No, it is not ad hominem. It is a serious issue.
The discussion of COMP is one of essentialism. Your first argument hinges upon a non-sequitur. Your second argument hinges upon semiotics. You have no way to compare your experience (conscious or otherwise) to that of any other creature; your umwelt is not my umwelt. And, vitalism is not necessarily a call to Deity. There are a great many non-deist connotations to vitality. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 10:51 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence I agree with what Roger is saying here (and have of course expressed that before often) and do not think that accusations of vitalism add anything to the issue. It's really nothing but an ad hominem attack. I would only modify Roger's view in two ways: 1. Programs can and do produce outcomes that are not directly anticipated by the programmer, but that these outcomes are trivial and do not transcend the constraints of the program itself. Conway's game of life can produce a new kind of glider, but it can't come up with the invention of Elvis Presley, regardless of how sophisticated the game is. Blue cannot be generated by any combination of black and white or one and zero. 2. Hardware does actually feel something, but not necessarily what we would imagine. We use certain materials for computer chips and not hamsters or milkshakes because reliable computation requires specific properties. We only use materials which are subject to absolute control by outside intervention and behave in an absolutely automatic way to sustain those introduced controls. Living organisms are very much the opposite of that, but that doesn't mean that inorganic matter has no experience or proto experience on its own inertial frame of perception. It might, but we don't know that. I would give the benefit of the doubt to all matter as having common physical sense, but that organic chemistry, biology, zoology, and anthropology present dramatic qualitative breakthroughs in elaboration of sense. This is not vitalism. There is no magic juice of life-ness, only a rough segmentation or diffracted caste relation of participation richness and significance intensity. A living baby is not the same thing as a spare tire to us, but it isn't significantly different to a tsunami. Neither the significance nor the insignificance is an 'illusion', they are just measures of the relations of the investment of experience across eons and species and how that investment relates to the participants on every level. Roger and Searle are correct however in pointing out that the machine has no stake in the outcome of the program, nor can it. I suggest that there is an experience there, but likely very primitive - a holding and releasing which is what we know as electric current within the semiconductors. There is no actual current, only excited-empowered molecules. There is no program, only a mirroring of our meticulous transcription of human motive and its inevitable tautological products. Since we are multi-layered, we can become confused when we assume that who we are must be a monolithic representation of all that we are. If we expect that the contents of all processes of the psyche should be available to our verbal-cognitive specialists then we will be disappointed and turn to Libet. We will mistake the automatism which supports lower levels of what we are for the quasi-independence of the spectrum of identity which we embody. Craig On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 12:13:23 AM UTC-4, William R. Buckley wrote: Roger: I suggest that at root, you have vitalist sympathies. wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com <javascript:> [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com <javascript:> ] On Behalf Of Roger Clough Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 4:07 AM To: everything-list Subject: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence Hi meekerdb IMHO I don't think that computers can have intelligence because intelligence consists of at least one ability: the ability to make autonomous choices (choices completely of one's own). Computers can do nothing on their own, they can only do what softward and harfdware tells them to do. Another, closely related, reason, is that there must be an agent that does the choosing, and IMHO the agent has to be separate from the system. Godel, perhaps, I speculate. Roger Clough, <javascript:> rclo...@verizon.net 8/27/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: meekerdb <javascript:> Receiver: everything-list <javascript:> Time: 2012-08-26, 14:56:29 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers On 8/26/2012 10:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 25 Aug 2012, at 12:35, Jason Resch wrote: > >> >> I agree different implementations of intelligence have different capabilities and >> roles, but I think computers are general enough to replicate any intelligence (so long >> as infinities or true randomness are not required). > > And now a subtle point. Perhaps. > > The point is that computers are general enough to replicate intelligence EVEN if > infinities and true randomness are required for it. > > Imagine that our consciousness require some ORACLE. For example under the form of a some > non compressible sequence 11101000011101100011111101010110100001... (say) > > Being incompressible, that sequence cannot be part of my brain at my substitution level, > because this would make it impossible for the doctor to copy my brain into a finite > string. So such sequence operates "outside my brain", and if the doctor copy me at the > right comp level, he will reconstitute me with the right "interface" to the oracle, so I > will survive and stay conscious, despite my consciousness depends on that oracle. > > Will the UD, just alone, or in arithmetic, be able to copy me in front of that oracle? > > Yes, as the UD dovetails on all programs, but also on all inputs, and in this case, he > will generate me successively (with large delays in between) in front of all finite > approximation of the oracle, and (key point), the first person indeterminacy will have > as domain, by definition of first person, all the UD computation where my virtual brain > use the relevant (for my consciousness) part of the oracle. > > A machine can only access to finite parts of an oracle, in course of a computation > requiring oracle, and so everything is fine. That's how I imagine COMP instantiates the relation between the physical world and consciousness; that the physical world acts like the oracle and provides essential interactions with consciousness as a computational process. Of course that doesn't require that the physical world be an oracle - it may be computable too. Brent > > Of course, if we need the whole oracular sequence, in one step, then comp would be just > false, and the brain need an infinite interface. > > The UD dovetails really on all programs, with all possible input, even infinite non > computable one. > > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/> > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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