The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines

John David Funge writes "In Dr David Ellerman's book Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life there are a number of interesting essays. But there is one particular essay, entitled "The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines," that caught my attention and which should be of interest to Slashdot readers. In that essay Dr Ellerman claims that "after several decades of debate, a definitive differentiation between minds and machines seems to be emerging into view." In particular, Dr Ellerman argues that the distinction between minds and machines is that while machines (i.e., computers) make excellent symbol manipulation devices, only minds have the additional capacity to ascribe semantics to symbols." Read the rest of John's review. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life author David P. Ellerman pages 290 pages publisher Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. rating 7 reviewer John David Funge ISBN 0847679322 summary Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or "trespassers".

However, Dr Ellerman's argument appears circular. In particular, Dr Ellerman seems to have decided that, by definition, the only possible semantic interpretation for any collection of wires, capacitors, transistors, etc. that we would commonly refer to as a "computer" is as nothing more than a symbol manipulation device. While a computer is indeed (at the very least) a symbol manipulation device, what is there to prevent another mind ascribing additional semantic interpretations to the collection of wires, capacitors, transistors, etc. that we commonly refer to as a "computer"? In particular, what if my mind were willing to make the semantic interpretation that a computer is a device that can both manipulate symbols and can also ascribe semantics to symbols.

Moreover, what if I one day met a collection of blood vessels, skin, bones, etc. called Dr Ellerman? What would prevent me from ascribing to him the semantic interpretation that he is nothing more than a symbolic manipulation device? After all, Dr Ellerman concedes that their may be no way of distinguishing minds from machines purely on the basis of behavior. That is he specifically acknowledges that computers may one day pass the Turing test. So why would my mind not then be able to legitimately ascribe any semantic interpretation (that fits the observed behavior) I see fit to either humans or machines?

It seems that Dr Ellerman's essay considers two different types of physical devices that are potentially indistinguishable on the basis of behavior. Then arbitrarily defines one type of device (computers) to correspond to nothing more than symbolic manipulation and the other (human brains) to have the additional ability to ascribe semantics. Upon adopting these two axioms, he is then (somewhat unsurprisingly) able to conclude there is a distinction! But the distinction simply arises from the fact that he has arbitrarily defined a distinction in the first place.

In another essay in the collection, entitled "Trespassing against the Happy Consciousness of Orthodox Economics," Dr Ellerman argues that modern Western societies are not as free from slavery as orthodox economics would have us believe. In particular, he concludes that work in non-democratic firms is nothing less than a form of "temporary voluntary slavery". It would be ironic therefore if his essay on minds and machines were one day used to justify the slavery of (non-human) machines. Indeed, Dr Ellerman's characterization of the supposed intrinsic differences between humans and machines is sadly reminiscent of the despicable and unscientific arguments about intrinsic racial differences that were once used to justify human slavery."
You can purchase Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Just like Organic vs. Inorganic chem.

[Vengeance]

While there was long believed to be some sort of mystical special quality to organic molecules, eventually we figured out that chemistry is chemistry, and that simply by using Carbon we get interesting possiblities.

I (so far) have not seen any reason to suppose that the difference between 'thought' and 'computing' is any different. Incorporate enough complexity in the right sort of organizational framework, and the two should be interchangable.

Re:Just like Organic vs. Inorganic chem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep Stephen Pinker wrote a whole book saying the Blank Slate doesn't exist.

Genetics DO matter.

We are Equal but Not the Same.

EQUAL != SAME

Re:Just like Organic vs. Inorganic chem.

[jc42]

The blank slate theory is a misguided attempt to pollute science with a bunch of feel-good egalitarian crap, and should be placed in the same category as Intelligent Design.

Well, yes and no. The strong form of the Blank Slate theory is of course bunk. If we are born with no wired behavior at all, we could never learn any, because learnin is a behavior. It's a prototypical infinite regress, and there's no way out: We have to be born knowing how to learn.

But there's a weak form of the Blank Slate theory that you often hear from biologists: One of the main differences between us humans and our relatives is that we've lost most of the common body of wired-in knowledge, aka instinct, and have replaced it with learning from the environment. We do have relics of instinct, but they are relatively weak, and we can even overcome them with a bit of thought and practice.

To extend the slate metaphor, we are born with the slate (or maybe a whiteboard these days), and a supply of chalk (or erasable markers), and we're born knowing how to use them. Not well, of course, but we can learn to learn and write better with aid and guidance.

Another metaphor that I've run across that is instructive: We have a cultural equivalent of instinct, in the form of religion and customs. These are behaviors that we do learn, but we learn them at a young age, without much thought or analysis. And, as with the species variations in instinct vs learning, we have wide variations in how much of our behavior is religio-cultural and how much is learned.

And, as the success of humans has shown the superiority of learning over instinct, the success of modern industry and science shows the superiority of conscious learning over religion and culture. This is assuming that these actually are superiorities, and this really hasn't been proved yet. Right now, we could very easily cause our own extinction using the tools that these abilities have given us.

But, as the Blank Slate needs a hard-wired learning instinct, we probably wouldn't survive without a culture to instill unanalyzed knowledge when we're too young to figure out that saber-tooth tigers or speeding automobiles are dangerous. On the other hand, our history seems to tell us that humans who rely solely on instincts or customs or religion are generally doomed to short, brutish lives. And they tend to take their neighbors with them when they go. So those of us capable of thoughtful learning, especially of the scientific sort, should be working on getting across what we've learned to the people who prefer not to learn.

Upon consideration

[SpinyNorman]

I've evaluated this claim in light of the mind being the product of a neural machine, and have determined it to be a load of bollocks.

turing test

[dirvish]

That is he specifically acknowledges that computers may one day pass the Turing test.

A computer will one day be sophiscated enough to manipulate symbols sufficiently to pass the Turing test. I don't believe that means it is sentient and/or has a mind. It may be time to move beyond the Turing test as the rule for artificial intelligence.

False presumption

[blair1q]

Semantics are associations between symbols.

So whatever this guy is on about, he's got it wrong.

Computers are perfectly capable of making fuzzy inferences from loose associations.

With a greater understanding of real connections, they will be better able to weed out the fuzzy associations and strengthen the remaining ones.

This is how intellectual learning works.

And there's no reason a computer can't simulate it better than a human can.

Symbolic vs semantic

[chriss]

Basically: a symbol is a variable and can hold any value. If a system knows that Dolly is a sheep and that sheeps are animals and that animals eat, it can guess that Dolly eats. But it cannot tell if Dolly is a plane, unless someone somewhere made that relation (planes are machines, machines are not living beings, animals are living beings, so Dolly can't be a plane). They would need an unlimited amount of rules.

A human "knows" about the meaning (semantic) of the symbol "sheep". Although this has never been discussed, he could answer that a sheep will not stand still if set on fire. The question is how the human is able to tell this. He does not need a sharp line of arguments.

But maybe he simply uses an enormous amount of small rules that seem to form something more complex called semantic in the sense of the article. The OpenCyc project assumes this and tries to teach a machine millions of small rules (assertions and concepts) to create sort of common sense based on a real world view (requiring to "know" about the world) in software.

Difference between man and machine

[digitaldc]

It would be ironic therefore if his essay on minds and machines were one day used to justify the slavery of (non-human) machines.

A machine will work diligently until it physically breaks or encounters an error.

A man will figure out a way to avoid the work by creating a machine to do it for him, and then quickly move on to more pleasurable activities.

11 year old book of crap reviewed here? Why?

[Dr. Spork]

Sorry, I teach philosophy in college and I read student essays like this every semester. This one seems reasonably insightful, probably B+ (though I haven't read the book myself, so I can't say whether it misrepresents the position).

But what's really on my mind is this: Read the table of contents - this book could not possibly be anything but crap. I mean, what sense does it make to have one chapter called "Chapter 3: The Libertarian Case for Slavery" and once you're done with musings on economic theory, you toss off a Chapter 7 where you casually present your solution to the question about the difference between minds and machines? How promising is that? Not very. So while the review author may have torn this chapter a new orifice (and the thesis surely has many other problems to boot), I must say that I do not toast his choice of reading. This is crap that was ignored in 1995, and just because it's a $2.95 special at the used book store doesn't mean we need to hear the following on Slashdot:

Newsflash: Some crank wrote a stupid book 11 years ago and I found there is a problem with one of the chapters!!!!! Read on!!!!!

I'd have more sympathy if the text were available online so we could RTFA and have a substantive discussion, but in the absence of that, our only option is to flame the responsible.

Cockroaches, babies, and Wal-Mart

[ScentCone]

There's no true recursive decision making or calling upon the past except of what is explicitely defined by the programmer

No. Replace "programmer" with "programming" and you're closer. And that's a reminder that self-programming is something which we're genetically good at. It's also something we're getting better at building inorganic, programmable systems to do themselves. Baby steps, but the concept is there, and important.

In humans, we are not stopped by that limit.

We can't do what we can't do. We have to train ourselves to process information in a new way, or we can't process it (except in a familiar way). We can though, build inorganic systems that process information in new ways by design. Sure, the aggregate complexity of a human brain is stunning, and its interconnectivity gives rise to some astounding adapative behavior (and self programming), but that's all we're talking about: scale and complexity... not a magic leap beyond the basic, underlying organic chemistry that makes us and cockroaches tick.

We have the ability to make sense of our environment

After we've been trained to, yes. That takes a long time, and we have a nice high-speed processor highly adapted to that purpose and well integrated with its sensors. But surely you don't suggest that babies or newborn puppies (both already armed with incredibly complex neural engines) "make sense of our environment" ? Not in the way that you do, after years of training.

filter the information, and decide dynamically based on past experience and current condition.

Wal-Mart has inventory management systems that do this just fine.

It's the "soul" fallacy

[pieterh]

"Humans are different from X because they can do Y", where X is variously "animals", "machines", and Y is variously, "make tools", "use language", "play chess", "murder", or whatever.

It's a silly exercise because there is nothing specific about humans except their ability to interbreed with other humans. That is all that technically defines us as a species, and even that definition is fuzzy, ignoring people who are sterile, too old or young to breed, or who never leave their keyboards long enough to look for a mate.

When it comes to the mind, emerging consensus is that it consists of a large number of well-designed tools, not some fuzzy blob of software. Most likely, each of these mental tools can be perfectly implemented as software. There are simply a huge number, and some are very, very subtle.

We will, eventually, be able to simulate the whole human mind in software, in the same way as we'll eventually be able to construct robotic bodies that work as well as human bodies, by re-implementing the structures that our genes build, one by one. The best way to construct a robotic hand that works like a human hand is to reimplement a human hand. The best way to construct a robotic mind that works like a human mind is to reimplement a human mind. This is perhaps self-evident but it's not always been accepted.

As for the arbitrary distinctions, this is just a belief system, an attempt to create a soul, however you phrase it.

The problem is context

[markdj]

The difference between humans and machines is NOT semantics. If that were it, building human-like machines would be easy. And in fact for small trivial universes, this has been done.

The big difference is context. Many words in the human languages only acquire meaning by their context. That includes not only their place in the syntax, but their place in the semantics.

We currently don't understand how we humans remember contexts and how we apply symbols to the various contexts with which we are acquainted, including the one that contains the symbol, to discern meaning. Additionally, we don't understand how we limit a context when trying to decide that meaning. Working with contexts is a tricky business that even humans often fail to master. Look at how many interpretations and translations of the Bible there are and how we fight over which one is correct.

This is why computers are so good at deciphering context-free languages (such as computer languages) and so poor at deciphering context-sensitive languages (such as human languages) other than in trivial situations or narrow contexts.

Re:This is religion, not science

[servognome]

When a machine can say "I am."

It's easy for a machine to say "I am," it's difficult to know when it really means it.

Re:This is religion, not science

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is called compatibilism. Here's a rough account of the philosophical debate:

The classic conception of free will is that there is a soul that makes decisions, and the soul is independent of physical contingencies, a person's desires, values, etc. A soul may be influenced by these factors, and some might even allow that a soul isn't always making decisions. For example, the brain may deterministically make most day-to-day decisions based on the above factors. But the soul always has the power to override the deterministic decision-making and choose really freely. This ability is seen as crucial for moral responsibility.

The problems with this position are myriad. First, there's at least a suggestion of mind/body dualism, which doesn't comport to reality or scientific knowledge. Second, it's not clear exactly what so-called indeterminists mean when they say a soul can choose freely. If this "ghost in the shell" can choose independently of ones own values, conditioning history, etc., is this soul really part of a personality?

The compatibilist answers "no." There's simply no such thing as a choice divorced from one's values, history, and circumstances. A choice is simply what action a rational agent takes in response to a stimulus. The choice is considered "free" (roughly speaking) when it is harmonious with the agent's values and conditioning history. The choice is not free when circumstances exist that lead to the agent having to compromise his value and history or otherwise put the values in conflict.

For example, an agent decides to give a stranger money. If he does this out of a sense of charity, religious beliefs, and/or having been conditioned to do it, that's a free choice. If he does this because the stranger is holding a gun to his head, that's not a free choice: the agent has to subordinate many of his values (e.g., don't allow others to profit from violence) to another value (self preservation).

Christianity has a hard time with this account of choice. Christian morality, with its focus on repentance and compassion, requires that we be able to "hate the sin but love the sinner." This is possible only if the act and the person are completely distinct--the classic position on free will allows this divide via choice. The murderer could have chosen not to murder, the logic goes, so he isn't *intrinsically* an evil person. The compatibilist, in denying the act/person dichotomy, denies that an evil action could be done by anything but an evil agent, or at the very least, a partly-evil agent.

The big objection to determinism (including compatibilism) is that you lose moral responsibility. I think compatibilism offers a way out: we would lose moral responsibility for specific actions, since that kind of responsibility seems to require free choice in the classic sense, but we could hold people morally accountable for being evil people. Since compatibilism gets rid of the action/agent divide, commission of an evil act would be proof of an evil (or partly evil) agent. The criminal justice system would no longer punish people for murder, but for having a personality that murders. Justification for such punishment could be either corrective (we need to change the person so he doesn't murder anymore) or protective (we need to incarcerate the murderer so he doesn't murder anymore).

Posted as AC because I moderated (had to, being a philosophy major).

Re:Natural vs Artificial

[ChrisGilliard]

Well, the problem arises when you have more than one copy of a brain. Does each copy have all the rights of the original? What if one copy breaks a law? Is that copy "in jail" or do all copies need to be punished? What happens if you make a copy of a mind and change a few neurons around and it very closely resembles a human mind, does this mind still get all the rights of a human? What if we design a "mind" that is far superior to human minds? Should this "mind" not get human rights too? I think you've over simplified it a bit and using this principle we'll run into some problems.

Re:Sure are a lot of zombies in this thread...

[Pendersempai]

But there are some phenomenological properties of my experiences that sure ain't physical.

I doubt it. In fact, I think your mind is nothing more than a wad of neural addition machines dutifully computing sums. I don't believe you that you have consciousness or self-awareness, and I challenge you to prove otherwise, knowing that you will be just as unable to do so as will the first machine to assert the same only to face a similar challenge from you.

Re:mind vs brain

[joe user jr]

Even if the word "model" were to transfer straightforwardly into what we have "in" our mind, this misses the point that for equivalence (which is what is demanded here - ie a complete simulation) more is required than having a rough idea of how it works.

Question - if your mind is "something that exists" that you know about, can it therefore be simulated in your mind? Certainly - you can take a guess what you would do do in a hypothetical situation, presumably by simulating your decision process at the time.

But can your mind be simulated completely (in your mind?) Doubtful - you'd run into the halting problem!

Words, words...

[tiltowait]

My point was that subjective states can't be scientifically verified, just correlated to neural stuff. So your argument about this hypothetical perfect Turing machine is valid, but it sure doesn't negate that people have more feelings than a Chinese room would.

Re:Words, words...

[Pendersempai]

We agree that we won't be able to prove whether machines have "sentience," "self-awareness," or whatever.

I think we also agree that we can't prove whether any individual human has these traits.

Why, then, do you assume that humans do but machines won't? At the very least, it seems to me that your assumption should be the same for both, since the behavioral cues are (by hypothesis) invariant.

Re:Old Argument

[hahiss]

You're right, at least in part, about Searle's argument; he does (IIRC, it has been a while since I read/taught the original piece) think that the Turing test is not a sufficient test for intelligence---because one could produce results that satisfy the Turing test without grasping the thoughts expressed.

A really good response to Searle comes from the Churchlands, who do want to say that there is some understanding, and so the Chinese Room argument doesn't work. To do so, they try to show why his argument is fallacioius; the argument is ingenious, though I'm not sure I buy it either:

Churchland, Paul, and Patricia Smith Churchland (1990), "Could a Machine Think?", Scientific American 262(1, January):32-39.

There's also a nice annotated bibliography on this issue at:
http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/chines ebiblio.html

Re:Sure are a lot of zombies in this thread...

[UserGoogol]

I am my mind. An internal sensation such as "the feeling of blue" is nothing more than how my mind procceses some visual input.

The problem is that people have what might be called an epistemological bias. People see their mental states from the "inside," and thus when they see how my mental states look from the "outside," as just a bunch of neurons flashing around, they can't help but feel that there's something missing. But ultimately I think that the evidence suggests that there is an exact one to one correspondance between mental phenomena and physical phenomena. As such, the only difference between a bunch of neurons zapping at each other and a mind thinking abstract concepts is simply a matter of flavor: our brain interprets data which comes from the outside quite differently from how it interprets data from the inside.