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My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

drkitten said:
So Robin and Westprog are in the rather uncomfortable position of asking whether or not it's possible to exceed the speed of light. I have told them, several times, that relativity theory says that it isn't. They then ask if relativity theory applies to angelic unicorns that are defined to have the ability to exceed the speed of light at will.
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Drkitten, on the other hand, would rather fling around straw than try to read a sentence properly.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Indeed, but sometimes the ontological difference is largely irrelevant. Adding 2 + 2 in a computer program is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to adding 2 + 2 on your fingers. The question is whether this equivalence holds for consciousness.

~~ Paul
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I accept that for most things, understanding, thinking, intelligence.

You will remember that I posted the desk check idea tentatively at first, an attempt to put into words the intuition that an algorithm that simulated consciousness was not conscious.

The more people argued in it's favour, the more straw they flung around, the more absurd it sounded to me.

If everybody is so comfortable with this idea why did I get attacked so hard? Especially when I had started out saying that it was only an intuition.
 
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Robin said:
Thus if the Chinese room is able to pass the Turing test in Chinese, then by my definition it understands Chinese.
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Not JUST understands Chinese.

Do you even know what the Turing Test is? We are not even talking Leobner.

We are talking about the ability for a computer to have a conversation to with a human being and the human being not able to discern whether or not it's a computer. So the computer needs to "understand" many things. It needs to be able to think like a human.
 
drkitten said:
But no one claimed that cars couldn't float. The claim, however, is that all algorithms behave according to the mathematics of information processing.
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No, you changed the claim.

Your claim was that a system capable of running an algorithm behaved according to the mathematics of information processing.

There is a difference.
 
RandFan said:
Not JUST understands Chinese.

Do you even know what the Turing Test is? We are not even talking Leobner.

We are talking about the ability for a computer to have a conversation to with a human being and the human being not able to discern whether or not it's a computer. So the computer needs to "understand" many things. It needs to be able to think like a human.
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Yes I know what the Turing Test is. You are just quibbling. Yes of course it needs to know more stuff.

But it does not need to have identical conscious states to humans.
 
Robin said:
He says the person does not understand and yet can converse in Chinese using the program. So therefore a computer conversing in Chinese would not understand.
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Would not understand what? It meets your definition of understand. Clearly Searle doesn't mean what you mean. He's appealing to our intuition. How can file cabinets, pencil and paper carry on a conversation, in Chinese no less.

I, on the other hand, was making an appeal to intuition and explicitly so (I said so to Paul and I said so to you)
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Searle appeals to our intuition. He has no other argument.

Why are you repeating all this stuff, dragging it out?
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It directly addresses your appeal to intuition.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
What? Why can't humans be more powerful than a Turing machine? Anything more powerful can perform arithmetic.

~~ Paul
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This "more powerful" is a red herring. An algorithm needs to be equivalent to a function on natural numbers.

That seems to suggest there are a couple of things an algorithm doesn't do.

For example a process that was genuinely random could not, strictly speaking, be random since a function cannot map a point on it's domain to more than one point on it's range.

A process that involves non-discrete values cannot, by that definition, be an algorithm.

This thesis is really just about the equivalence of one way of doing arithmetic with another, people tend to get a bit over excited by it.
 
Robin said:
If everybody is so comfortable with this idea why did I get attacked so hard? Especially when I had started out saying that it was only an intuition.
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I don't know if you got attacked hard. But to the extent that people took issue with your argument it was, IMO, because appealing to intuition can be problematic. QM and Relativity are counterintuitive. That they are isn't a valid argument against them.
 
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RandFan said:
Who said it did?
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Well since my entire point was whether or not the desk checked algorithm had identical conscious states to humans and you keep dragging up Searle and Strong AI as though it was relevant, so I guess you said it did.

I keep asking you for the relevance of this stuff.
 
RandFan said:
Can you clarify?
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I did, in the rest of the sentence you quoted.
Robin said:
For example a process that was genuinely random could not, strictly speaking, be random since a function cannot map a point on it's domain to more than one point on it's range.
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drkitten said:
By showing that a Turing-machine is a universal computational device.
Anything that is capable of computing -- of performing arithmetic, really -- is either equivalent to a Turing machine or is less powerful than a Turing machine.

Since humans are capable of performing arithmetic, they are either equivalent to or less powerful than a Turing machine.
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A human being can go to the shops and buy beer, which makes a human being more powerful than a Turing machine.

A Turing machine - well, a certain type of Turing machine - can perform computable operations. To say that nothing is more powerful than a Turing machine is just to say that there is nothing possible except for computation. The statement is either wrong or trivial.
 
RandFan said:
Would not understand what? It meets your definition of understand. Clearly Searle doesn't mean what you mean.
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But why are you getting into this stuff again. Am I not allowed to have a different definition
He's appealing to our intuition. How can file cabinets, pencil and paper carry on a conversation, in Chinese no less.
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But they are just the program and data in Searles argument. The person is the computer.
Searle appeals to our intuition. He has no other argument.
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Do you understand Chinese? If not, is it just an intuition that you don't?

So, no, it is not an intuition. The man does not understand Chinese by any definition.
It directly addresses your appeal to intuition.
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Even if he did, it is still not the same.

Please answer this question: is Searles objection to the Chinese Room that it does not have identical conscious states to humans?

You have this bee in your bonnet for some reason - you want Searle's argument to be what I am saying and it really is not. Can we get past this?
 
Robin said:
Well since my entire point was whether or not the desk checked algorithm had identical conscious states to humans and you keep dragging up Searle and Strong AI as though it was relevant, so I guess you said it did.
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Identical conscious states? I'm sorry but I don't remember this. Sincerely. I would have told you from the start that the answer was no. Why would that even be a point for discussion? Who cares? So long as the algorithm is conscious. You and I don't even have identical conscious states. Not even identical twins have identical conscious states.
 
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Robin said:
Please answer this question: is Searles objection to the Chinese Room that it does not have identical conscious states to humans?
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I don't know why that would be anyone's objection. If you've made this clear to me then I sincerely apologize. I would never have been in such a discussion. I honestly don't know what the purpose of proving you and I don't have identical conscious states so it would be even less obvious to me why your thought experiment would advance any discussion about consciousness.

You have this bee in your bonnet for some reason - you want Searle's argument to be what I am saying and it really is not. Can we get past this?
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I won't bring it up again I assure you.
 
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RandFan said:
Identical conscious states? I'm sorry but I don't remember this. Sincerly. I would have told you from the start that the answer was no. Why would that even be a point for discussion? Who cares? So long as the algorithm is conscious. You and I don't have identical conscious states.
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It was just the entire point I was making. Sheesh.

Do you really not recall me asking "Do you think it possible that this moment you are experiencing right now could be the result of a billion years of writing numbers on paper?"

I think I have said it over and over again. Without that I have no point. I am not making the Chinese Room argument.
 
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