[FRIAM] Warring Darwinians for Glen, Steve

Tue May 5 12:26:55 EDT 2020

Quite a few things suddenly going on here....

1) The "can computers act?" thing is a bit of a red herring, I think. We
would be more obviously where we want to be by talking about robots,
instead of computers. We could then separately discuss the issue of overt
vs covert behavior (which has been phrased many different ways, none of
which are ideal). After that, we could muse over which side of that
distinction sending packets over the internet or altering pixels on a
screen fall upon.

2) The question of metaphors at the heart of thinking might have more legs.
There are two separate issues there: One is about the role of metaphors in
communication between two people, which might connect to "the hard
problem"... maybe... The other is about whether much, or even all,
individual "thinking" is in metaphors, which I don't think relates to "the
hard problem", but I could be convinced otherwise. Also, in those
discussions, Nick would take a formal model as a highly-abstracted
metaphor. He wrote extensively about "The Prisoner's Dilemma" as a
metaphor, for example, even its formally specified form.

3) We have an explanation of "the hard problem" that places it remarkably
close to "the Turing Test". I think there are pros and cons to that way of
looking at it. The pro is that it focuses us on that "how would you know?"
part of "the hard problem", i.e., "How would you know if someone else
experienced blue as you experience blue?" The con is that it focuses us on
a "subjective" attempt to answer that, rather than a pragmatist /
broad-scientific attempt to answer it. In Turing Test comparison leads us
to ask what a computer would have to do for us, as individuals, not to be
able to tell if we were dealing with man or machine. the pragmatist
approach is to ask, as comprehensively as possible, what the organism is
doing when doing mental things, and then to determine if the machine is
doing those same things. A pragmatist approach to "How would you know if
someone else experienced blue as you experience blue?" *should *be to place
ourselves and the other person in every possible situation in which "blue"
is a relevant concept, and see if the resulting behavior matches. If it
does match, then we have the same concept, and there is nothing else to
talk about. If it doesn't match, then we are different in only and exactly
those non-matches, and there is nothing else to talk about. The responses
to the various probes are individual, but the individual is not relevant
for determining the array of relevant situations. I am worried that the
Turing Test comparison might lead us to think that our individual ideas
about how to prob the machine matter, when they don't.

4) Also, separately, Nick has accused my of intellectual slander. To
clarify my prior statement: I have seen Nick become convinced, more than
once, that some particular set of assumptions is so incredibly wrong that
he loses the ability to do anything with the ideas those assumptions lead
to. At least that's my impression of what happens. I take "the hard
problem" to be an example of such. I think Nick's "problem" is related to
Wittgenstein's saying about being silent. Once the conversation becomes
centered completely around something about-which-we-cannot-speak, Nick
can't get himself to keep speaking, beyond trying to point out to everyone
that something has gone horribly wrong. (I'm not sure if Nick will be any
happier with that diagnosis, but it's as close to a* mia culpa* as he is
likely to get out of me.) If you *a priori* declare that "How would you
know if someone else experienced blue as you experience blue?" as an
inherently unanswerable question, and then you ask the question... well...
then there is nothing more to do; there is nowhere to go, other than to
point out that something has gone wrong.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 11:56 AM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> Maybe I missed something that makes this redundant but if a highschool
> student asked me what the *hard problem* is I would say:  There appears
> to be no limit to how competent computers can be.  They seem to be able to
> do just about anything that people think requires thought.  But I am
> persuaded that they can't think.  What makes the difference between
> thinking people and hypercompetent computers?
>
> Nick would say if it behaves as if it thinks then it thinks.  I think.
>
> I think I think, therefore I think I am?    A real-world exercise in
> terminating tail recursion?  Waddya think?
>
>
>
> Frank
>
> On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 7:50 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought this was a support group for recovering (or just
>> self-indulgent) metaphorists... you mean it's not?   Why do I feel like
>> I'm in a scene from "Fight Club"?   I guess that would make me more of
>> an allegorist?
>>
>> > Is it? You people can't help yourselves. It's compulsive. You might
>> want to get some help for that.
>> >
>> > On 5/4/20 10:47 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> >> Choosing one's rifle is so concrete.  It makes me want to run out and
>> blow away a few cacti.  Oh, it's a metaphor!
>>
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