harnad@mind.UUCP (02/03/87)
cugini@icst-ecf.UUCP ("CUGINI, JOHN") wrote on mod.ai:
> "Why I am not a Methodological Epiphenomenalist"
This is an ironic twist on Russell's sceptical book about religious
beliefs! I'm the one who should be writing "Why I'm Not a Methodological
Mentalist."
> Insofar as methodological epiphenomenalism (ME) is simply the
> following kind of counsel: "when trying to get a computer to
> play chess, don't worry about the subjective feelings which
> accompany human chess-playing, just get the machine to make
> the right moves", I have no particular quarrel with it.
It's a bit more than that, as indicated by the "Total" in the Total
Turing Test. The counsel is NOT to rest with toy models and modules:
That the only kind of performance which will meet our sole frail intuitive
criterion for contending with the real-world other-minds problem --
indistinguishability from a person like any other -- is the total
performance capacity of a (generic) person. Settling for less mires us
in an even deeper underdetermination than we're stuck in anyway. The
asymptotic TTT is the only way to reduce that underdetermination to
the level we're already accustomed to. Chess-playing's simple not
enough. In mind-modeling, it's all-or-nothing. And this is again a
methodological matter. [I know that this is going to trigger (not from
Cugini) another series of queries about animals, retardates, aliens,
subtotal modules. Please, first read the prior iterations on those matters...]
> It is the claim that the TTT is the only relevant criterion (or,
> by far, the major criterion) for the presence of consciousness that
> strikes me as unnecessarily provocative and, almost as bad, false.
> It is not clear to me whether this claim is an integral part of ME,
> or an independent thesis... If the claim instead were
> that the TTT is the major criterion for the presence of intelligence
> (defined in a perhaps somewhat austere way, as the ability to
> perform certain kinds of tasks...) then, again, I would have no
> serious disagreement.
The TTT is an integral part of ME, and the shorthand reminder of why it
must be is this: A complete, objective, causal theory of the mind will
always be equally true of conscious organisms like ourselves AND of
insentient automata that behave exactly as if they were conscious --
i.e., are turing-indistinguishable from ourselves. (It is irrelevant
whether there could really be such insentient perform-alikes; the point is
that there is no objective way of telling the difference. Hence the
difference, if any, cannot make a difference to the objective
theory. Ergo, methodological epiphenomenalism.)
The TTT may be false, of course; but unfortunately, it's not
falsifiable, so we cannot know whether or not it is in reality false.
[I'd also like to hold off the hordes -- again not Cugini -- who are
now poised to pounce on this "nonfalsifiability." The TTT is a
methodological criterion and not an empirical hypothesis. It's only
justification is that it's the only criterion available and it's the
one we use in real life already. It's also the best that one can hope for
from objective inquiry. And what is science, if not that?]
Nor will it do to try to duck the issue by focusing on "intelligence."
We don't know what intelligence is, except that it's something that
minds have, as demonstrated by what minds do. The issue, as I must
relentlessly keep recalling, is not one of definition. It cannot be
settled by fiat. Intelligence is as intelligence does. We know minds
are intelligent, if anything is. Hence only the capacity to pass the
TTT is so far entitled to be dubbed intelligent. Lesser performances
-- toy models and modules -- are no more than clever tricks, until we
know how (and whether) they figure functionally in a candidate that
can pass the TTT.
> It does bother me (more than it does you?) that consciousness,
> of all things, consciousness, which may be subjective, but, we
> agree, is real, consciousness, without which my day would be so
> boring, is simply not addressed by any systematic rational inquiry.
It does bother me. It used to bother me more; until I realized that
fretting about it only had two outcomes: To lure me into flawed
arguments about how consciousness can be "captured" objectively after
all, and to divert attention from ambitious performance modeling to
doing hermeneutics on trivial performances and promises of
performances. It also helps to settle my mind about it that if one
adopts an epiphenomenalist stance not only is consciousness
bracketed, but so is its vexatious cohort, "free will." I'm less
bothered in principle by the fact that (nondualistic) science has no
room for free will -- that it's just an illusion -- but that certainly
doesn't make the bothersome illusion go away in practice. (By the way,
without consciousness, your day wouldn't even be boring.)
--
Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771
{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet