On 01 May 2013, at 20:09, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 10:49:11 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 30 Apr 2013, at 20:58, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Wednesday, April 24, 2013 10:31:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 24 Apr 2013, at 15:40, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Wednesday, April 24, 2013 8:50:07 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 23 Apr 2013, at 22:26, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 3:58:33 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote:
On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Craig Weinberg
<whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
"If you think about your own vision, you can see millions of
pixels constantly, you are aware of the full picture, but a
computer can't do that, the cpu can only know about 32 or 64
pixels, eventually multiplied by number of kernels, but it see
them as single bit's so in reality the can't be conscious of a
full picture, not even of the full color at a single pixel.
He is making the same mistake Searle did regarding the Chinese
room. He is conflating what the CPU can see at one time
(analogous to rule follower in Chinese room) with what the
program can know. Consider the program of a neural network: it
can be processed by a sequentially operating CPU processing one
connection at a time, but the simulated network itself can see
any arbitrary number of inputs at once.
How do he propose OCR software can recognize letters if it can
only see a single pixel at a time?
Who says OCR software can recognize letters? All that it needs to
do is execute some algorithm sequentially and blindly against a
table of expected values. There need not be any recognition of
the character as a character at at all, let alone any "seeing". A
program could convert a Word document into an input file for an
OCR program without there ever being any optical activity - no
camera, no screen caps, no monitor or printer at all. Completely
in the dark, the bits of the Word file could be converted into
the bits of an emulated optical scan, and presto, invisible optics.
Searle wasn't wrong. The whole point of the Chinese Room is to
point out that computation is a disconnected, anesthetic function
which is accomplished with no need for understanding of larger
contexts.
Searle might be right on non-comp, but his argument has been shown
invalid by many.
I'm surprised that you would try to pass that off as truth Bruno.
You have so much tolerance for doubt and uncertainty, yet you
claim that it "has been shown invalid". In whose opinion?
It is not an opinion, it is a fact that you can verify if patient
enough. The refutation is already in Dennet and Hofstadter "Mind's
I " book. Searle concludes that the man in the room is not
understanding chinese, and that is right, but that can not refute
comp, as the man in the room plays the role of a CPU, and not of
the high level program on which the consciousness of the chinese
guy supervene. It is a simple confusion of level.
The high level program is just a case-by-case syntactic handler
though. It's not high level, it's just a big lookup table. There is
no confusion of level. Neither the Chinese Room as whole, the book,
nor the guy passing messages and reading the book understand
Chinese at all. The person who understood Chinese and wrote the
book is dead.
The kind of reasoning that you (and Dennett and Hofstadter) are
using would say that someone who is color blind is not impaired if
they memorize the answers to a color vision test. If I can retake
the test as many times as I want, and I can know which answers I
get wrong, I don't even need to cheat or get lucky. I can compute
the correct answers as if I could see color in spite of my complete
color blindness.
What you are saying is circular. You assume that the Chinese guy
who wrote the book is running on a program, but if you knew that
was the case, then there would be no point in the thought
experiment. You don't know that at all though, and the Chinese Room
shows why computation need only be performed on one level and never
leads to understanding on any others.
I am not sure I can help you. You confuse the levels. You don't
really try to understand the point, which would mean that you talk
like if you knew that comp is false.
I don't expect you to help me, I'm trying to help you.
Of course. But what helps me is reasoning, not personal conviction.
I don't know that comp is false, but I know that if it isn't it
won't be because of the reasons you are suggesting. Comp may be true
in theory, but none of the replies to the Chinese room are adequate,
or even mildly compelling to me.
Searles confuse a program, and a universal program running that program.
This page http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ is quite
thorough, and lists the most well known Replies, yet it concludes:
"There continues to be significant disagreement about what
processes create meaning, understanding, and consciousness, as
well as what can be proven a priori by thought experiments."
Thought experience are like proofs in math. Some are valid, some
are not valid, some are fatally not valid, some can be corrected or
made more precise. The debate often focuse on the truth of comp and
non-comp, and that involves sometimes opinion. I don't really play
that game.
Game? All it's saying is that there is no consensus as you claim.
The fact that you claim a consensus to me smells like a major
insecurity. Very much a 'pay no attention to the man behind the
curtain' response.
Without that consensus, there would be no scientific researches nor
beliefs. The consensus is not on truth in general, but on the means
of communication. Your answer betrays that yo have more a pseudo-
religious agenda than an inquiry in what could possibly be true or
false.
My agenda is to understand consciousness as it actually is, rather
than as a theory would like it to be.
Understanding is always in the frame of some assumption. You confuse
the experience, and the possible explanation for the existence of that
experience (which is indeed more direct, but that can be due to the
existence of the brain).
The replies listed are not at all impressive to me, and are all
really variations on the same sophistry. Obviously there is a
difference between understanding a conversation and simply copying
a conversation in another language. There is a difference between
painting a masterpiece and doing a paint by numbers or
spraypainting through a stencil. This is what computers and
machines are for - to free us from having to work and think
ourselves. If the machine had to think and feel that it was
working like a person does, then it would want servants also.
Machines don't want servants though, because they don't know that
they are working, and they function without having to think or
exert effort.
And this is begging the question.
Only if you are already assuming Comp is true from the start.
Not at all. It is rare I do not assume comp, though, but here I was
not.
Our position are not symmetrical. I suggest a theory and reason from
there. You pretend knowing a truth, and use this as a pretext for
not looking at a theory. I doubt the condition for a dialog is
possible.
I'm not pretending to know a truth, I am stating that I understand
the point that Searle and Leibniz made, and which the replies to
that point do not. They underestimate the depth of consciousness,
and mistake copy and pasting Shakespeare for being Shakespeare.
But here you betray that you are again begging the question. What you
say is just "no doctor". So you introduce either an infinite low level
of comp (= non comp), or something non turing emulable in the brain or
the body.
Bruno
Craig
Bruno
Craig
Bruno
Craig
Bruno
Craig
Jason
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