Thank you for correcting me on Nagel's name. I'm embarrassed that I misspelled it, cuz his book is right in front of me.
51 karma · joined December 8, 2013
You associate a meaning to the symbol "dog". You think of an animal that barks, wags its tail, chases cats and squirrels, and is happy to see you when you get home. You associate something in the real world what that symbol. (That is the very meaning of doing semantics.)
The computer does nothing of the sort with the symbol "dog".
Please prove that mere electromagnetism can cause intentions, goals, and teleology. Limit yourself to Maxwell's equations, and the consequences thereof.
I look forward to your response, but I am not hopeful that you will provide a cogent answer.
There is no "meaning" associated with any variable or its value, and there cannot be.
If somebody wanted to produce a real AI, every bit as intelligent as a human, he probably wouldn't go wrong by trying to reproduce in software what Pascal Boyer describes in his book "Religion Explained". http://www.Amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Evolutionary-Origin...
Boyer fails, in my mind, in many ways, but at the very least by not providing a solution to the Frame Problem. The Frame Problem looms very large in all of Boyer's descriptions of folk psychology, and how the human mind works. Yet it is completely unaddressed.
For a good explanation of the Frame Problem, see Daniel Dennett's argument "Cognitive Wheels: The Frame Problem of AI" in chapter 7 of "The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence". http://www.Amazon.com/Philosophy-Artificial-Intelligence-Oxf... In this article, Dennett is his own worst enemy, in that he proves that AI isn't possible. (Nobody has solved the Frame Problem yet.)
Thanks. I'll buy it and read it.
Since electromagnetism cannot cause intentions, or goals, and since the human obviously has both intentions and goals (teleology), it is clear that the human brain does encompass something in addition to electromagnetism. (The same statement applies to all of the chemical processes involved in the human brain.)
Please read Nagle's work. Read Searle's work. Read all of the philosophical literature on "intention".
But the hypothesis of materialism is what is in question here, both by my citation of the difference between syntax and semantics, and the obvious (to anybody who understands what a computer is and does) conclusion that computers do only syntax, while humans clearly do semantics also, and also by Searle's and Nagle's work.
I think that the evidence (which most people want to deny) is very clear that materialism is false. Most people deal with this evidence by ignoring it, or by denying it exists in the first place. They never address it.
You can prove me wrong. You can prove that materialism is correct. Just produce a real AI which is every bit as intelligent and capable as a human. Produce an AI which can really do semantics. Produce an AI which clearly convinces everybody that it is really intelligent in the way humans are, without any parlor tricks (like modelling an idiot savant).
It is much harder to prove that materialism is false, but that is what Nagle has done in his recent book. Have you read it? If he has not convinced you, please critique his arguments.
Please come back and post your response here, or start a new Hacker-News story.
I think you are wrong here as well.
There is an entire branch of philosophy dedicated to the study of what we (can) know, and how we know it: epistemology.
Some philosophers get things wrong, just like some people get their mathematical sums wrong, and some scientists follow incorrect hypotheses for many years. But that is not a valid excuse for neglecting to search for the Truth, or failing to arrive at Truth.
Indeed, the entire aim of all of science is to arrive at Truth.
> because there is no clear way to reach one
The laws of logic are very clear, even though most people do not follow them most of the time. You cannot even think properly without obeying the laws of logic. http://En.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought (And sadly, indeed, many people do not think properly.)
For every task which is syntax only, it is a fantastic idea to make computers do the work, and relieve humans from the drudgery. I'm all in favor of that.
But for any task which requires semantics -- real human intelligence -- it is foolish to attempt to replace humans. It cannot be done.
What is required is the wisdom to know the difference between the two.
There is nothing which is scientific (dealing with knowledge in general, according to the Latin roots of the word), which is not also philosophical (dealing with the love of wisdom, according to the Greek roots of the word).
You are correct that I cannot change anybody's mind, one way or the other. I was only hoping to plant seeds.
Voting my comment down without giving any reason or justification proves my original point that nobody can stomach the actual evidence that I have raised, and which Searle and Nagle have also raised.
You are not yet ready for the Kuhnian revolution in AI which must eventually take place, and you will be on the wrong side of it.
My thermostat has three possible beliefs: 1) It is too warm in here. 2) It is too cold in here. 3) It is just about right.
Minsky is wrong about AI in the same way that McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy really "believed" that his thermostat had three possible beliefs, and that his thermostat really "believed" one of them at any given time. http://Books.Google.com/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA...
Searle debunked him, but the message doesn't seem to have gotten out. We are still wasting money on AI.
We are wasting money on AI because we are following the materialist hypothesis: that there is nothing in the universe besides matter and energy, and the interactions between matter and energy. To reject this hypothesis is unthinkable for many, even for most, because the only alternative hypothesis would be that some sort of non-material (spiritual?) stuff must exist.
But the evidence is overwhelming. The evidence cannot be denied.
Linguistics, for example, has always been divided into syntax and semantics. No linguist has ever challenged this taxonomy. Both syntax and semantics are very real.
Computers are syntactic engines. They do syntax. They can only do syntax. It matters if a symbol is present, or not, and it matters in what order symbols are arranged. But the computer does not, and indeed cannot, associate any meaning (semantics) with any symbol. The only way a computer, being only a syntactical engine, can appear to do semantics, is if a human has first been clever enough to have found a mapping in some natural language between syntax and semantics [and such mapping must exist in the first place, for him to find it], and then clever enough to exploit it. The computer is still doing only syntax, even while appearing to do semantics.
Searle showed this also with his Chinese Room analogy. But the "cognitive scientists" have not been paying attention. Or they are still in denial.
But humans really do semantics. Nobody questions this, or challenges it, because it is self-evident. You are doing semantics right now, as you read my comment.
Because humans really do semantics, and computers cannot, humans and computers must be fundamentally different sorts of creatures. The idea that the human mind is software, running on the hardware of a human brain, must necessarily be false. (If it was true, then humans couldn't do semantics either, but they do!)
If this wasn't enough, Nagel (of "What is it like to be a bat?" fame) has shown that the materialistic hypothesis is almost certainly wrong, in his recent book "Mind and Cosmos". http://www.Amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-...
But the world pays no attention to Nagel either. To do so would be to have a Kuhnian revolution of epic proportions, and that is not "scientifically correct".
So the cognitive scientists, the AI researchers, the biologists, and pretty much everybody in science today, toe the politically correct line. They celebrate Minsky.
They ought to be bringing up the hard questions. That is what real scientists do.
It is easier to be an idiot, because that doesn't put your funding in jeopardy.
I conclude that there are very few "real" scientists. Cue the "no true Scotsman" jokes. But deal with the issue I've raised. Be intellectually honest.
I don't have direct proof or experience, but I understand that many other models (and manufacturers) are similarly broken.
UEFI (better called Restricted Boot) takes away the user's freedom.
I want to own my hardware. I don't want the manufacturer to own it. I don't truly own it unless I can run whatever software I want on it. I don't own it if it prevents me from doing anything I want to do -- no matter what that is.
Please note that OpenBSD has no problem handling large disks, greater than 2 TB. The problem is with the horrible Restricted Boot (UEFI) system.
The Asus model 1015E is in violation of the requirement that UEFI (Restricted Boot) can be disabled, and that Legacy Boot can be enabled. I am boycotting all future Asus products, because I had to deal with this problem after I had already purchased one. It was difficult and painful to get my money back.
If any manufacturer purposely builds systems without Restricted Boot, I will patronize them (even for non-Arm products). I am hoping that some manufacturer will build a line of Arm-based devices without Restricted Boot. (Yes, I know about BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, etc. But these are not full-featured laptops. They are embedded machines aimed at embedded uses. I do use them for that purpose. Also note that the Raspberry Pi has the craptastic Broadcom chip, and it is anything but free [as in liberty] and open. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/192942 Also, the recent release of source code from Broadcom is only open source wrappers that call proprietary binary blobs. Fsck Broadcom.)
Your question itself is enough evidence that humans didn't invent teleology, but merely recognized its existence. You are asking for a reason why. You are asking a teleological question.
Two year old children do the same thing, constantly. They ask why.
It is natural to ask why.
It is very unnatural to deny the naturalness of asking why, or to try to suppress it, as if the desire to understand why didn't exist in all of us.
Indeed, the answer to the "why" question is one of the four causes Aristotle says we must explain to understand what a thing is. We must understand the why behind it. That is the final cause, or the purpose for the thing.
What you cannot answer is this: How can final cause -- purpose or motivating reason for something -- arise out of nothing? Indeed, the intelligent person recognizes that such an idea is non-sense, and rejects it out of hand.
You get purpose, or reason for being, from a priori purpose or reason. I work in order to have money. I want money in order to buy food and shelter. I want food and shelter to continue to survive. And so on.
You never get purpose, or reason for being, from nothing.
You think by asking me to show that teleology is more than a human construction, that you will bolster your evidence for reductive materialism -- especially if I can't provide an answer that meets your satisfaction. But in so doing, you are demonstrating teleology. You have a goal. You are driving towards that goal. And your goal is self-contradictory. Your goal is to establish that teleology is somehow not Real, not inherent in the universe, and not inherent in us. But goal-based action is what teleology is all about. So you are engaging in the very behavior you are seeking to prove doesn't exist, except as a figment of our imagination.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Yes, I'm aware of these studies.
But they make the mistake of presupposing materialist reductionism a priori, as if it were actually true.
Those who assume materialist reductionism have an entire set of questions they are incapable of answering, such as:
1) How can teleology arise from non-teleology? 2) Whence consciousness? 3) How can something come from nothing?
There is a great deal of evidence that materialism is not the best explanation for Reality. If you want to see some of this evidence, read "Mind and Cosmos" by Thomas Nagel.
The story is incompatible with free will. The only way the universe could be the way it is, with the one person living all those lives, yet always choosing such that the other people (him in another re-incarnation) also always choose as they (he) did, it would be necessary for free will not to exist.
But this would also mean that the "god" in this story also didn't have free will, because the man was "of his (god's) kind".
But if God does not have free will, he isn't the greatest possible being. The universe thus described therefore fails Anselm's Ontological Argument for the Existence of God. The hypothetical God who is identical to the God in this story, with the exception that He DOES have free will, is obviously a greater being.
I conclude that this story cannot possibly describe Reality, as It actually Is.
Do click on the link: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7033047
Unfortunately, this chart is arranged badly. But you can glean the information by comparing columns.
First huge difference: N > S (biggest of all!) Next difference: T > F (more pronounced amongst Ns) Next difference: I > E (more pronounced amongst NTs)
Note that there is almost no difference along the J/P axis.
Read it again in 5-10 years.