Neurologist outlines why machines can’t think

[Silmarien]

Focusing on morality instead of rights is moral nihilism? That's new.

The way you were putting it? It sure seemed to be on the edge of saying that it's natural that people oppress each other, so any attempt to prevent them from doing so is a matter of arbitrarily setting one group above another. Given that it was the concept of rights that managed to finally cut through several millennia of systematic oppression of women, often under the guise of moral systems, I would not be quick to toss out rights as unnecessary.

I would very much be interested in hearing how egalitarianism is not simply one more illusory concept, though.

I'm not quite sure how "robotic rights" could ever work as a concept. It would simply give plentiful deterrent for businesses to keep these as clearly unconscious possible.

I'm curious as to what you think about something like animal farming for food?

Frankly? I see a moral problem in industrialized cruelty, which is what modern animal farming is.

But what is wrong with giving businesses a deterrent against employing strong artificial intelligence? What pressing need do we have as a society to create and enslave conscious machines?

 

[devolved]

The way you were putting it? It sure seemed to be on the edge of saying that it's natural that people oppress each other, so any attempt to prevent them from doing so is a matter of arbitrarily setting one group above another.

I think that it's a complex issue that can't be wrapped up in the universal moral applications (as per idealism). There are objective facts in reality, and one of these objective facts is that we are not equal in our abilities and that this lack of equality actually plays to our collective advantage through distributive specialization. Imposing the same set of standards of people can't work in context of various settings, and specialized advantages. We actually never do that, that's why our morality is compartmentalized in context and is grounded in moral realism.

It doesn't however mean that we shouldn't and wouldn't set boundaries to how far one should express one's natural advantage over other people, and I think these are not boundaries set by "rights", but rather boundaries set by collective moral standards. Again, I'm not sure why you think that would mean moral nihilism.

Ideals are great when these are constrained by reality. These tend to be oppressive when reality isn't taken into account and imagination takes over to favor ideal norms people should maintain. Idealistic systems don't last very long, mainly because these are structures that attempt to circumvent natural order and laws, which eventually takes over.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Well that's the thing. When that's all you can show ,you can't rush to definitively correlate the two without need for anything else out there.

It's the only thing I need to show.
That's what you seem to be missing.

It's the only thing you can show concerning anything.
Take Germ Theory of Desease. It shows that germs cause desease. Does it show that these deseases are ONLY caused by germs? No. Does it shows that there are no other unknown causes? No.

It just shows that germs cause deases. Not "only". Not "exclusively".

But, lacking any evidence of any other causes (like demonic posession for example, to stay in tune with "supernatural" factors), it's perfectly fine to only accept the germ thing as causal factor. Why would you also accept the supernatural factors, if there is not reason to believe, or even suggest, that at all?

If you did not know how TV works, I could likewise "show you" that TV is solely responsible for displaying the images that you see when I turn it on. Would it be up to you to debunk that claim?

You would be unable to show that the mechanics of the TV are the exclusive cause of displaying the images. You would NOT be able to demonstrate that there isn't an undetectable fairy in every TV making it work.

Exactly the point.

"Material" is an axiomatic model. You invoke it as an assumption. Why would you then assume that someone else had a burden of proof when you are making a claim that material exists, and projecting that claim to assuming that material is all that exists?

I'm not projecting that claim at all.
I'm just saying that the material exists and that, in case of mind/brain, that all the available evidence suggests that the mind is a product of the physical brain. I'm not the one who added the word "only". That was you.

Now, if YOU wish to include "immaterial" processes to the manifestation of "minds" - then it is upto you support that claim, isn't it?

And pointing out that I can't disprove such processes, is not such support.
Seeing how you can't demonstrate that such processes exist, while the material processes CAN be demonstrated, why wouldn't I accept the material hypothesis while rejecting the immaterial one?

Surely you understand that it wouldn't be rational to accept such a wild proposition without any supporting evidence whatsoever, right?

You are assuming "material" by building models and naming properties.

I'm just restricting myself to those things that can be supported. It just so happens that only the material aspect can be supported, while it can't be shown -at all- that there is an immaterial aspect.

Yes, the evidence that TV independently produces the images is likewise overwhelming via the same logic.

Yes. Exactly. And likewise, that same evidence doesn't exclude, at all, that there are other undetectable aspects at work.

But here we go again: it's not upto me to demonstrate that there are NO other aspects at work. Because I don't make any claims that require such demonstration. It's upto the one who DOES claim that there ARE other aspects at work, to demonstrate / support that.

I don't feel the need to refute a potentially infinite amount of unsupported claims.

We can damage the TV or parts of the TV and we can know which one is producing the sound and which one is responsible for picture.

Yep. All the while NOT being able to exclude the possibility that an undetectable fairy isn't regulating it all.

If the broadcast variable is hidden, then that's all you end up assuming... falsely.

It's not an assumption, as I have already explained. It's rather just sticking to those things that you can actually know / show / demonstrate / support.

Likewise, you are mixing up consciousness as "self" and personality. These are two different things. Ask someone who ever took a good dose of DMT and they'll explain.

DMT? I'll assume that's a drug? You know.... one of those material substances that alters brain chemistry and in doing so produces effects in state of mind, consciousness, perception, cognition, reasoning ability, etc?

How about that....

I'm not assuming that. I claim that I don't know. And in lack of knowledge there are more degrees of freedom to draw various hypothetical scenarios.

Sure. The thing about "various hypothetical scenarios" though, is that only those that can be supported with actual evidence, are relevant.

What you are trying to do here is definitively assume that material is the only viable me mechanism without actually explaining how a chain of physical causality can produce a coherent "mental picture".

Not the only "viable" mechanism. The only supported and demonstrable mechanism.
I can invent for you, on the spot, a near infinite amount of unsupported and undemonstrable mechanisms. And they would all be useless and without merrit.

Again, the point exactly.

My point is that if all you can see is RPG then you are limited to examination of RPG reality.

Yes. Just like in the Matrix. And since you are confined to that world, you would have no way of knowing about it nore would you be justified in suggesting that there is some other reality that nobody knows about.

Assuming that RPG perception is what reality is would be false, since you are not taking the observer into account.

And if the muslims are correct, then you are wrong also.

I don't see the point of this game.
Yes, the person in your RPG hypothetical would be incorrect. Yet, he would be rationally incorrect. But let's be serious here. No person in your RPG example would be able to have a correct assessment of the real world, because that person would have no way of coming up with that.

 

[devolved]

It's the only thing I need to show.
That's what you seem to be missing...

I think you need to read the subsequent post below the one you are responding to in order to get the full breadth of the problem with your position.

Again, what you are defining as a "material" you are defining based on axiomatic assumptions of a model of reality. I have no problem with that assumption if both of us agree that it's a model of observable.

What many people in your camp tend to do is to reify that model into actual reality because they were never adequately explained the philosophical concepts behind that model. Thus, it becomes an unproductive discussion when we are discussing the nature of reality and you are pointing at the materialistic model and say "No no no... these are the constraints". It makes little sense in context of the observer that these constraints don't take into account.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I think you need to read the subsequent post below the one you are responding to in order to get the full breadth of the problem with your position.

That's a long post and didn't get the time yet to go through it.

Again, what you are defining as a "material" you are defining based on axiomatic assumptions of a model of reality.

I base it on what can be observed and tested. Because I have no other choice.
If you think there is another valid basis to work from, I'm all ears.

I have no problem with that assumption if both of us agree that it's a model of observable.

Obviously.
Again, why would I try to come up with models of reality that don't correspond to (observable) reality????

What many people in your camp tend to do is to reify that model into actual reality because they were never adequately explained the philosophical concepts behind that model.

'actual reality'? You mean to say that "actual reality" is different from "observable reality"? That might very well be the case, and in some instances it indeed likely is.

But how would you know? Worse even: assuming actual reality is indeed different from observable reality, how could you possible find out what actual reality is REALLy like then??
You'ld necessarily have to appeal to the unknown...

Thus, it becomes an unproductive discussion when we are discussing the nature of reality and you are pointing at the materialistic model and say "No no no... these are the constraints".

It seems you still don't get it.
I don't appeal to "materialistic models". I appeal to supportable models.
It just so happens that all models that are supportable, are materialistic.

If you can show me an "immaterial" model that can be observed / tested / supported, I'm all ears.

Again it comes down to the burden of proof.
If you wish to claim that there are "immaterial" aspects to things like consiousness - go right ahead. But don't ask me to prove/demonstrate that such aspects do NOT exist - as if your model is validated by default if I can't do that.

It is not. It's your claim: support it.
I'm not making any claims regarding such immaterial aspects. Not pro, nore contra.
It's a non-issue for me. Just like undetectable graviton fairies are non-issues to me when it comes to the force of gravity. Can I prove they don't exist? No. But then again, why should I?

It makes little sense in context of the observer that these constraints don't take into account.

Don't take into account what?

I don't need to take into account those things that aren't observed, that aren't demonstrable, that aren't supportable, that have no manifestation whatsoever.

I can, in fact, safely ignore / discard them.

Just like I do with undetectable graviton fairies.

 

[zippy2006]

If only, hahaha. More like a bored attorney wishing I'd gone to grad school instead of law school!

Hehe, well you fooled me! Just to warn you, I'm going to have lots of questions for you. It's really not a matter of interrogation in the pejorative sense. It just seems like you've thought a lot of this through so I want to understand it a bit.

The way I view the mind actually draws more from Vedic thought, but I conceptualize it with Platonic language to avoid the hard idealistic eliminativism of Hinduism. Basically I agree with materialists that the mind can be reduced to a complex system of computational processes, but then I follow Plotinus in holding Intellect to be ontologically dependent upon a principle of absolute simplicity, so to speak. I would hold that at the heart of the self-conscious, subjective person is a little piece of nothingness in the apophatic sense.

Okay, great. Thanks for clarifying that.

As for AI and teleology, I would view all computation as teleological, so I don't necessarily see that as a problem.

Sure, computation is certainly teleological in the broad, ancient sense. Yet when the word is brought to bear on AI (in a modern context) it usually carries with it ideas of Turing tests, consciousness, intentionality, and perhaps even self-consciousness. That's more what I was getting at, and in posts 218 and 221 you affirm the idea that AI has the potential for consciousness and therefore natural and legal rights.

So what is the limit case of AI on your view? Presumably it involves no Intellect and therefore no self-consciousness or subjectivity. What does it involve, and how do natural rights derive from the limit case of AI?

(My point was more that I would like to see materialists explain why reality appears to have a computational element without borrowing from hylomorphism or Platonism.)

I agree: I think materialists have all sorts of problems. At the same time it seems to me that materialism is very often a (poor) inference from a modern scientific worldview, particularly one heavily invested in the hard sciences. If you go by the numbers, materialists aren't philosophically literate and even some of those who are explicitly subscribe to some version of pragmatism, thus avoiding many of the quintessentially philosophical questions from the outset. (I have respect for thinkers like Peirce, but later pragmatists became watered down.)

Oh, I'm a recovering Nietzschean, whose entire philosophical system was in direct opposition to Plato, so these days I tend to view questions in terms of Plato against his 19th and 20th century interlocutors. These are the forerunners of postmodernism, whose interests were primarily in the human person and their relationship with the world, which really is just a new permutation on all the problems that Plato described so clearly. I do, however, have a strange habit of alternating between continental and analytic moods, so when I switch over to a more empirical state of mind, I drop the Platonists for the Aristotelians. But having been forged in the fires of French philosophy, so to speak, that's always going to be secondary for me. (Unless Jacques Maritain manages to win me over to Thomistic personalism, at least. )

Yeah, that makes sense as I read some of your posts, especially the continental-analytical bifurcation. You are a strange animal, that's for sure! Maritain would definitely be appropriate.

My familiarity with the existentialists and phenomenologists comes mostly informally, as the university courses I took in those areas ended up being frustratingly sub-par. Right now I am reading Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, by John Caputo. Caputo is quite good, but the later parts of the book are slow going for me due to my unfamiliarity with Heidegger's later thought. Caputo is curiously moving towards a comparison between Heidegger and Meister Eckhart which will apparently claim that Eckhart's Thomistically-infused mysticism is the better subject of comparison with Heidegger. It will be interesting to see to what extent Caputo brings Eckhart's Neoplatonism to bear. Whether that would interest you or not, the bibliography may be worth a glance, and Caputo treats Heidegger's Catholic roots quite well, also referencing different Catholic philosophers and theologians who engaged and influenced him. The conclusion is appropriate since Heidegger's knowledge of and respect for Eckhart is fairly well-known.

As far as scholars of Neoplatonism go, a couple that I would recommend are Pierre Hadot and Lloyd Gerson. There are also some Christian Platonists out there--I haven't read him yet, but the Catholic scholar of Platonism that I've heard most about is John Rist. I don't think he's a Thomist, but I discovered him through a Thomistic site, so he's probably a good bet.

Awesome, thanks! Funny story - I am currently living within walking distance of a university with a considerable philosophical and theological library--they have multiple titles by each of these authors. But today I am moving out, seeking a cheaper harbor!

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Agreed with some of you. The only reason some people are aware of the Matrix (in the movie or RPG), is because they are "outside" the Matrix. Those inside the Matrix are unaware of those "outside" it, but those "outside" are aware of both those "inside" and "outside".

So if we were in a Matrix situation, we would never be able to tell... except maybe by deja vu???? Which in no way would confirm an "outside" existence.....

So the only conclusion is that this experience is real.... and even if it isn't it wouldn't matter, as to "us" on the "inside" there is no "outside" that is in any way demonstrable......

 

[Silmarien]

I think that it's a complex issue that can't be wrapped up in the universal moral applications (as per idealism). There are objective facts in reality, and one of these objective facts is that we are not equal in our abilities and that this lack of equality actually plays to our collective advantage through distributive specialization. Imposing the same set of standards of people can't work in context of various settings, and specialized advantages. We actually never do that, that's why our morality is compartmentalized in context and is grounded in moral realism.

It doesn't however mean that we shouldn't and wouldn't set boundaries to how far one should express one's natural advantage over other people, and I think these are not boundaries set by "rights", but rather boundaries set by collective moral standards. Again, I'm not sure why you think that would mean moral nihilism.

Ideals are great when these are constrained by reality. These tend to be oppressive when reality isn't taken into account and imagination takes over to favor ideal norms people should maintain. Idealistic systems don't last very long, mainly because these are structures that attempt to circumvent natural order and laws, which eventually takes over.

I am sorry you find the concept of universal human rights oppressive. I assume you prefer forcing people to adhere to rigidly determined social positions according to what the culture in question determines to be their appropriate role? As the old German saying goes: Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

You have either misunderstood the concept of human rights and are viewing it in terms of some sort of radical egalitarianism instead of a matter of protecting individuals from systematic abuses by government, or you are advocating oppression under the guise of some sort of natural law theory. I'm not sure which, so I won't comment further.

 

[devolved]

am sorry you find the concept of universal human rights oppressive...

Please read what I say more carefully. It's the second time in the row you imply something I did not say.

I don't find the concept of human rights oppressive. I merely agree with criticism of this concept on the grounds that it may not be as progressive as we are taught to think about it, and that I prefer the concept of collective moral responsibility as more useful and more precise.

https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/rights.htm

 

[Silmarien]

Please read what I say more carefully. It's the second time in the row you imply something I did not say

You quite explicitly called a doctrine of rights an idealistic system, said that such systems become oppressive, and then talked about the natural order, which you seem to associate with a distributive approach to specialization. I see little difference between this and an authoritarian state that tells people what role they will play in society.

I'm glad to hear that you do not find human rights oppressive, but a little bit more clarity would go a long way, since the implication that you did was very much evident in your post.

 

[Silmarien]

So what is the limit case of AI on your view? Presumably it involves no Intellect and therefore no self-consciousness or subjectivity. What does it involve, and how do natural rights derive from the limit case of AI?

My concern is actually that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence might possess self-consciousness and subjectivity. There are so many different metaphysical approaches to the mind, and even if we want to rule out materialism, there are alternatives out there that also support the possibility of genuinely conscious AI.

I'm specifically thinking about panpsychism and idealism, both of which approach subjectivity as something that is ontologically fundamental and/or ubiquitous. Arch anti-materialist David Chalmers is a serious proponent of AI, so this is not the sort of thing that sets people in easily predictable groups.

I could really go either way, since I'm undecided on what Intellect actually is in terms of the human mind. (I'm somewhat unconvinced by the entire Western tradition on this issue, from Plato and Aristotle to the modern materialists.) If we were able to create an artificial brain whose neural network perfectly mimicked the human brain, would it be conscious in a similar sense? We could drop materialism for a form of idealism wherein the physical serves to facilitate the manifestation of the underlying subjective reality, and there would still be no real reason to assume that this couldn't be done artificially.

Like I said, it's Vedic thought that I find more seductive than I would like on this particular issue, and once you toss that into the mix, things become considerably more difficult. (Interestingly, I tend to find reductive idealism and reductive materialism to be two sides to the same coin, especially on questions like this one.)

I agree: I think materialists have all sorts of problems. At the same time it seems to me that materialism is very often a (poor) inference from a modern scientific worldview, particularly one heavily invested in the hard sciences. If you go by the numbers, materialists aren't philosophically literate and even some of those who are explicitly subscribe to some version of pragmatism, thus avoiding many of the quintessentially philosophical questions from the outset. (I have respect for thinkers like Peirce, but later pragmatists became watered down.)

Yes, I have similar concerns. There are some very good materialists out there, and I could certainly make a theistic physicalist theory of mind work, but by and large it just seems to be a cultural prejudice. Though it was actually New Mysterianism that made me stop wondering if I was missing something as far naturalism was concerned--if you're going to simultaneously hold that we are evolutionarily unequipped to tackle the question of consciousness and that it must have a naturalistic explanation, we are clearly into the realm of dogma.

Yeah, that makes sense as I read some of your posts, especially the continental-analytical bifurcation. You are a strange animal, that's for sure! Maritain would definitely be appropriate.

Oh, it gets worse. According to the forum, I am a radical Marxist with a conservative religious worldview.

My familiarity with the existentialists and phenomenologists comes mostly informally, as the university courses I took in those areas ended up being frustratingly sub-par. Right now I am reading Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, by John Caputo. Caputo is quite good, but the later parts of the book are slow going for me due to my unfamiliarity with Heidegger's later thought. Caputo is curiously moving towards a comparison between Heidegger and Meister Eckhart which will apparently claim that Eckhart's Thomistically-infused mysticism is the better subject of comparison with Heidegger. It will be interesting to see to what extent Caputo brings Eckhart's Neoplatonism to bear. Whether that would interest you or not, the bibliography may be worth a glance, and Caputo treats Heidegger's Catholic roots quite well, also referencing different Catholic philosophers and theologians who engaged and influenced him. The conclusion is appropriate since Heidegger's knowledge of and respect for Eckhart is fairly well-known.

You know, I have Caputo's book on Kierkegaard, but I haven't read it yet. I'd heard about his book on Heidegger also, but my reading list grows a lot more quickly than I can clear it. I do have some stuff from within the Christian world in a similar trend--David Bentley Hart's Beauty of the Infinite is suppose to hold up Maximus the Confessor as a response to Heidegger, though it'll be a while before I get around to it since I'm meaning to read Hans Urs von Balthasar's Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor first. (Just don't tell the Orthodox, haha.)

But yeah, Heidegger is... very difficult. I actually need to reread him--I can't even say whether or not the university course where I'd studied him was subpar, since I managed to forget which one it was altogether. It took finding the essays to remember where I'd come across him at all!

Awesome, thanks! Funny story - I am currently living within walking distance of a university with a considerable philosophical and theological library--they have multiple titles by each of these authors. But today I am moving out, seeking a cheaper harbor!

Hahaha, you've left me wondering which one!

 

[devolved]

You quite explicitly called a doctrine of rights an idealistic system, said that such systems become oppressive, and then talked about the natural order, which you seem to associate with a distributive approach to specialization. I see little difference between this and an authoritarian state that tells people what role they will play in society.

I specifically talked about potential tendencies of unconstrained idealism, given that virtually all of the oppressive systems in history are inherently idealistic. It doesn't mean that we should dispose with idealism and ideals. It does mean that there should be a healthy balance between ideals and how these ideals would actually work in a much more complex and nuanced reality that such ideals usually don't take into account.

If we do talk about rights, then we should always talk about these in a manner of constrained social responsibility of people as opposed to unconstrained "you are owed this simply because you exist". I would argue that you are not owed anything apart from our consensual agreement of certain rules by which we play the game of society.

Form the standpoint of education alone it's a difference between maintaining a culture of expectation and complaints vs maintaining culture of empathy, understanding, and social responsibility.

I'm not saying that it's "either or" type of scenario, but I do say that idealism of rights should be balanced with realism of responsibility.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I think that it's a complex issue that can't be wrapped up in the universal moral applications (as per idealism). There are objective facts in reality, and one of these objective facts is that we are not equal in our abilities and that this lack of equality actually plays to our collective advantage through distributive specialization. Imposing the same set of standards of people can't work in context of various settings, and specialized advantages. We actually never do that, that's why our morality is compartmentalized in context and is grounded in moral realism.

It doesn't however mean that we shouldn't and wouldn't set boundaries to how far one should express one's natural advantage over other people, and I think these are not boundaries set by "rights", but rather boundaries set by collective moral standards. Again, I'm not sure why you think that would mean moral nihilism.

Ideals are great when these are constrained by reality. These tend to be oppressive when reality isn't taken into account and imagination takes over to favor ideal norms people should maintain. Idealistic systems don't last very long, mainly because these are structures that attempt to circumvent natural order and laws, which eventually takes over.

But in a “natural” system the strong dominate the weak. The healthy drive the sick and infirm out of the pack.

So our society would collapse into anarchy if we let the natural laws take over.....

 

[devolved]

But in a “natural” system the strong dominate the weak. The healthy drive the sick and infirm out of the pack. So our society would collapse into anarchy if we let the natural laws take over.....

Actually dominance hierarchies is how any society operates and organizes. You can't have organization without dominance hierarchies. Lack of dominance hierarchy would actually be closer to anarchy than a strict dominant hierarchy.

Dominance isn't inherently evil or unwanted. Dominance hierarchies is how we operate in this world, and there's nothing wrong with these apart from immoral settings of dominance, which is much more rare than that which is moral form of dominance.

Hence, we really have to focus on contextual morality and not dominance. Dominance is merely a continuum of one's action to successfully alter reality, and it can exist on a short and wider spectrum of "influence over environment and people that occupy it". Thus, dominance is a generic concept. Morality is generally a very specific concept.

For example, it's wrong to kidnap people. Such would be a very specific context of the wrong type of dominance that we can contextualize and define.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The logic that relies upon philosophical intuitions being reliable in the first place, you mean?

No, the logic of philosophical arguments.

 

[Silmarien]

No, the logic of philosophical arguments.

I was unclear. My point is that the a priori knowledge that logical systems presuppose could easily fit under the label of "philosophical intuitions." If you see no reason to consider these particular "intuitions" reliable, then you cannot build a reliable logical system and your entire epistemology collapses. It doesn't matter if we can logically assess philosophical arguments if the possibility of logic itself is in doubt--we might as well be reciting Jabberwocky.

If, on the other hand, you do accept the possibility of a priori knowledge as either something apart from intuition or an instance of reliable intuition, you are going to have to be much clearer about which philosophical intuitions are a priori and therefore trustworthy and which ones need to be discarded. Otherwise, assertions about the unreliability of philosophical intuitions are just so much anti-metaphysical sophistry.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... the evidence that TV independently produces the images is likewise overwhelming via the same logic. We can damage the TV or parts of the TV and we can know which one is producing the sound and which one is responsible for picture.

If the broadcast variable is hidden, then that's all you end up assuming... falsely.

There's a big difference - when you mess with a TV, you may change the channel it receives, or degrade the audio and/or images it displays, but you won't change the content of those images.

But when we mess with the brain, we find we can change pretty much every recognised aspect of consciousness, including identity, sense of self, morals, values, personality, emotional response, artistic ability, taste, judgement, etc. That's the equivalent of messing with your TV and seeing the plot of a movie, or the decor of a newsroom, or the sex of the newsreader change before your eyes, hearing the newsreader read out gibberish or recite Shakespeare, seeing a blend of two different programmes, or finding a nonsense program that isn't scheduled, and so-on.

There's also a considerable specificity about the particular changes to consciousness and the kind of interference and/or the area of the brain that you mess with.

This provides good reason to suppose that the brain generates consciousness and that the 'brain as receiver' model is not supported by the evidence.

 

[devolved]

There's a big difference - when you mess with a TV, you may change the channel it receives, or degrade the audio and/or images it displays, but you won't change the content of those images.

The content would be your perception of the "output", hence if you change the channel, the content would change. If you have no knowledge of where the content is coming from, you can make the wrong assumption that you are indeed changing "the content" by messing around with TV.

But when we mess with the brain, we find we can change pretty much every recognised aspect of consciousness, including identity, sense of self, morals, values, personality, emotional response, artistic ability, taste, judgement, etc. That's the equivalent of messing with your TV and seeing the plot of a movie, or the decor of a newsroom, or the sex of the newsreader change before your eyes, hearing the newsreader read out gibberish or recite Shakespeare, seeing a blend of two different programmes, or finding a nonsense program that isn't scheduled, and so-on.

You are switching the context between memory contents and consciousness as a mechanism. I'm not sure we can adequately equivocate between the two.

I'm well-aware of the current model for memory as a mechanism, and I think we could equivocate cognition, memory, and behavioral preferences in context of "decision" as a part of the same process. All of these seem to happen below conscious threshold though.

I'm speaking about this from personal "meta-cognition" perspective, and it seems like our conscious experience "waits" on those things before these pop into awareness. Most of the times these are so fast that these bypass the awareness all together, for example like me typing and focusing on my content instead of the fact that I'm automatically typing away on keyboard right now. But sometimes the memory process can take a while to chase down a response from the "database" due to some "fragmentation", so it may take a couple of seconds to remember a name, etc.

Hence, it seems like it's not a process "in the middle", but rather the last in the chain of brain function, and it's personally unclear to me as to whether it's in control or merely observing otherwise automated and "unconscious" process. It seems to be the latter, hence conscious choice seems to be merely an post-awareness of otherwise unconscious one (from what we see in neuroscience data)

Either way, for me personally, it's a complex issue riddled with various paradoxes, and I simply don't have definitive reasons to merely reduce conscious experience to a chain of physical events. If you are not aware of why that's problematic, we could discuss that.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I was unclear. My point is that the a priori knowledge that logical systems presuppose could easily fit under the label of "philosophical intuitions." If you see no reason to consider these particular "intuitions" reliable, then you cannot build a reliable logical system and your entire epistemology collapses. It doesn't matter if we can logically assess philosophical arguments if the possibility of logic itself is in doubt--we might as well be reciting Jabberwocky.

If, on the other hand, you do accept the possibility of a priori knowledge as either something apart from intuition or an instance of reliable intuition, you are going to have to be much clearer about which philosophical intuitions are a priori and therefore trustworthy and which ones need to be discarded. Otherwise, assertions about the unreliability of philosophical intuitions are just so much anti-metaphysical sophistry.

Sure; my point was that intuition can assist in evaluating the validity of the argument, particularly with lengthy or complex arguments. We don't have to accept the truth of the premises to do this.

Provisional 'for the sake of the argument' acceptance of premises is common, and it's not unheard of for an argument to have sufficient explanatory power to change one's estimate of the likelihood of an uncertain premise being true - it happens in science a fair bit.

 

[Tom 1]

This article is an interesting discussion about why it is not AI that is a threat to humanity. Rather it is humanity that may use AI to destroy itself.
https://mindmatters.today/2018/neurosurgeon-outlines-why-machines-cant-think/
A cornerstone of the development of artificial intelligence is the pervasive assumption that machines can, or will, think. Watson, a question-answering computer, beats the best Jeopardy players, and anyone who plays chess has had the humiliation of being beaten by a chess engine. (I lose to even the most elementary levels of the chess program on my iPhone). Does this mean that computers can think as well as (or better than) humans think? No, it does not. Computers are not “smart” in any way. Machines are utterly incapable of thought.

The assertion that computation is thought, hence thought is computation, is called computer functionalism. It is the theory that the human mind is to the brain as software is to hardware. The mind is what the brain does; the brain “runs” the mind, as a computer runs a program. However, careful examination of natural intelligence (the human mind) and artificial intelligence (computation) shows that this is a profound misunderstanding.

What is the hallmark of human thought, and what distinguishes thoughts from material things? Franz Brentano (1838–1917), a German philosopher in the 19th century, answered this question decisively. All thoughts are about something, whereas no material object is inherently “about” anything. This property of aboutness is called intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind. Every thought that I have shares the property of aboutness—I think about my vacation, or about politics, or about my family. But no material object is, in itself, “about” anything. A mountain or a rock or a pen lacks aboutness—they are just objects. Only a mind has intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind.....

....But to believe that machines can think or that human thought is a kind of computation is a profound error. Belief in this fundamental error about AI will lead us away from, not toward, the truth about AI. Machines, for example, will never become malevolent and harm mankind. Men will act with malevolence, using machines, or men will use machines in ways that (unintentionally) harm others. Men can use cars malevolently and carelessly and can thus harm others. But the malevolence and careless is in the man, not in the car.

To paraphrase Pogo: we have met AI, and AI is us.

By Denyse O'Leary

I don’t know if there is any real theory that machines may become ‘malevolent’, however one possible scenario would be a machine crunching big data to find an optimal solution to some issue too complex for the human brain, which might, in theory, conclude that removing or actively controlling humans is part of that solution.