Yes, at least in principle. If you're going to own part of a corporation, you should be to at least some degree responsible for its actions. Why not? Who else is going to be?
And I'm disputing "majority". I guess it would be possible to get more of a buzz from oxygen deprivation if (ab)used in that way (prolonged breathing of N2O exclusively, which would be pretty stupid), but that is certainly not the case in "normal" recreational usage. I have used nitrous several times without getting anywhere near "asphyxiation" and got a fairly strong euphoric effect.
In many people, it gives an enhanced sense of euphoria, though a majority of that feeling comes from near-asphyxiation.
This isn't really correct. N20 has euphoric and hallucinogenic properties in itself. People generally get a euphoric feeling whilst breathing it in combination with oxygen.
If your statement was true, people would get a similar effect breathing nitrogen or helium.
I just tried comparing "Wales" and "Scotland" in WA. Instead of the countries, I got information about two cities. Hmm. Then again, comparing "Welsh" and "Scottish" returned some genuinely interesting information about the two languages.
Comparing "Badger" and "Giraffe" returns some interesting comparisons.
Comparing "Java" and "Lisp" returns nothing.
I agree: an interesting toy, but not terribly useful at present. I'll keep an eye on it though.
How do you know the Neanderthals weren't the aggressors?
Humans throughout their history have jumped at the chance to make war on fellow humans. It would be astounding if they didn't do the same to Neanderthals. Neanderthals may well have been just as bloodthirsty, but I don't believe we have any evidence for this. The fact that they died out and we survived could even be taken as evidence for us being the more aggressive species.
Nature's produced a hell of a lot worse and more blood thirsty killers than Humans.
Unless you count bacteria and viruses, I disagree. Consider the mass killings carried out by the Nazis, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge...
Re:Eh...not likely for quite some time
on
Artificial Ethics
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· Score: 1
Speaking as an engineer and a (~40-year) programmer:
Odds are extremely good for beyond human AI, given no restrictions on initial and early form factor. I say this because thus far, we've discovered nothing whatsoever that is non-reproducible about the brain's structure and function,
Structure, maybe. There's no known aspect of the brain's structure we can't simulate, at least on a small scale. But we haven't been able to reproduce many of the brain's higher functions even in part.
all that has to happen here is for that trend to continue;
What trend? We've had considerable success in AI with abstract logic, but haven't managed to get anywhere with respect to simulating consciousness. We haven't really got any further than Descartes, other than having some new perspectives on the problems involved. We don't even have any plausible theories (speaking as a cognitive scientist).
While I do agree on the characterization part, I cannot agree with you about the plot, because there is none yet.
A bunch of subplots centered in a confused mishmash
True to some degree, but each subplot is well constructed. There have been hints that all the strands of the story are part of an overarching plot, though Martin has been slow getting there (particularly in the last book). I don't mind the delay, however, because the journey is so enjoyable.
a vague promise that "winter is coming".
We don't even know what that means, except that the wildlings are supposed to invade from the north. Only - the wildlings were killed off in the last book.
The Others are presumably the "big bad" of the series.
Yes, it is that good. The writing is only fair, but the characterisation, plotting, and world-building are absolutely outstanding. The best fantasy series I have ever read, and I'm including LOTR. It's epic.
You get war, intrigue, politics, a giant wall of ice hundreds of metres high, torture, incest, dire wolves, eunuchs, castles, tournaments, rape, duels, slavery, dragons, fratricide, patricide... all the good stuff:)
Well I guess it's too much to expect civility from a torture apologist.
Lets start with the big one. Castro locks up meek little librarians for the crime of criticising him. The people in Gitmo are people we took on the battlefield bearing arms against us plus a few we took in raids.
According to whom? No doubt the Castro regime declared the people he locked up to be enemies of his regime and so did the Bush regime. The only civilised way to deal with criminals is to have an independent judicial process. This is how the rest of the civilised world do it, and we seem to have got by OK.
Sorry, but I find it hard to even debate with you. I can accept that people may have different views, and I can tolerate a lot of political stances, but to me a baseline for civilised behaviour is condemning torture. And another is an independent judiciary for meting out punishment rather than by the whims of the current regime.
Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma. You know, places your type loves to proclaim your love of but never get around to relocating to. Say Cuba for one example, they have thousands locked up but I'm sure they could make room for you.
What's the difference between Cuba locking people up and Guantanamo? In both cases it seems that people have been incarcerated because two governments have declared unilaterally that people are threats to their nations. In the civilized world there is an independent judicial process to decide if the threat is justified. The Bush regime had an awful lot more in common with Castro's regime than you are able to see.
I won't concede that waterboarding is torture
Oddly enough, I've never heard of anyone who has undergone the process to have declared this. Have you seen Iraq war apologist Christopher Hitchen's experience of it?
but even if it is we did it to three, yes three, very high value targets.
Torture is OK if the targets are high-value enough as decided by the ruling regime? Castro, is that you?
Furthermore they aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions so we would have been perfectly within the laws of war to have simply executed them.
Sounds like tinpot dictator logic to me. It's always possible to construct a convenient legal fiction to justify your actions.
If you understand the value of such programs, you should donate whatever time, money, effort you can toward such causes, and personally persuade your friends, family, neighbors, etc, to do the same.
So only people who believe in science should fund it? It wouldn't work.
Let's say Alice, Bob, and Carol under the current system each pay 1,000 zorkmids in tax per year each towards science research. So science gets 3,000 zorkmids in funding.
Now, say we make it voluntary. Alice can't see the point of science research so she doesn't pay anything. Bob thinks science is overfunded (and anyway needs to buy a new car) so he decides to only donate 800 zorkmids. Carol understands the value of science so pays her full share of 1,000 zorkmids. Result: science has 1,800 zorkmids of funding. Ignorant Alice gets to freeload on the publicly-available results of the scientific research performed, even if she doesn't know it. Carol is pissed off at having to foot a bigger share of the bill than anyone else. Much less research is performed, to the detriment of all. Plus, researchers have to spend half their time trying to persuade people to fund their projects (even more than now). Also, research is heavily politicised: cures for sick cats gets huge amounts of funding, whereas research into string theory is almost entirely neglected.
The first model has produced the massively successful and technologically advanced world you see around you. If we had followed the second (incredibly naive) model, we would still be stuck in the industrial revolution.
Come on. Do you REALLY think "pay what you feel like" is ever going to work!? To believe it does requires a very idealistic view of human nature.
As at least 15 out of 20 confirmed swine flu deaths were reported in Mexico City my guess is that is primarily due to population concentration and the lack of proper health care.
It doesn't seem like the people infected in the US have received much health care, so I would guess that's not the reason.
IANAV either, but it seems to me that there are several other potential explanations.
The most obvious one (to me) is that the strain that was "exported" to the US was a related but slightly different strain to the one responsible for the deaths. For example, the "exported" strain may have appeared first and been present for some time in Mexico before the more lethal strain evolved from it.
Let's face it, if you're driving an electric car, you're really just exporting your smog to the power plant that handles your section of the grid. If it's a coal burner, well...
But there are several advantages to doing that. First, it's generally preferable to produce smog somewhere far away from where people are. It won't help global CO2 emissions but it should improve local air quality. Second, applying technology to clean up pollution is easier if it's concentrated: for example, carbon scrubbers in smokestacks. Third, some forms of power production only make sense at a certain scale: you can't produce power through burning refuse or hydroelectric or even burning the longer hydrocarbons directly in a car.
Also, you dismiss it, but there's no reason why we couldn't produce the energy through nuclear power.
that is the exact fallacy that was being dismissed. correlation vs causation can't be determined in this case. the key is that there are at least 3 classes of behaviours: learned, instinctive, and discovered.
How could a bird discover how to build a nest without any motivation to do so? It needs to build the nest before it lays an egg, and it does.
Anyway, there is other evidence: birds will build nests in the style of its species rather than making up some new arrangement, even if it has no contact with its species.
did your parents teach you how to eat? if you grew up away from your species would you be able to learn to eat by yourself? if you grew up on a planet with entirely new species of plants, how would your instincts help determine which plants are poisonous?
at some point you have to admit that some behaviours are new actions that you just had to figure out for yourself. albeit you might come up with a very similar solution to others before you.
Well I am not a bird and am capable of abstract thought, so I don't understand any point you are trying to make.
Because building a nest is genetically wired into the bird.
I wasn't aware that we had decoded genomes to that level of detail.
We don't need to. It's easy to test: hatch and bring up a bird in isolation from the rest of its species. If it starts building nests (maybe you'd have to artificially inseminate it first, not sure what triggers the behaviour) then you can fairly safely conclude that it is instinct rather than learnt behaviour. And I believe this is what happens.
Personally I find it incredible that behaviour so specific can be encoded in the genome, but it seems to be the case.
Um, yes we do, namely our extremely successful attempts to do just that. Read any physics book for details. For good measure, I'm representing here one rather famous such formulation of a physical law: E=mc^2.
Whilst I would agree we have had great success modeling the universe with symbols, that does not necessarily mean the laws of physics follow the same rules. Don't confuse the simulation with reality.
You claimed that there is no evidence that the human brain operates by the laws of physics ("We have no evidence that it is merely executed rules either, nor that chemistry and physics follow the same."). This must mean that it instead operates by magic, there being nothing else left it could operate with.
You are working on the assumption that the laws of physics do indeed follow executed rules as we understand them, which is not necessarily true. It may be that the universe (and maybe the mind) operates non-algorithmically and we simply do not have the necessary tools or ability to understand this. That view is not the same as "magic".
Personally I leave open the question as to whether solving the consciousness problem will require new physics. I accept the possibility that we are missing something and may eventually understand how it all works with current tools, and that it is my inability to comprehend the issue that is the problem. However I think that the possibility that we are missing some physical knowledge is certainly still on the table.
Right. This is why I have an increasingly cynical view of philosophers nowadays, at least when they leave the realm of ethics and try to mess with science.
I'm actually a computer scientist/cognitive scientist, not a philosopher. (Though not a consciousness researcher, so I don't claim any authority in this area).
For anyone reading this: Searle's argument was that the Chinese Room can't be a mind (or have a mind), because the only thing there that could possibly be a mind would be the algorithm itself, and only an algorithm can't - according to Searle - be a mind unless it's running in a right sort of hardware (human brains). This is, of course, circular logic, and thus fails to prove anything; consequently, the Chinese Room boils down to an argument from incredulity.
That isn't Searle's argument. Have you read the original paper? I can't put it better than he could.
I will ask a question though, which I think is related, or at least interesting to think about. Which part of the system "understands" Chinese? Presumably not the room itself. Presumably not the man. Is it the rules? Or the man + rules? If either of the latter, do they understand Chinese passively, or only actually when in the process of, well, processing it?
Of course this doesn't prove that the Chinese Room has a mind either; for all we know Searle could be right and only human brains are capable of producing them. However, Searle fails to produce any reason why this would be so and merely asserts it.
I believe Searle's argument is not that only human brains are capable of producing thought, but rather that computers (as we define them) are incapable of producing thought, and that something is missing when we try to model minds using just symbol processing. It is the difference between a simulation and the real thing. Exactly what is missing is not specified, but if we could understand it we could build a mind, and presumably not using "human hardware".
I'm not sure I entirely disagree that an element of Searle's argument relies on incredulity, but that doesn't make it invalid. At the least it poses questions that need answering, and in my view they haven't been yet. It may also be that there is some problem in his argument, but if so I don't think anyone has found it yet either.
The point of Turing's test is that for all practical purposes it simply
We have no evidence... that the laws of physics exist? Lul wut?
Gotta hand it to you, you certainly take your scepticism seriously;).
Now who's arguing from a point of incredulity? We have no evidence that the laws of physics can be reduced to symbol processing. And if you want to misrepresent my argument and then apply ridicule in response, I can't be arsed discussing the subject with you. You similarly misrepresent Searle's views, but discussing the differences would be a painful experience I imagine.
Well I believe Searle did in his original paper. But I did as well, and I think it's valid because it's an open question (IMO) as to whether true understanding requires consciousness.
Basically it comes down to the meaning of "understanding".
Agreed. But I think people who dismiss the Chinese Room out of hand are not considering the same meaning as Searle. You might not agree with Searle's view, but I think the concept raises far-reaching questions.
I think it's reasonable to use it in the sense of an intelligent entity having knowledge of something, whether or not that entity is conscious.
Does a thermostat understand anything about temperature or what it is doing? You could argue that it is an intelligent entity with knowledge.
But in that case, why is it unreasonable to say that the man doesn't understand Chinese? He clearly does.
The "rules" in the box are part of the system, and I would claim that if it passes the test, the person+rules do demonstrate understanding.
Well that was Turing's argument, and what the Chinese room is arguing against (or at least questioning).
We have no evidence that human thought somehow transcends the model of executed rules anyway; at some level it is all chemistry and physics.
We have no evidence that it is merely executed rules either, nor that chemistry and physics follow the same.
A modern example would be that my CPU (::person in box) doesn't know how to behave as a web browser. While true, my computer does know how to be a web browser when you add the software (::rules), and an input and output system (::box interface).
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. There's no evidence that the computer "knows" how to be a web browser. It acts as one, given the rules, but does it understand? This is the heart of the problem, and I don't believe you've answered it.
The other thing the "paradox" does it to try to evoke imagery of a very simple ruleset because it is a person executing rules on paper, which would be very slow.
Searle's response to this was to replace the man in the box with the population of India, thereby allowing for much more processing power in a reasonable time.
I think the appeal of the paradox is that deep down many people want to believe that we are qualitatively different from computers, rather than quantitatively so.
Maybe. For me, I think it raises genuine and far-reaching questions that we still have hardly began to answer in a meaningful way. It's strongly related to the Hard Problem, IMO the biggest question in science.
The Chinese Room is misdirection, pure and simple. We're supposed to conclude that because the person in the room doesn't have the subjective experience of understanding Chinese, the system as a whole (the person, the data tables, the rules) doesn't "really" understand Chinese.
There's no "supposed to" in the Chinese Room setup. It's a thought experiment, and you can (and people have) come to different conclusions after thinking about it.
You seem to be arguing that the entire system understands Chinese, but that's a fairly remarkable leap IMO. If the rules themselves are just passive statements, and the man reading the rules doesn't understand the rules being read, then how does the system suddenly obtain understanding once you bring the two together in a black box? Where is this new consciousness located?
One of Searle's replies to this argument is to do away with the rules and the room, and have the man memorise all the rules. Then, the entire system comprises of just the man, who can demonstrate an ability to process Chinese, even though he has no understanding of the language. Is there still a "system" present that understands Chinese?
Do you believe each specific part of your brain subjectively experiences understanding? How about individual neurons? How about the atoms that comprise the neurons in your brain? If you don't believe these things have the subjective experience of understanding the things that your brain as a whole understands, then your brain is incapable of "really" understanding anything, according to the logic of the Chinese Room.
Well one argument is that individual neurons and atoms *do* have elements of conciousness (not one I agree with, but it's not easy to show it's false). But I think it's missing the point. The Chinese Room is not so much a question about dividing up consciousness as to whether understanding can be achieved by just following simple rules.
What you say is true, but it never ceases to amaze me that people who:
- have natural talent - develop that talent through hard work and education - are tirelessly ambitious - and incredibly hard working
Seem to to magically have the best "luck."
But people who have natural talent have just been lucky in the genetic lottery. Inclination towards hard work and ambition are also genetic. And education depends on environment, or to put it another way, luck as to where one is born.
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Yes, at least in principle. If you're going to own part of a corporation, you should be to at least some degree responsible for its actions. Why not? Who else is going to be?
And I'm disputing "majority". I guess it would be possible to get more of a buzz from oxygen deprivation if (ab)used in that way (prolonged breathing of N2O exclusively, which would be pretty stupid), but that is certainly not the case in "normal" recreational usage. I have used nitrous several times without getting anywhere near "asphyxiation" and got a fairly strong euphoric effect.
In many people, it gives an enhanced sense of euphoria, though a majority of that feeling comes from near-asphyxiation.
This isn't really correct. N20 has euphoric and hallucinogenic properties in itself. People generally get a euphoric feeling whilst breathing it in combination with oxygen.
If your statement was true, people would get a similar effect breathing nitrogen or helium.
I just tried comparing "Wales" and "Scotland" in WA. Instead of the countries, I got information about two cities. Hmm. Then again, comparing "Welsh" and "Scottish" returned some genuinely interesting information about the two languages.
Comparing "Badger" and "Giraffe" returns some interesting comparisons.
Comparing "Java" and "Lisp" returns nothing.
I agree: an interesting toy, but not terribly useful at present. I'll keep an eye on it though.
I'm not sure there was a "before".
How do you know the Neanderthals weren't the aggressors?
Humans throughout their history have jumped at the chance to make war on fellow humans. It would be astounding if they didn't do the same to Neanderthals. Neanderthals may well have been just as bloodthirsty, but I don't believe we have any evidence for this. The fact that they died out and we survived could even be taken as evidence for us being the more aggressive species.
Nature's produced a hell of a lot worse and more blood thirsty killers than Humans.
Unless you count bacteria and viruses, I disagree. Consider the mass killings carried out by the Nazis, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge...
Speaking as an engineer and a (~40-year) programmer:
Odds are extremely good for beyond human AI, given no restrictions on initial and early form factor. I say this because thus far, we've discovered nothing whatsoever that is non-reproducible about the brain's structure and function,
Structure, maybe. There's no known aspect of the brain's structure we can't simulate, at least on a small scale. But we haven't been able to reproduce many of the brain's higher functions even in part.
all that has to happen here is for that trend to continue;
What trend? We've had considerable success in AI with abstract logic, but haven't managed to get anywhere with respect to simulating consciousness. We haven't really got any further than Descartes, other than having some new perspectives on the problems involved. We don't even have any plausible theories (speaking as a cognitive scientist).
While I do agree on the characterization part, I cannot agree with you about the plot, because there is none yet.
A bunch of subplots centered in a confused mishmash
True to some degree, but each subplot is well constructed. There have been hints that all the strands of the story are part of an overarching plot, though Martin has been slow getting there (particularly in the last book). I don't mind the delay, however, because the journey is so enjoyable.
a vague promise that "winter is coming".
We don't even know what that means, except that the wildlings are supposed to invade from the north. Only - the wildlings were killed off in the last book.
The Others are presumably the "big bad" of the series.
Yes, it is that good. The writing is only fair, but the characterisation, plotting, and world-building are absolutely outstanding. The best fantasy series I have ever read, and I'm including LOTR. It's epic.
You get war, intrigue, politics, a giant wall of ice hundreds of metres high, torture, incest, dire wolves, eunuchs, castles, tournaments, rape, duels, slavery, dragons, fratricide, patricide... all the good stuff :)
Idiot.
Well I guess it's too much to expect civility from a torture apologist.
Lets start with the big one. Castro locks up meek little librarians for the crime of criticising him. The people in Gitmo are people we took on the battlefield bearing arms against us plus a few we took in raids.
According to whom? No doubt the Castro regime declared the people he locked up to be enemies of his regime and so did the Bush regime. The only civilised way to deal with criminals is to have an independent judicial process. This is how the rest of the civilised world do it, and we seem to have got by OK.
Sorry, but I find it hard to even debate with you. I can accept that people may have different views, and I can tolerate a lot of political stances, but to me a baseline for civilised behaviour is condemning torture. And another is an independent judiciary for meting out punishment rather than by the whims of the current regime.
Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma. You know, places your type loves to proclaim your love of but never get around to relocating to. Say Cuba for one example, they have thousands locked up but I'm sure they could make room for you.
What's the difference between Cuba locking people up and Guantanamo? In both cases it seems that people have been incarcerated because two governments have declared unilaterally that people are threats to their nations. In the civilized world there is an independent judicial process to decide if the threat is justified. The Bush regime had an awful lot more in common with Castro's regime than you are able to see.
I won't concede that waterboarding is torture
Oddly enough, I've never heard of anyone who has undergone the process to have declared this. Have you seen Iraq war apologist Christopher Hitchen's experience of it?
but even if it is we did it to three, yes three, very high value targets.
Torture is OK if the targets are high-value enough as decided by the ruling regime? Castro, is that you?
Furthermore they aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions so we would have been perfectly within the laws of war to have simply executed them.
Sounds like tinpot dictator logic to me. It's always possible to construct a convenient legal fiction to justify your actions.
That doesn't contradict what the parent post said.
If you understand the value of such programs, you should donate whatever time, money, effort you can toward such causes, and personally persuade your friends, family, neighbors, etc, to do the same.
So only people who believe in science should fund it? It wouldn't work.
Let's say Alice, Bob, and Carol under the current system each pay 1,000 zorkmids in tax per year each towards science research. So science gets 3,000 zorkmids in funding.
Now, say we make it voluntary. Alice can't see the point of science research so she doesn't pay anything. Bob thinks science is overfunded (and anyway needs to buy a new car) so he decides to only donate 800 zorkmids. Carol understands the value of science so pays her full share of 1,000 zorkmids. Result: science has 1,800 zorkmids of funding. Ignorant Alice gets to freeload on the publicly-available results of the scientific research performed, even if she doesn't know it. Carol is pissed off at having to foot a bigger share of the bill than anyone else. Much less research is performed, to the detriment of all. Plus, researchers have to spend half their time trying to persuade people to fund their projects (even more than now). Also, research is heavily politicised: cures for sick cats gets huge amounts of funding, whereas research into string theory is almost entirely neglected.
The first model has produced the massively successful and technologically advanced world you see around you. If we had followed the second (incredibly naive) model, we would still be stuck in the industrial revolution.
Come on. Do you REALLY think "pay what you feel like" is ever going to work!? To believe it does requires a very idealistic view of human nature.
IANAV (I am not a virologist) but...
As at least 15 out of 20 confirmed swine flu deaths were reported in Mexico City my guess is that is primarily due to population concentration and the lack of proper health care.
It doesn't seem like the people infected in the US have received much health care, so I would guess that's not the reason.
IANAV either, but it seems to me that there are several other potential explanations.
The most obvious one (to me) is that the strain that was "exported" to the US was a related but slightly different strain to the one responsible for the deaths. For example, the "exported" strain may have appeared first and been present for some time in Mexico before the more lethal strain evolved from it.
Surely no true /.er would do such a thing :(
Let's face it, if you're driving an electric car, you're really just exporting your smog to the power plant that handles your section of the grid. If it's a coal burner, well...
But there are several advantages to doing that. First, it's generally preferable to produce smog somewhere far away from where people are. It won't help global CO2 emissions but it should improve local air quality. Second, applying technology to clean up pollution is easier if it's concentrated: for example, carbon scrubbers in smokestacks. Third, some forms of power production only make sense at a certain scale: you can't produce power through burning refuse or hydroelectric or even burning the longer hydrocarbons directly in a car.
Also, you dismiss it, but there's no reason why we couldn't produce the energy through nuclear power.
that is the exact fallacy that was being dismissed. correlation vs causation can't be determined in this case. the key is that there are at least 3 classes of behaviours: learned, instinctive, and discovered.
How could a bird discover how to build a nest without any motivation to do so? It needs to build the nest before it lays an egg, and it does.
Anyway, there is other evidence: birds will build nests in the style of its species rather than making up some new arrangement, even if it has no contact with its species.
did your parents teach you how to eat? if you grew up away from your species would you be able to learn to eat by yourself? if you grew up on a planet with entirely new species of plants, how would your instincts help determine which plants are poisonous?
at some point you have to admit that some behaviours are new actions that you just had to figure out for yourself. albeit you might come up with a very similar solution to others before you.
Well I am not a bird and am capable of abstract thought, so I don't understand any point you are trying to make.
Because building a nest is genetically wired into the bird.
I wasn't aware that we had decoded genomes to that level of detail.
We don't need to. It's easy to test: hatch and bring up a bird in isolation from the rest of its species. If it starts building nests (maybe you'd have to artificially inseminate it first, not sure what triggers the behaviour) then you can fairly safely conclude that it is instinct rather than learnt behaviour. And I believe this is what happens.
Personally I find it incredible that behaviour so specific can be encoded in the genome, but it seems to be the case.
Um, yes we do, namely our extremely successful attempts to do just that. Read any physics book for details. For good measure, I'm representing here one rather famous such formulation of a physical law: E=mc^2.
Whilst I would agree we have had great success modeling the universe with symbols, that does not necessarily mean the laws of physics follow the same rules. Don't confuse the simulation with reality.
You claimed that there is no evidence that the human brain operates by the laws of physics ("We have no evidence that it is merely executed rules either, nor that chemistry and physics follow the same."). This must mean that it instead operates by magic, there being nothing else left it could operate with.
You are working on the assumption that the laws of physics do indeed follow executed rules as we understand them, which is not necessarily true. It may be that the universe (and maybe the mind) operates non-algorithmically and we simply do not have the necessary tools or ability to understand this. That view is not the same as "magic".
Personally I leave open the question as to whether solving the consciousness problem will require new physics. I accept the possibility that we are missing something and may eventually understand how it all works with current tools, and that it is my inability to comprehend the issue that is the problem. However I think that the possibility that we are missing some physical knowledge is certainly still on the table.
Right. This is why I have an increasingly cynical view of philosophers nowadays, at least when they leave the realm of ethics and try to mess with science.
I'm actually a computer scientist/cognitive scientist, not a philosopher. (Though not a consciousness researcher, so I don't claim any authority in this area).
For anyone reading this: Searle's argument was that the Chinese Room can't be a mind (or have a mind), because the only thing there that could possibly be a mind would be the algorithm itself, and only an algorithm can't - according to Searle - be a mind unless it's running in a right sort of hardware (human brains). This is, of course, circular logic, and thus fails to prove anything; consequently, the Chinese Room boils down to an argument from incredulity.
That isn't Searle's argument. Have you read the original paper? I can't put it better than he could.
I will ask a question though, which I think is related, or at least interesting to think about. Which part of the system "understands" Chinese? Presumably not the room itself. Presumably not the man. Is it the rules? Or the man + rules? If either of the latter, do they understand Chinese passively, or only actually when in the process of, well, processing it?
Of course this doesn't prove that the Chinese Room has a mind either; for all we know Searle could be right and only human brains are capable of producing them. However, Searle fails to produce any reason why this would be so and merely asserts it.
I believe Searle's argument is not that only human brains are capable of producing thought, but rather that computers (as we define them) are incapable of producing thought, and that something is missing when we try to model minds using just symbol processing. It is the difference between a simulation and the real thing. Exactly what is missing is not specified, but if we could understand it we could build a mind, and presumably not using "human hardware".
I'm not sure I entirely disagree that an element of Searle's argument relies on incredulity, but that doesn't make it invalid. At the least it poses questions that need answering, and in my view they haven't been yet. It may also be that there is some problem in his argument, but if so I don't think anyone has found it yet either.
The point of Turing's test is that for all practical purposes it simply
We have no evidence... that the laws of physics exist? Lul wut?
Gotta hand it to you, you certainly take your scepticism seriously ;).
Now who's arguing from a point of incredulity? We have no evidence that the laws of physics can be reduced to symbol processing. And if you want to misrepresent my argument and then apply ridicule in response, I can't be arsed discussing the subject with you. You similarly misrepresent Searle's views, but discussing the differences would be a painful experience I imagine.
Who said anything about consciousness?
Well I believe Searle did in his original paper. But I did as well, and I think it's valid because it's an open question (IMO) as to whether true understanding requires consciousness.
Basically it comes down to the meaning of "understanding".
Agreed. But I think people who dismiss the Chinese Room out of hand are not considering the same meaning as Searle. You might not agree with Searle's view, but I think the concept raises far-reaching questions.
I think it's reasonable to use it in the sense of an intelligent entity having knowledge of something, whether or not that entity is conscious.
Does a thermostat understand anything about temperature or what it is doing? You could argue that it is an intelligent entity with knowledge.
But in that case, why is it unreasonable to say that the man doesn't understand Chinese? He clearly does.
Well *he* would claim he doesn't.
The "rules" in the box are part of the system, and I would claim that if it passes the test, the person+rules do demonstrate understanding.
Well that was Turing's argument, and what the Chinese room is arguing against (or at least questioning).
We have no evidence that human thought somehow transcends the model of executed rules anyway; at some level it is all chemistry and physics.
We have no evidence that it is merely executed rules either, nor that chemistry and physics follow the same.
A modern example would be that my CPU (::person in box) doesn't know how to behave as a web browser. While true, my computer does know how to be a web browser when you add the software (::rules), and an input and output system (::box interface).
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. There's no evidence that the computer "knows" how to be a web browser. It acts as one, given the rules, but does it understand? This is the heart of the problem, and I don't believe you've answered it.
The other thing the "paradox" does it to try to evoke imagery of a very simple ruleset because it is a person executing rules on paper, which would be very slow.
Searle's response to this was to replace the man in the box with the population of India, thereby allowing for much more processing power in a reasonable time.
I think the appeal of the paradox is that deep down many people want to believe that we are qualitatively different from computers, rather than quantitatively so.
Maybe. For me, I think it raises genuine and far-reaching questions that we still have hardly began to answer in a meaningful way. It's strongly related to the Hard Problem, IMO the biggest question in science.
The Chinese Room is misdirection, pure and simple. We're supposed to conclude that because the person in the room doesn't have the subjective experience of understanding Chinese, the system as a whole (the person, the data tables, the rules) doesn't "really" understand Chinese.
There's no "supposed to" in the Chinese Room setup. It's a thought experiment, and you can (and people have) come to different conclusions after thinking about it.
You seem to be arguing that the entire system understands Chinese, but that's a fairly remarkable leap IMO. If the rules themselves are just passive statements, and the man reading the rules doesn't understand the rules being read, then how does the system suddenly obtain understanding once you bring the two together in a black box? Where is this new consciousness located?
One of Searle's replies to this argument is to do away with the rules and the room, and have the man memorise all the rules. Then, the entire system comprises of just the man, who can demonstrate an ability to process Chinese, even though he has no understanding of the language. Is there still a "system" present that understands Chinese?
Do you believe each specific part of your brain subjectively experiences understanding? How about individual neurons? How about the atoms that comprise the neurons in your brain? If you don't believe these things have the subjective experience of understanding the things that your brain as a whole understands, then your brain is incapable of "really" understanding anything, according to the logic of the Chinese Room.
Well one argument is that individual neurons and atoms *do* have elements of conciousness (not one I agree with, but it's not easy to show it's false). But I think it's missing the point. The Chinese Room is not so much a question about dividing up consciousness as to whether understanding can be achieved by just following simple rules.
What you say is true, but it never ceases to amaze me that people who:
- have natural talent
- develop that talent through hard work and education
- are tirelessly ambitious
- and incredibly hard working
Seem to to magically have the best "luck."
But people who have natural talent have just been lucky in the genetic lottery. Inclination towards hard work and ambition are also genetic. And education depends on environment, or to put it another way, luck as to where one is born.
That's actually a pretty good idea. Certainly one of the better ones I've heard from an AC.