4 ms·
Yes, the issue is that word, "think", and its variants. But "what is thinking?" isn't poorly posed in the case that "thinking" isn't well defined, because it i
by kirkules 4y ago
Yes, the issue is that word, "think", and its variants.
But "what is thinking?" isn't poorly posed in the case that "thinking" isn't well defined, because it is about establishing and agreeing on a definition.
The approach some people take to answering "could machines think?" is to try to determine an actual subject in the real world to call "thinking" in a way that aligns with common intuitions, which to me seems like a good approach. But many (most?) approaches I've encountered instead just assume personal intuition about thinking is sufficient, and worse, in common with all other askers of the question.
- mannykannot 4y agoI certainly agree that there's a lot of low-quality debate around this and similarly open-ended questions. I think your objection can be made even within the philosophy of the mind (though you may not agree with me!) This is a significant branch of philosophy, and within it, hundreds if not thousands of papers have been written in attempting to prove that nothing operating by the laws of physics as we know them today, nor any future extension of them, could have a mind - yet those who have been trying to do this are no better off than anyone else in knowing what a mind is. Coming back to Dijkstra's aphorism, you will notice that I was objecting to interpreting it as ruling out, a priori, the question of whether machines could ever think. From your latest post, however, you seem to be saying it would be a reasonable question once we are equipped with an established and agreed-upon definition of thinking.