Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein on Machines and Thinking
- From: Han Geurdes <han.geurdes@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:27:32 +0200
Indeed Stuart, if aliens were created out of Silicon and not Carbon would
they count as thinking machines?
On 20 June 2011 16:25, SWM <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> --- 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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