Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein on Machines and Thinking
- From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Wittgenstein's Aftermath <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:25:12 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> [corrected version]
>
>
> 'Is it possible for a machine to think?' ... the trouble
> which is expressed in this question is not really that we
> don't yet know a machine which could do the job. The
> question is not analogous to that which someone might
> have asked a hundred years ago: 'Can a machine liquify
> gas?' The trouble is rather that the sentence, 'A machine
> thinks (perceives, wishes)' seems somehow nonsensical.
> It is as though we had asked 'Has the number 3 a
> colour?' (BB 47)
>
> But a machine surely cannot think! - Is that an empirical
> statement? No. We only say of a human being and what
> is like one that it thinks. We also say it of dolls and no
> doubt of spirits too. Look at the word 'to think' as a tool.
> (PI §360)
>
> SW
And the issue, Sean, would be whether a machine can be like us in a relevant
way. Say a machine were built to speak to us in a thoughtful and autonomous
way. (By "autonomous" I mean without being pre-programmed to give certain
answers to certain questions under certain conditions.) Now we have a machine
that is like us in a relevant way. Maybe it lacks a body like ours (it's not
Commander Data). Maybe it lacks all our sensory capabilities because of
different equipment to which it is attached. But if it has enough sensory
capability to share enough of our world and language capability (for putting
information into words we can understand) AND it has the capacity to learn and
think about what it encounters and has learned, then if it answered questions
intelligibly (without being programmed to the question, as it were) then what
would the problem be?
Is it that "think" or "understand" are not simple terms with simple meanings?
Well that's fine because a great many of our terms are not, even when applied
to entities like ourselves.
Would you make the case that Wittgenstein, in the above passages, was saying
that it makes no sense to say of a machine that it thinks?
But what about an ape, many of which have shown clear thinking behaviors. Or
dogs? What about an alien organism from another planet? Could we not think of
it as thinking merely because it is sharply different from ourselves?
If any of these can be said to think, why not a machine, too? Of course this is
not to say that it would make sense to say of any old machine that it's
thinking! My toaster certainly shows no signs of contemplation before browning
my bread. Nor does my pc. But why would we not be able to say of some machines
that they think, even if there are no such examples as of now?
SWM
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