Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein on Machines and Thinking

Han Geurdes <han.geurdes@xxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:42:27 +0200

Stuart thanks.

This indeed covers what I wanted to say.Language appears a never ending
puzzle with pieces that fit in themselves when necessary but taking their
names with them.

*How many senses of "think" are there? I would agree that there are many,
and that many may be quite different from one another. Moreover, I would
note that there are some words whose meanings are much harder to pin down.

*Like W's chesspieces idea? A Knight and a Bishop must do different moves
but both are chesspieces bound to a chessboard. Some chesspieces transform
on the board when needed and become a Bishoplyknight. Mind is such a
'hydro-formic' word. Fits the situation and attaches to 'think'.

I look at my toaster and say ... I think it is hot enough. Thinking and
knowing also are hydro-form friends so it seems. What is the difference
between I know X and I think I know X. 'Think' here introduces doubt. But is
that the same think as 'think' from the toaster example? Also, I think when
I say I know. I know I think is thinking and knowing that one thinks but the
latter is thinking too. Nevertheless: I think I know is different from I
know I think.

So knowing is a part of machine thinking. Why can't we say my toaster knows
my intention to toast a sandwich. It is making all the preparations to
answer a question namely ... can you toast this sandwich? Yes => hot enough,
No => not hot enough. But Yes/ No answers can be based on rule-based machine
behavior ... that is not thinking? Can there be intelligent toasters?

Whoever did say that toasters could not think ;-). Hm,.., I think I go toast
a sandwich after this Wittgenstein immitation act. Would W have asked why a
toaster cannot think?

Han

On 21 June 2011 16:15, SWM <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Han Geurdes <wittrs@...> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks. I read that Wittgenstein was concerned with things like
> 'following a
> > rule'. f(n) = 2n + 1, is such a mathematical rule. When is this thinking
> in
> > your x-grammar ( for instance it is not thinking in neurological grammar
> but
> > it is in psychological grammar or in mathematical)  and when is it like
> what
> > a machine can do. Do we have a grammar that allows you to say the machine
> > thinks in his grammar but I do not allow this to be called thinking in my
> > own Han-and-Sean--define-thinking grammar of it ? Han and Stuart can
> share a
> > grammar and call it thinking but then Sean enters and says... hey fellows
> > that is not thinking becuse in my grammar ..... or do we have general
> > categorical grammars? No personal Han-and-Sean grammars but
> > science-this-and-that grammars? Then Stuart comes from Yes-it-is-thinking
> > grammar and you from No-it-is-not. What have we gained?
> >
> >
>
> Not much, I'd say, Han.
>
> Sean rightly points out Wittgenstein's notion that language plays many
> different roles (consists of many different language games) and a word that
> means X in one situation may mean Y in another, such that there isn't a
> necessary commonality between them except, perhaps, for some historical
> affinities, some overlapping connections (family likenesses), some factual
> elements which govern and constrain us as language users, etc.
>
> But I don't think that can answer your question, nor do I think that
> Wittgenstein would have simply said it's all a matter of what anyone chooses
> to mean as Sean seems to me to be suggesting. For language to work it must
> be a group enterprise which means there must be a mechanism (or mechanisms)
> to allow for shared meanings. Otherwise there can be no real understanding.
> That means the discipline of learning and adhering to common rules of usage.
> This doesn't mean we shouldn't explore those rules when questions like this
> arise. But it does mean, I think, that we cannot simply settle on an answer
> that it's all rule driven and thereafter ignore the differences or
> similarities. THAT can't solve these kinds of questions (what do we mean by
> "think" and can we just assume we each mean something different whenever we
> disagree).
>
> I would say that it's meaningful to expect some commonality in our uses and
> to attend to these as much as we attend to and emphasize the divergences.
>
> How many senses of "think" are there? I would agree that there are many,
> and that many may be quite different from one another. Moreover, I would
> note that there are some words whose meanings are much harder to pin down. I
> think words about our mental lives fall into this category quite clearly. We
> speak of minds as if we are denoting things in the way we denote baseballs
> or rivers (terms whose meanings are relatively easy to pin down, even given
> multiple senses.
>
> But the fact that a word like "mind" has the form (the grammar) of
> designating a thing looks to be misleading. It prompts us at times to
> imagine (maintain a mental picture) of some especially rarified object
> seated in the head, or the brain. Such a picture suggests the possibility of
> co-existence and even independent existence (dualism). Yet when we look
> inside the head, there's no mind to be seen.
>
> The word, in ordinary usage, seems to designate an array of things
> including certain kinds of behaviors and certain kinds of experience we
> have. Since I go with Wittgenstein in the notion that language is ultimately
> a public enterprise, I conclude that the application of a word like "mind"
> (or "thinking," for that matter) is mainly in the public sphere, i.e., it's
> used in relation to certain criterial facts we observe in the world (the
> behaviors). But I think it's pretty clear that we also mean by such terms
> what we experience subjectively, within the context of our mental lives.
>
> The feelings and motives and thoughts we have all seem to be part of what
> we mean by a word like "mind" in this sense. And we typically relate these
> private elements to the observed behaviors of the publicly driven usage.
>
> Chalmers suggests, rightly I think, that we have a dual understanding of,
> or dual usage for, mental words, though, with Wittgenstein, I think we have
> to recognise that the public usages take precedence. As such, words like
> "thinking" and "mind" can be hard to pin down because of their private
> referents that cannot be easily extricated from the public ones.
>
> So what do we mean by "think"? Is it the calculations a machine like a
> computer does? Is it sophisticated programs, consisting of such calculating,
> which enable these kinds of machines to make choices according to different
> data received, seemingly mimicking the kind of considerations and choices we
> humans make everyday? Is it such activity accompanied by an array of other
> features (mental pictures, being aware, complex associations of ideas)? If
> so, can these be produced computationally or are computer processes forever
> barred from this achievement (as some, like Searle, seem to think and as
> many of us may want to think)?
>
> In a certain sense ALL are variants of what we mean by "think", on my view,
> but this is only because thinking is not a particular thing but only a
> "thing" in a more general sense of the latter word (i.e., as an object of
> reference). Thinking is sometimes understood as a process (the stream of
> thoughts qua mental steps we take when we think something through, say) but
> THAT process is not the same thing as whatever brain processes underlie
> instances of thinking in us, despite the use of the same word "process", in
> both cases.
>
> So my view is that it is meaningful to ask what we mean by "think" (always
> as long as we're attending to the contexts in which the word is used) and
> that we expect to come up with enough commonality in usage to enable us to
> share the meaning of the term and thereby understand one another. If not, if
> we cannot share meanings, what's the point?
>
> SWM
>
> >
> >
> > On 21 June 2011 09:07, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
> >
> > > (Han)
> > >
> > > ... my sense is twofold. (1) to the extent that these things appear
> > > different, they constitute senses of "think," each of which bear family
> > > resemblance to one another. (2) Science finds information about the
> matter
> > > that introduces technical grammar into the the language game, for
> whatever
> > > purposes those grammars serve. To understand "think," one must
> understand
> > > its uses in the language game and the information that arrives about it
> from
> > > science (or whomever).
> > >
> > > And if a way of speaking comes along to say that X "thinks," no matter
> what
> > > it purportedly said, it would seem to be confined to its sense and
> dependent
> > > upon the information it was conveying. Imagine you say to yourself:
> "I'm not
> > > thinking today." Or, "my thoughts aren't working." And someone else
> says:
> > > "My parrot thinks." Neither of these ideas could be said to be
> > > contradictory; they all say something meaningful.
> > >
> > > So I guess when you ask "what is think," we must ask back: what do you
> want
> > > to know? What neurological grammar says about it? What psychological
> grammar
> > > does? (I don't know these answers). Think how silly it would be for
> science
> > > to say "the parrot doesn't 'think,'" when so much capital is exchanged
> in
> > > the language marketplace with such an expression. I guess the real
> question
> > > is this: how do technical senses of "think" differ from ordinary
> senses, if
> > > at all? (Cf., "motion." -- the lay sense versus that of particles and
> so
> > > forth).
> > >
> > >
> > > Regards and thanks.
> > >
> > > Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> > > Assistant Professor
> > > Wright State University
> > > Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> > > SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
> > > Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
> > >
> > >
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Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein on Machines and Thinking

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