roland@cochise.pcs.com (Roland Rambau) (02/20/90)
pat@ritcsh.cs.rit.edu (-Midnight Aesthete) writes:
->What is so awful about saying that bosons think? And the Rockies?
->Why do people insist on intelligence being "human-like" thought? Isn't
->it a bit self-righteous to make ourselves the measure on our own scale?
I didn't say it can't be true -- i said nobody is interested in it.
->How far has epistemology gotten anyway?
I made an economic argument, not an epistemological one.
( I do this in an attempt to better understand the eternal
debate about "Can submarines swim?" :-)
--
I know that You believe You understand what You think I said, but
I'm not sure You realize that what You heard is not what I meant.
Roland Rambau
rra@cochise.pcs.com, {unido|pyramid}!pcsbst!rra, 2:507/414.2.fidonet
--
I know that You believe You understand what You think I said, but
I'm not sure You realize that what You heard is not what I meant.jwi@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) (02/22/90)
> ->Midnight Aesthete writes: > ->What is so awful about saying that bosons think? And the Rockies? > ->Why do people insist on intelligence being "human-like" thought? Isn't > ->it a bit self-righteous to make ourselves the measure on our own scale? > Roland Rambau writes: > I didn't say it can't be true -- i said nobody is interested in it. > ( I do this in an attempt to better understand the eternal > debate about "Can submarines swim?" :-) The answers that we provide to the questions: Can submarines swim? and Can airplanes fly? may tell us a lot about the subject of whether machines can think. In paritcular, many of us would concede that airplanes fly, and some of us that submarines swim for all practical purposes. By extension then, machines that perform a practical function that normally requires thinking can be said to think. Let us keep in mind that our answers to all three of these questions should be reasonally analogous. Jim Winer -- jwi@lzfme.att.com ----------------------------------------------- Opinions not represent employer.
weigand@kub.nl (Hans Weigand) (02/23/90)
In article <3964@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> jwi@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) writes: >The answers that we provide to the questions: > Can submarines swim? >and > Can airplanes fly? >may tell us a lot about the subject of whether machines can think. > >In paritcular, many of us would concede that airplanes fly, and some of >us that submarines swim for all practical purposes. By extension then, >machines that perform a practical function that normally requires >thinking can be said to think. Let us keep in mind that our answers to >all three of these questions should be reasonally analogous. This reasoning by analogy has its pitfalls. The question is of course whether the terms (swim,fly,think) are functional or not (that is, can be described exhaustively in functional terms). There is already a difference between the swimming and the flying. The latter is more accepted in English, because flying means roughly something like "MOVE IN AIR ON OWN FORCE", whereas swimming is more than "MOVE IN WATER ON OWN FORCE": it implies a certain kind of moving, inside or on top of the water, that we attribute to humans, fishes, ducks, but not to ships, submarines, and surfers. Redefining the meaning of "to swim" to a purely functional term is no solution of course: then you can say that a submarine can swim, but you still have not characterized the swimming in its original sense. (A similar problem exists already for characterizing "flying" with respect to "move in the air". A jumping frog does not fly). When we go to the term "thinking", again we have to ask ourselves whether the functional performance completely captures the concept or not. The fact that non-biased humans tend to accept the CR argument, suggests that this is not the case. Redefining the term, as computer scientists want to do, is again no real solution, although it makes your view of the world a lot simpler perhaps. I see no a priori reason why "the three answers should be reasonably analogous" unless one has already chosen for a dogmatic functionalism. For me, some terms may have a functional definition, some terms depend just on linguistic conventions, and some others may be beyond the grasp of both functionalism and conventionalism. Sometimes the world is a bit more complicated then we would like ... --- Hans Weigand
es@sinix.UUCP (Dr. Sanio) (02/26/90)
In article <3964@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> jwi@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) writes: > >The answers that we provide to the questions: > > Can submarines swim? >and > Can airplanes fly? > >may tell us a lot about the subject of whether machines can think. > >In paritcular, many of us would concede that airplanes fly, and some of >us that submarines swim for all practical purposes. By extension then, >machines that perform a practical function that normally requires >thinking can be said to think. Let us keep in mind that our answers to >all three of these questions should be reasonally analogous. I disagree simply by the fact that "swimming" (diving) or "flying" are well-defined physical actions resp. properties of certain kinds of matter or organisms. Though you can construct a notion under which ships/subs don't swim and planes/balloons etc don't fly, that notion would be at least a bit artificial and irrealistic. On the other hand, when we say "thinking", we describe a process which is not at all sufficiently analyzed or described. We know that we can use some more or less complex/trivial tools to obtain certain r e s u l t s of thinking (as measuring/comparing/computing), further on that we can store certain r e s u l t s of thought (language) in books, computers or somwhere else. We can even rearrange them, sure. But what I'm completely missing (and it doesn't astonish me, at all) any definition or description what thinking is. In fact, we haven't but an intuitive notion about what thinking (as done by humans) is, but not more. How the hell to build or simulate something you even don't know what id does? regards, es >Jim Winer -- jwi@lzfme.att.com >----------------------------------------------- >Opinions not represent employer.
lws@comm.WANG.COM (Lyle Seaman) (02/28/90)
weigand@kub.nl (Hans Weigand) writes regarding submarines and airplanes: >... flying means roughly something >like "MOVE IN AIR ON OWN FORCE", whereas swimming is more than "MOVE >IN WATER ON OWN FORCE": it implies a certain kind of moving, inside >or on top of the water, that we attribute to humans, fishes, ducks, >but not to ships, submarines, and surfers. Redefining the meaning >of "to swim" to a purely functional term is no solution of course: >then you can say that a submarine can swim, but you still have not >characterized the swimming in its original sense. >(A similar problem exists already for characterizing "flying" with >respect to "move in the air". A jumping frog does not fly). >When we go to the term "thinking", again we have to ask ourselves >whether the functional performance completely captures the concept >or not. .... All of this is just language usage. If instead of being called "flying machines", the early attempts at airplanes had been called "supraterrans" or such, we might now say that only birds and bats fly, because it involves flapping motions that we usually only attribute to some kinds of animals. And early attempts at submarines were never called "swimming machines". (Does a flying squirrel fly? Or a flying fish? How is this different from a frog?) So I think the debate over "do machines think" is really just a debate over how we (fluent English speakers) use the term _think_ and not a discussion of what machines can do. Now, to confuse the issue. Do dogs love their humans? Does this question raise the same problems as the question of whether machines think? Lyle. lws%commm.wang.com@uunet.uu.net uunet!wang!comm!lws