Notes � Snowdon, Mind VII - machines

Thinking straddles both cognition and conation, because it is both a representation and an act of will. It is cognitive because we are forming a representation of our world, and considering and analysing it. It is conative insofar as any desire that we register in our minds, any volition that we will into action, are thoughts.

behvaioural criterion: require the machine to be performing and producing at a level comparable to humans???

Surely, we don�t expect to be able to create a full-blown, human, phenomenological and linguistic consciousness, complete with our reflections, senses, insights, whimsy, emotions, personalities and neuroses? After all, human minds are the way they are because of the features and limitations of human bodies.

Nagel concludes that we can never know what it is like to be a bat for a bat � we can imagine, but only what it would be like for us to be a bat and to have a bat�s body.

can one brain-mind wholly encompass another?

new physics? well, we�ll just add that to the mix

can you be intelligent without being conscious?

Because they are artificial

In some senses, machines are not indigenous to Earth at all.

The fact that they aren�t human is an unreasonable one. Rationally, there is no reason to regard humanity�s mind and free will as anything but

god-given

carbon chauvinism

deterministic

processing power

How can we test for these stages of intelligence?

we can only really look at behaviour. all the time, we have to bear in mind that their intelligence will be different to ours � however, since we can effectively shape it, and as we learn more, we will be able to craft minds with different natures etc.

But what is �mind�? We know that we have minds.

When pressed, we would probably agree that we are our minds, we are a res cogitans, a �thinking thing�. Certainly, when we die, our bodies remain, yet the mind seems somehow absent. Yet the mind cannot be severed from the body � what happens to the body, happens to the mind. In a similar way, we assume that we can build a machine such that it would have a mental life reflected by and dependent on its physical workings. But we are not prepared to be panpsychists � we shy away from ascribing mentality to everything physical, every flower, every rock and indeed every atom.

Although we hold thinking as almost synonymous with mentality, mentality is not an all-or-nothing concept. Indeed, it seems clear that mentality is a messy continuum.

It is a continuum in the sense that We can trace a path through the phylogenetic tree as far back as amoba, yet we have minds and they don�t (we don�t think). We would be reluctant to say that worms have minds really, but we would probably like to say that

continuum of intensity, also of quality/type/nature/senses/motor/processing/environment etc.

so the question becomes �how much can machines think?�, or �what sort of mental life can a machine have?�

Thinking is often used in the very broadest sense as a mental event. More often it refers to a process or succession of related mental events that are caused by other mental events, rather than a sensory perception of some kind.

2 problems:

can a machine be conscious?

can we know (even) if it is?

Quotes

artificial intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies. -- Bill Bulko

�Rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them.� -Zenon Pylyshnyn

if the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. -- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld

Questions

How did the Church react to Darwin? What happened to creation myths, and humans� place in the centre of the universe, especially relative to animals?

What exactly is propositional content? Which of desires, beliefs, intentions and sensations have it?

collections

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