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I think you could make the same argument for lots of things computers do. Could Grand Theft Auto 4, including the character AI and per-pixel 3D rendering, be im
by tlb 17y ago
I think you could make the same argument for lots of things computers do. Could Grand Theft Auto 4, including the character AI and per-pixel 3D rendering, be implemented by people following instructions on cards? Yes, because Turing machines yadda yadda. But it's inconceivable to non-programmers. The Chinese room argument is convincing for the same reason: doing something AI-like requires billions of steps and non-programmers can't imagine building up something that complex from primitive operations.
- lg 17y agoWell, it's inconceivable to Searle. Searle's problem is that, much as we can't imagine how silicon can be conscious, we can't imagine how squishy physical brains are capable of conscious experiences either, even though we know they are, because we are. His solution is that biological stuff just has these special properties, that's a "brute fact" about biological stuff and it's not true of silicon stuff. And I think most philosophers of mind (who are, by and large, nonprogrammers) think that's too 'magical' to be true. In fact a very popular idea now in philosophy is that consciousness is (in some sense) a fundamental physical property, and when physical things are arranged in the right way, they become conscious like us or any other animal. And the proper arrangement of particles to invoke these high-level conscious properties must help organisms survive, or else it'd be unlikely that we have them. And so machines structured the right way can probably be conscious too.