6 ms·

This is the first good refutation of the Chinese room I've encountered. This was never mentioned in the "Minds, Brains, Machines" course I took, so I don't thin

This is the first good refutation of the Chinese room I've encountered. This was never mentioned in the "Minds, Brains, Machines" course I took, so I don't think it's talked about as much as it should be among philosophy of mind circles?

Retra 12y ago
>This is the first good refutation of the Chinese room I've encountered. Really? I'd think that the fact that someone saying 'lookup tables aren't thinking' without ever saying what thinking is would be presenting an obviously self-refuting argument. Like a judge saying "I know crime when I see it: I don't have to write down what it is." It's simply not a basis for rational decision making, so it's certainly not a convincing assertion. The fact that anybody thinks the Chinese room is an interesting philosophical quandary is far more interesting. It means these are primitive times and you don't actually need to be very smart to beat the competition.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >The fact that anybody thinks the Chinese room is an interesting philosophical quandary is far more interesting. It means these are primitive times and you don't actually need to be very smart to beat the competition. There are genuinely competent people doing competent work in the field of philosophy. They just don't make up enough of the peer-review boards to throw out everyone who isn't as competent as them. The continuing influence of mathematical logic and its attendant "general axiom to specific theorem, As Above So Below" style of thinking does not help.
  - deleted 12y ago
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throwawayaway 12y ago
The whole Turing Test thing is massively overblown. It's a thought exercise and not a particularly great one. It's gotten completely out of hand, with Kurzweil, Chomsky, Searle etc all weighing in. Computer passes Turing Test, Human fails Turing test - vice versa - that's all there is to it.
- arvinjoar 12y ago
  Yeah well, context is king. The aim of the Turing Test is to say that judging machines based on their internal structures isn't very fair, since that's not how we judge humans. There's no real way of knowing about other people's "qualia" or whatever you want to call it. To skirt that problem, Turing suggested a behavior-based approach. I think we probably judge others to be conscious actors in more ways than this though. We probably accept that other people have "qualia" from the fact that we have it, and then we kind of learn that our parents have it, and so on, until it's not a huge leap to generalize that to all of humanity. Of course it's not like people have always assumed the same kind of "qualia" for all of humanity, in a lot of conflicts this has probably been thrown out of the window so it will be easier to kill your enemies. Either way, it's probably quite complex how we determine that other people are conscious, Turing tried to skirt the metaphysical issue (that we can never really know, this goes for both humans and other machines). I think this was a huge step in the right direction.
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    "Computing machinery and intelligence" wherein the test is outlined, with background. aka "The Imitation Game" http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.HTML http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.HTML > The aim of the Turing Test is to say that judging machines based on... That wasn't the aim at all, again I think you are reading way too much in to it. The aim was to pose a test that would fool people. Alan Turing: "an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes" "The original question, "Can machines think?" I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted." The test is a very simple thought exercise where he shows a machine will be able to pass for a human, and a human will fail to identify a machine. That's it. No questions of consciousness, metaphysics! In fact he dismisses such questions in the paper. His belief was that in 50 years time, the words may have changed, and people's opinions about what constitutes thinking would have changed to the point where: someone could say "a computer thinks" without challenge. That hasn't happened, when somebody says "a computer thinks" they are saying it with tongue firmly in cheek. Maybe in another 65 years time his belief will come true.

Retra 12y ago

>This is the first good refutation of the Chinese room I've encountered. Really? I'd think that the fact that someone saying 'lookup tables aren't thinking' without ever saying what thinking is would be presenting an obviously self-refuting argument. Like a judge saying "I know crime when I see it: I don't have to write down what it is." It's simply not a basis for rational decision making, so it's certainly not a convincing assertion. The fact that anybody thinks the Chinese room is an interesting philosophical quandary is far more interesting. It means these are primitive times and you don't actually need to be very smart to beat the competition.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>The fact that anybody thinks the Chinese room is an interesting philosophical quandary is far more interesting. It means these are primitive times and you don't actually need to be very smart to beat the competition. There are genuinely competent people doing competent work in the field of philosophy. They just don't make up enough of the peer-review boards to throw out everyone who isn't as competent as them. The continuing influence of mathematical logic and its attendant "general axiom to specific theorem, As Above So Below" style of thinking does not help.
- deleted 12y ago
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throwawayaway 12y ago

The whole Turing Test thing is massively overblown. It's a thought exercise and not a particularly great one. It's gotten completely out of hand, with Kurzweil, Chomsky, Searle etc all weighing in. Computer passes Turing Test, Human fails Turing test - vice versa - that's all there is to it.

arvinjoar 12y ago
Yeah well, context is king. The aim of the Turing Test is to say that judging machines based on their internal structures isn't very fair, since that's not how we judge humans. There's no real way of knowing about other people's "qualia" or whatever you want to call it. To skirt that problem, Turing suggested a behavior-based approach. I think we probably judge others to be conscious actors in more ways than this though. We probably accept that other people have "qualia" from the fact that we have it, and then we kind of learn that our parents have it, and so on, until it's not a huge leap to generalize that to all of humanity. Of course it's not like people have always assumed the same kind of "qualia" for all of humanity, in a lot of conflicts this has probably been thrown out of the window so it will be easier to kill your enemies. Either way, it's probably quite complex how we determine that other people are conscious, Turing tried to skirt the metaphysical issue (that we can never really know, this goes for both humans and other machines). I think this was a huge step in the right direction.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  "Computing machinery and intelligence" wherein the test is outlined, with background. aka "The Imitation Game" http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.HTML http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.HTML > The aim of the Turing Test is to say that judging machines based on... That wasn't the aim at all, again I think you are reading way too much in to it. The aim was to pose a test that would fool people. Alan Turing: "an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes" "The original question, "Can machines think?" I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted." The test is a very simple thought exercise where he shows a machine will be able to pass for a human, and a human will fail to identify a machine. That's it. No questions of consciousness, metaphysics! In fact he dismisses such questions in the paper. His belief was that in 50 years time, the words may have changed, and people's opinions about what constitutes thinking would have changed to the point where: someone could say "a computer thinks" without challenge. That hasn't happened, when somebody says "a computer thinks" they are saying it with tongue firmly in cheek. Maybe in another 65 years time his belief will come true.