don’t respond at all.

 

[polytropos]

Yes. I am saying the whole concept relies on not understanding what truth is.

I don’t think you’ve understood Quine at all. You seem to think he is denying that “The truth is just a piece of knowledge that accords with reality. As long as it accords with reality it is the truth, end of story.” While I think he’d agree, the point of scientific underdetermination is that for any set of data there are incompatible scientific models which both accord equally with reality. This is par for the course for methodological naturalism.

Color me perplexed. We never needed to ponder our navels about whether reality is the world or is what we make of the world. Surely that’s a form of dualism of a particularly pointless variety. I’m a monotheist, if one god is enough then surely one reality is too?

Color me perplexed as well, because once again I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[polytropos]

Recent technology has overtaken your skepticism. Although reading human and animal minds is beset with practical difficulties, is in its infancy, and currently very low resolution, it’s becoming a reality:

technologyreview.com/news/409705/mind-reading-with-functional-mri/
technologyreview.com/view/513326/scientists-use-mri-to-glimpse-the-dreaming-mind/
articles.latimes.com/2012/may/08/business/la-fi-tn-scientists-give-dogs-mri-20120507

Got another chance to look at these, and it seems like my original thoughts were spot on:

I will take a closer look at these in the next few days (I have a couple exams on wednesday so I can’t take a close look at them now). However, my short answer is that they do not seem to meet what I am claiming. I think some of my remarks in post #22, as to whether a computer can “think” about red, are relevant. Certainly there are particular neurons that fire when I see the color red. Those neurons are going to be roughly the same across my disparate experiences of seeing red, and they should roughly correlate to which neurons fires in other members of my biological species fire when they see red. Brain scans can track that. They can also use it to predict what data is entering my perception.

But I am committed to denying none of that, and none of it shows that the presence of data corresponding regularly to the experience of seeing red is a sufficient explanation of my subjective, qualitative experience of seeing red. And so, such studies have nothing to say as to whether a computer can be a “subject” which can represent the experience of red to itself, even if the appropriate data is flowing through it, as I allude to in post #22.

And post #22:

For example, I can think about the color red. I have never “seen” red alone (though I’ve seen red things). I have red in the abstract. (It even seems that my thinking about red need not even be visual/imaginative, since when I think about red, my vision does not “go red.”)

Can a computer “think about” red? It seems doubtful. Suppose we hooked up a camera to the computer, and it converts a photo stream to binary data. Nothing about the data necessitates red. The program could be implemented differently so that the stream of data rather means blue, or something unrelated to photo processing altogether. Perhaps the computer can show “red” on its screen. Perhaps it is even programmed such that it plays a recording to say, “I see red.” The data that the external color was converted to is data - at what point is it represented to the computer in a tangible way, as an intentional experience about the external world, rather than as a stream of data?

Say we fit the computer into an android’s body, so it is visually indistinguishable from a human. Then we sharpen its audio processing and vocal capabilities. It then convinces someone that it “sees red,” just like it has been programmed. But what have these bells and whistles done to change whether we should regard it capable of seeing red? Nothing, it seems.

Figuring out what parts of the brain are active in certain visual situations is simply not a part of what would begin to constitute an explanation of qualia or intentionality. There is a reason none of the scientists are claiming to have solved those tougher problems - because they know they haven’t, and that their data does not suggest that they’re on the way.

 

[inocente]

This doesn’t engage my point.

Say someone gives you two glasses of sodapop. They look identical. You take a sip of each. They taste identical too. You judge they are the same drink. But then it is revealed that one is actually the diet version, and contains aspartame rather than high fructose corn syrup - you didn’t notice the difference (and perhaps the difference was not even detectable for the human palette). You respond, “Ehh, I’m not quite sure, they taste very similar.” But then the results are confirmed: the person video-taped his pouring from two distinct bottles into the glasses, which he then brought to you. Chemists also analyze the two beverages and figure that they are, in fact, chemically distinct. At this point, it seems like we have to say that they are distinct - even if we judged that they were - since our judgments very well can be defeasible.

My judging that they’re different has nothing to do with “approved clothing.” It has to do with what they are. If we’re wrong about what they are - which is where the Turing test can get us - we aren’t required to hold onto the falsehood that the machine has a mind. It doesn’t seem like I’m the one who is refusing to be convinced in the face of evidence.

By saying “approved clothing” my critique was that your only criterion is a matter of taste, so it’s interesting you chose taste for your example. But in your drinks example there is an objective measure, whereas you are arguing against any objective measure for thought.

God pours pure thought into two bottles. You taste from both and judge them the same, which of course they are. But then you notice the labels on the bottles are different, and now you convince yourself they taste different, purely because of the labels.

Qualia are not just efficient processing. No doubt, the brain does process sensory data quite efficiently. What of it? That is not what philosophers are referring to when they refer to qualia; qualia are the distinct, first-person, qualitative aspects of experience, ie. what the color red looks like to you. Those aren’t really related directly to efficiency; I could create a machine that plays an audio recording of the word “red” when it is struck by light with a wavelength of 700 nanometers; it doesn’t have qualia, even though it processes certain visual data pretty “efficiently.”

Of course, but you ignored my point. Now design yourself a machine which is continuously processing all the data from eyes, ears, nose, balance, feeling, pain, heart rate, etc., etc., and which can reliably and rapidly separate out from all that data hitting it continuously, the very few things important to survival. You will find you had to invent something which your machine might well call qualia.

As for the remark about philosophers who don’t go near the engineering department, it only seems to belie an unfamiliarity with the problems facing materialism. Raymond Tallis is a neuroscientist who is aware of the fact that most materialists not only aren’t “mystified” by qualia, but flatly ignore them (Tallis is also no friend of the Catholic Church, theism, or even dualism). I’m assuming that at some point when he was getting his degree in medicine he went near an engineering department.

When those philosophers invented the vague subjective notion of qualia, and gleefully waved it at the engineers shouting “ooh bet you can’t solve our vague subjective notion”, the engineers called back “not even wrong” but the philosophers were too busy giggling to notice.

I’m aware of one Catholic substance dualist on these forums (though there may be more). I did not think that the CCC spelled out a hylemorphic theory of the soul in much detail (though I could be wrong), although it’s visible in the writings of, for instance, John Paul II, as well as other Church Fathers.

It seems the subject isn’t taught and I guess to a modern mind, substance dualism is intuitively easy compared to hylemorphism, property dualism and so on, not that I have any expertise.

Consciousness has, I think, been overemphasized and reified since Descartes, but its opacity is hardly a non-issue for materialists.

Never seen is as a problem, although maybe I’d call it self-awareness as the word consciousness carries philosophical baggage.

If you aren’t willing to respond to my points seriously, then please don’t respond at all.

Apologies, didn’t mean to offend. I was being serious though in the sense that you appear to have decided that (a) There’s real-thinking and pseudo-thinking. (b) Only humans can do the first while non-humans can only do the second. (c) Only humans can distinguish real-thinking from pseudo-thinking.

 

[inocente]

I don’t think you’ve understood Quine at all. You seem to think he is denying that “The truth is just a piece of knowledge that accords with reality. As long as it accords with reality it is the truth, end of story.” While I think he’d agree, the point of scientific underdetermination is that for any set of data there are incompatible scientific models which both accord equally with reality. This is par for the course for methodological naturalism.

Yes and that’s fine. But for reasons unexplained Quine imagines there must only be One True® Model. Why? Is Picasso’s Guernica the One True® Model or is Beethoven’s Ninth? The question doesn’t make sense. Why do these guys insist on hit parades? [stalks off muttering, stage left]

Color me perplexed as well, because once again I have no idea what you are talking about.

See above.

 

[inocente]

Figuring out what parts of the brain are active in certain visual situations is simply not a part of what would begin to constitute an explanation of qualia or intentionality. There is a reason none of the scientists are claiming to have solved those tougher problems - because they know they haven’t, and that their data does not suggest that they’re on the way.

If the vague subjective notion of qualia corresponds to brain activity then brain activity corresponds to the vague subjective notion of qualia.

The reason why scientists may not be claiming to solve these problems is they are not real problems, they are, as the engineers so eloquently put it, not even wrong.

If the hypothesis for qualia was open to being tested then it could be found wrong. But it is so vague and subjective that no test is possible; it is not even wrong.

It’s not productive for scientists to chase after philosopher’s notions, reductionist or otherwise. If the notions are part of reality, they will be discovered in the evidence.

 

[polytropos]

By saying “approved clothing” my critique was that your only criterion is a matter of taste, so it’s interesting you chose taste for your example. But in your drinks example there is an objective measure, whereas you are arguing against any objective measure for thought.

But my criterion wasn’t a matter of taste. Discovering that I was wrong about the machine being human should make me call my judgment into question. Sometimes we have to revise our beliefs in the face of evidence. It’s not that I prefer humans or anything - it is that I know that I have a mind, I have never seen a convincing theoretical proposal for a machine having a mind, though many intelligent people have tried, and I have adduced reasons to doubt that a machine has a mind, so I should not presume that a machine has a mind.

But in your drinks example there is an objective measure, whereas you are arguing against any objective measure for thought.

There are objective differences between the machine and the human as well. Before seeing in the machine’s head, I defeasibly thought it was human. After seeing in its head, I realized that it was not. I don’t argue: It’s not human, so it doesn’t have a mind. But I do argue: It’s not human, and its constitution calls into question whether it thinks, so I should not believe it thinks.

But in any case, I don’t need an objective, physical measure for thought - the lack of one is reason to doubt that I should prima facie assume that machine has thought, especially if a computer scientist who built it from the ground up is sitting right there and can show me the code, the hardware, and how it works.

God pours pure thought into two bottles. You taste from both and judge them the same, which of course they are. But then you notice the labels on the bottles are different, and now you convince yourself they taste different, purely because of the labels.

The analogy breaks down in the first sentence, in that we don’t know that both the machine and the man think, since that’s exactly the question we’re asking.

Of course, but you ignored my point. Now design yourself a machine which is continuously processing all the data from eyes, ears, nose, balance, feeling, pain, heart rate, etc., etc., and which can reliably and rapidly separate out from all that data hitting it continuously, the very few things important to survival. You will find you had to invent something which your machine might well call qualia.

What you propose here seems to be false. You know what the color red and the experience of pain are like (I’m guessing). But the ability to sort out those stimuli has no essential connection to those experiences. A cam-corder can record and represent an image with sound; you could modify it to detect orientation (to account for balance). You could make certain parts of it respond to your touching it (would this be feeling/pain? I don’t know what reason we have to think so). But what about the convergence of these complex pathways - however complex you make them - suggests that the camera should at some point start to experience red and pain in the way you do. Even if you could get by the vacuous notion of “inventing” qualia, there seems to be no reason to think that the complexity of data processing should beget qualia; it would seem to require some sort of panpsychism. It has just been asserted without argument.

When those philosophers invented the vague subjective notion of qualia, and gleefully waved it at the engineers shouting “ooh bet you can’t solve our vague subjective notion”, the engineers called back “not even wrong” but the philosophers were too busy giggling to notice.

I do not think most engineers are committed to denying that their consciousness or qualitative experiences are more than “vague subjective notions,” so perhaps they can speak for themselves. You are free to deny that you have qualia or that you are conscious. If calling them “not even wrong” convinces you that you don’t experience red or feel pain qualitatively, then I suppose it is a useful retort.

 

[polytropos]

Apologies, didn’t mean to offend. I was being serious though in the sense that you appear to have decided that (a) There’s real-thinking and pseudo-thinking. (b) Only humans can do the first while non-humans can only do the second. (c) Only humans can distinguish real-thinking from pseudo-thinking.

But of course one has to distinguish between real-thinking and pseudo-thinking. Take a calculator: I can type 2+2 in it and get 4. I could also do that in my head. Does it think? It seems that one has two options: say that it does, or say that it doesn’t. If one says that it does, then one has defined “thinking” incredibly broadly, for all that need distinguish the calculator from an abacus is speed.

If one says that it doesn’t, then one has conceded that there are algorithmic processes mapping (name removed by moderator)uts to outputs that do not constitute thinking; hence, there is some line between real thinking and pseudo-thinking. The question is, where is the line, and why should I believe that a machine that passes the Turing test has passed it?

To echo questions I’ve asked before (receiving no answer, though I did not ask you): if human intelligence is not different in principle from what a machine is doing, then what makes humans the standard of intelligence, such that a machine that can act human is “intelligent”? Why is parsing human speech and mapping human language to some socially acceptable response a paradigmatically intelligent activity? If computers can be intelligent, then it should not be human-like qualities that account for it, for two “intelligent” computers should be able to chat themselves (or sit there and run calculations?) as alternative manifestations of their intelligence.

But this seems misguided: I wrote a program the other day that can generate legal anagrams for Scrabble. The program couldn’t fool me into thinking it was human (because I didn’t program it to do that), but it was performing calculations and algorithms far more complex than I’d care to do manually. But what makes it intelligent?

So the proponent of machine intelligent is faced with a conundrum: the machine algorithmically maps (name removed by moderator)uts to outputs. It doesn’t care what the (name removed by moderator)uts and outputs are: it might be the syntax for a calculus problem, or it might be soundbytes from a microphone into which a human just spoke. The machine processes it - perhaps in a sophisticated way - and produces some result. What makes its processing of speech principally different from its processing of an equation? (Perhaps we could even create an isomorphism between linguistic and mathematical systems, so that the machine actually does the same things internally, and the only difference is the way we interpret the results - it is certainly conceivable.) I find the Turing test proponent committed to accepting intelligence of all machines (perhaps of some threshold complexity) whether they fool us or not. The Turing test just seems to add an emotional element to it, so that we can fool ourselves into thinking it’s human.

I do find many of your comments offensive. You are shoehorning a philosophical discussion into thinly veiled accusations of bigotry. It’s a pretty serious charge to insinuate that my attitude toward computers is comparable to discrimination toward women or black people, as you did in #19.

Yes and that’s fine. But for reasons unexplained Quine imagines there must only be One True® Model. Why? Is Picasso’s Guernica the One True® Model or is Beethoven’s Ninth? The question doesn’t make sense. Why do these guys insist on hit parades? [stalks off muttering, stage left]

Can you quote where you think Quine is imagining that there is only “One True® Model”?

Can you also clarify what I see as a dilemma (but where I must just be misunderstanding you): In post #45, you said, “I’m a monotheist, if one god is enough then surely one reality is too?” If I am reading you right, you are taking issue with Quine thinking that there isn’t just one reality. Here you seem to be taking issue with there just being “One True® Model.” So it’s a problem for Quine to think that there are “multiple realities” but also a problem for him to think there’s one “model.” Are these related claims? Is Quine committed to both? Do you mean the same thing by model and reality? Am I misunderstanding you?

It seems to me like Quine accepts that there is some single way that reality is, the aim of science being to model it. The problem of underdetermination is that evidence can confirm multiple theories and can’t always separate them in principle. I’m just using this as an example of an admixture of logical and empirical problems that would not be overcome by God’s omnipotence.

 

[polytropos]

If the vague subjective notion of qualia corresponds to brain activity then brain activity corresponds to the vague subjective notion of qualia.

Depends what you mean by “correspond.” If you mean that they coincide, ie. I have the experience of seeing things when certain parts of my brain are active, then yes. But of course, the confusion of correlation and causation is notorious…

The reason why scientists may not be claiming to solve these problems is they are not real problems, they are, as the engineers so eloquently put it, not even wrong.

If the hypothesis for qualia was open to being tested then it could be found wrong. But it is so vague and subjective that no test is possible; it is not even wrong.

I see you’ve found a catchphrase. The thing is, qualia are perfectly falsifiable. If you and I had any reason to doubt that there is such a thing as experiencing pain, then we would doubt it. But while we can correlate the feeling of pain to the activity of certain neurons, we don’t have an explanation - even a tentative, theoretical explanation - of the existence of a subjective feeling of pain.

I’m going to venture to say that the articles you cited were not even news. I don’t think any scientist or philosopher (materialist, dualist, or otherwise) would have disputed that what the articles were discussing was possible and likely to be achieved.

It’s not productive for scientists to chase after philosopher’s notions, reductionist or otherwise. If the notions are part of reality, they will be discovered in the evidence.

Agreed on the first point: some things are in principle out of science’s reach, and scientists won’t accomplish a lot by going after them. (Another example, you and I might agree that God, however disparate our conceptions of Him are, is out of science’s reach, but is nonetheless “part of reality.”)

Regarding your second point, I would have to disagree. Even if we assume full methodological naturalism, it seems more plausible that there are limits to what science can discover - but what science can discover does not determine what is real.

Furthermore, take something like the color of my shirt. Science can tell us what pigment it’s made out of. It can tell us what wavelength the light reflecting off of it is. It can tell us what happens when light passes through my cornea. It can tell us why it looks different to someone who is colorblind. It can tell us which regions of my brain are active when I look at my shirt.

But it can’t tell me what the color of my shirt is like; it’s just not a question science answers, which is not a slight to science, which is quite productive. Asserting that the qualia of my shirt color therefore shouldn’t be part of our ontology seems more like stipulation than following the evidence.

 

[inocente]

I’m brain dead today sorry, need light relief, will come back tomorrow.

 

[inocente]

But my criterion wasn’t a matter of taste. Discovering that I was wrong about the machine being human should make me call my judgment into question. Sometimes we have to revise our beliefs in the face of evidence. It’s not that I prefer humans or anything - it is that I know that I have a mind, I have never seen a convincing theoretical proposal for a machine having a mind, though many intelligent people have tried, and I have adduced reasons to doubt that a machine has a mind, so I should not presume that a machine has a mind.

You are saying that evidence supports your theory but no amount of evidence can shake your theory.

There are objective differences between the machine and the human as well. Before seeing in the machine’s head, I defeasibly thought it was human. After seeing in its head, I realized that it was not. I don’t argue: It’s not human, so it doesn’t have a mind. But I do argue: It’s not human, and its constitution calls into question whether it thinks, so I should not believe it thinks.

I said “you are arguing against any objective measure for thought” and you have not provided any, all you’ve said is there’s an objective difference in the clothes.

But in any case, I don’t need an objective, physical measure for thought - the lack of one is reason to doubt that I should prima facie assume that machine has thought, especially if a computer scientist who built it from the ground up is sitting right there and can show me the code, the hardware, and how it works.

This is circular, a human is that which thinks and that which thinks is human. There’s no way in, you’ve built yourself a perfect fortress.

The analogy breaks down in the first sentence, in that we don’t know that both the machine and the man think, since that’s exactly the question we’re asking.

I was using Turing’s theological objection, and again you have denied that God is omnipotent, explicitly this time.

What you propose here seems to be false. You know what the color red and the experience of pain are like (I’m guessing). But the ability to sort out those stimuli has no essential connection to those experiences. A cam-corder can record and represent an image with sound; you could modify it to detect orientation (to account for balance). You could make certain parts of it respond to your touching it (would this be feeling/pain? I don’t know what reason we have to think so). But what about the convergence of these complex pathways - however complex you make them - suggests that the camera should at some point start to experience red and pain in the way you do. Even if you could get by the vacuous notion of “inventing” qualia, there seems to be no reason to think that the complexity of data processing should beget qualia; it would seem to require some sort of panpsychism. It has just been asserted without argument.

Rats, you ignored my point again. My argument it that you cannot design a machine that can survive in a complex environment without using prioritization mechanisms which might look to it much like qualia. You’ve done nothing to disprove that argument, you’ve just waved your arms about by calling it vacuous, as if.

I do not think most engineers are committed to denying that their consciousness or qualitative experiences are more than “vague subjective notions,” so perhaps they can speak for themselves. You are free to deny that you have qualia or that you are conscious. If calling them “not even wrong” convinces you that you don’t experience red or feel pain qualitatively, then I suppose it is a useful retort.

This is just trying to poke fun at me for not going with your vague subjective folk notions. My turn to play skeptic. Prove to me that qualia exist, and that my qualia are the same as yours. Prove that your qualia today are the same as your qualia yesterday.

 

[inocente]

But of course one has to distinguish between real-thinking and pseudo-thinking. Take a calculator: I can type 2+2 in it and get 4. I could also do that in my head. Does it think? It seems that one has two options: say that it does, or say that it doesn’t. If one says that it does, then one has defined “thinking” incredibly broadly, for all that need distinguish the calculator from an abacus is speed.

If one says that it doesn’t, then one has conceded that there are algorithmic processes mapping (name removed by moderator)uts to outputs that do not constitute thinking; hence, there is some line between real thinking and pseudo-thinking. The question is, where is the line, and why should I believe that a machine that passes the Turing test has passed it?

But this is exactly the question which Turing wants to avoid, because he knows people will disagree on the answer. So rather than spend the next 400 years trying to define it (roughly how long philosophers since Descartes have been trying to define consciousness), he ask how, in practice, do we distinguish.

To echo questions I’ve asked before (receiving no answer, though I did not ask you): if human intelligence is not different in principle from what a machine is doing, then what makes humans the standard of intelligence, such that a machine that can act human is “intelligent”? Why is parsing human speech and mapping human language to some socially acceptable response a paradigmatically intelligent activity? If computers can be intelligent, then it should not be human-like qualities that account for it, for two “intelligent” computers should be able to chat themselves (or sit there and run calculations?) as alternative manifestations of their intelligence.

Intelligence is another vague concept, and somewhat nebulous. Is a walking machine really walking or only doing something which looks like walking? To me, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. So I would deny any possibility of a p-zombie.

*But this seems misguided: I wrote a program the other day that can generate legal anagrams for Scrabble. The program couldn’t fool me into thinking it was human (because I didn’t program it to do that), but it was performing calculations and algorithms far more complex than I’d care to do manually. But what makes it intelligent?

So the proponent of machine intelligent is faced with a conundrum: the machine algorithmically maps (name removed by moderator)uts to outputs. It doesn’t care what the (name removed by moderator)uts and outputs are: it might be the syntax for a calculus problem, or it might be soundbytes from a microphone into which a human just spoke. The machine processes it - perhaps in a sophisticated way - and produces some result. What makes its processing of speech principally different from its processing of an equation? (Perhaps we could even create an isomorphism between linguistic and mathematical systems, so that the machine actually does the same things internally, and the only difference is the way we interpret the results - it is certainly conceivable.) I find the Turing test proponent committed to accepting intelligence of all machines (perhaps of some threshold complexity) whether they fool us or not. The Turing test just seems to add an emotional element to it, so that we can fool ourselves into thinking it’s human.*

Have you played with cellular automata? It is very instructive to program [Conway’s Game of Life](Conway’s Game of Life). You will see complex forms arise which seem alive, yet you know they are just shapes arising from simple repetition, because you wrote the program. Conway proved that shapes could arise which can be computers, reproduce, all kinds of things.

 

[inocente]

I do find many of your comments offensive. You are shoehorning a philosophical discussion into thinly veiled accusations of bigotry. It’s a pretty serious charge to insinuate that my attitude toward computers is comparable to discrimination toward women or black people, as you did in #19.

You seem to have let that brew and made it more than it was:

You said “We have thoughts, and we infer that other things of the same kind also have thoughts. But machines aren’t the same kind, so there does not seem to be any warrant to the inference that machines are ensouled like we are.”

And I replied “I think you need to be careful here about the ethics. In what sense are machines not the same kind as us? They are physical, they are made of the same stuff, so at what level of detail do you draw the distinction of kind? There have been those who believed women are not the same kind as men, or black skins not the same kind as white. If space aliens land and have Star Trek matter transporters, mathematics way beyond ours, stunning literature and so on, doesn’t that indicate they’re intelligent, not whether they’re silicon-based seven-legged cyborgs?”.

Can you quote where you think Quine is imagining that there is only “One True® Model”?

In the quote below there’s the image of a picture frame, with experience as the frame and our interpretation of the experience (knowledge) as the picture. The middle of the picture is far from the frame, and could be different. Yes fine, so what? To say otherwise would mean there can only be one possible picture, only one valid interpretation, One True® Model.

“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.”

Can you also clarify what I see as a dilemma (but where I must just be misunderstanding you): In post #45, you said, “I’m a monotheist, if one god is enough then surely one reality is too?” If I am reading you right, you are taking issue with Quine thinking that there isn’t just one reality. Here you seem to be taking issue with there just being “One True® Model.” So it’s a problem for Quine to think that there are “multiple realities” but also a problem for him to think there’s one “model.” Are these related claims? Is Quine committed to both? Do you mean the same thing by model and reality? Am I misunderstanding you?

Yes. It would seem that there is one objective reality, or at least we can say that when we nudge the world, we get equivalent results. But going back to the picture frame analogy, our frames are similar but different (our experiences are similar but different), and so the fabric of our interpretations, the way we picture reality, is different. So what, it seems too trivial to need to be mentioned.

It seems to me like Quine accepts that there is some single way that reality is, the aim of science being to model it. The problem of underdetermination is that evidence can confirm multiple theories and can’t always separate them in principle. I’m just using this as an example of an admixture of logical and empirical problems that would not be overcome by God’s omnipotence.

I’d have thought Quine’s argument applies to all experience and all knowledge, not just science.

Didn’t understand the last sentence, I don’t see where the logical problem comes in.

 

[inocente]

Depends what you mean by “correspond.” If you mean that they coincide, ie. I have the experience of seeing things when certain parts of my brain are active, then yes. But of course, the confusion of correlation and causation is notorious…

I’m going to carry on denying that qualia exist, my logic being that same (seriously) as:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog

I see you’ve found a catchphrase. The thing is, qualia are perfectly falsifiable. If you and I had any reason to doubt that there is such a thing as experiencing pain, then we would doubt it. But while we can correlate the feeling of pain to the activity of certain neurons, we don’t have an explanation - even a tentative, theoretical explanation - of the existence of a subjective feeling of pain.

The catchphrase has been around for many years - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

Talk to Daniel Dennitt about whether qualia are falsifiable.

I don’t understand your remarks about pain. It signals something which a system somewhere is interpreting as wrong and requiring attention to prevent further damage. So subjectively it won’t let go, it keeps hammering for our attention so we’ll do something to make it to go away. That’s what the subjective feeling is.

I’m going to venture to say that the articles you cited were not even news. I don’t think any scientist or philosopher (materialist, dualist, or otherwise) would have disputed that what the articles were discussing was possible and likely to be achieved.

I cited them because you said “Your question seems to beg the question that “logging something’s thoughts” is even a coherent notion”. And the articles say why wouldn’t it be coherent?

Agreed on the first point: some things are in principle out of science’s reach, and scientists won’t accomplish a lot by going after them. (Another example, you and I might agree that God, however disparate our conceptions of Him are, is out of science’s reach, but is nonetheless “part of reality.”)

That’s not what I said. I said just because someone invents notions (such as qualia or unicorns) is no reason why a scientist should go chasing off to see if they exist.

Regarding your second point, I would have to disagree. Even if we assume full methodological naturalism, it seems more plausible that there are limits to what science can discover - but what science can discover does not determine what is real.

You could say that about UFOs and whatever else you like.

*Furthermore, take something like the color of my shirt. Science can tell us what pigment it’s made out of. It can tell us what wavelength the light reflecting off of it is. It can tell us what happens when light passes through my cornea. It can tell us why it looks different to someone who is colorblind. It can tell us which regions of my brain are active when I look at my shirt.

But it can’t tell me what the color of my shirt is like; it’s just not a question science answers, which is not a slight to science, which is quite productive. Asserting that the qualia of my shirt color therefore shouldn’t be part of our ontology seems more like stipulation than following the evidence.*

I can’t say that I understand this. So, internally, we experience our experiences. We experience our qualia. experiences = qualia. Same thing said differently, only the second time it’s supposed to be saying something new. I can’t say that I understand this.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Turing lacked insight into a machine’s lack of insight. Did he really regard himself as a machine, I wonder…

Perhaps profoundly autistic?