[Wittrs] Mirsky on Watson and Seale

[SWM]

The issue, Kirby, is whether "thinking" and "feeling" are just so many complicated information processing functions (in which case we ought to be able to construct and implement them on a computer platform along with various other subsystems) or whether they are something quite different (something inexplicable, ineffable, etc.)?

My point in the article was that they may well be nothing more than a certain kind of information processing, contra Searle, in which case, if incorporated into a Watson-type system, there would be nothing left out.

Searle thinks that something would be left out, namely the "semantics" (the getting of meaning) but that's a presumption on his part, not an argument-based conclusion. Before subscribing to such a presumption, I argue that we ought to challenge it. One of the ways to do that is by building Watson-like systems and seeing what they can do.

SWM      

--- In Wittrs at yahoogroups.com, kirby urner <wittrs at ...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Wittr2Feed
> <wittrs2feed at ...> wrote:
> 
> << snip >>
> 
> > What if a sufficiently complex and layered computer program, using the same basic syntactic processes available to all computers, could develop and use representational models of its world and its various internal systems and components (the way we're aware of the elements of our world and all our aches and pains and other somatic sensations)? What if this were then integrated with a "Watson"-like natural language program and the same massive database of stored inputs? Why should we think that that system, now able to image itself and the world, as well as the myriads of relations obtaining between these different layers of representation, would not be able to understand what it means to play and win games, too?
> >
> 
> Heh.
> 
> I'd call this "begging the question" big time.
> 
> What if we had an artificial human that could do what humans do,
> wouldn't that be "like a human" then?
> 
> Yes, it would.
> 
> Yes, if we could make a computer that could think, feel and
> experience, then we would have such a computer.
> 
> We don't though, HAL a fading dream in the rear view mirror.  Not even
> close, after all this time.  Not even closer.
> 
> Mirsky would be stronger as an interlocutor if he could come across as
> anything other than the "gee whiz" spectator in the bleachers, where
> computers are concerned.
> 
> IBM's marketing division was created for people like him, eh?
> 
> Kirby
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Wittrs mailing list
> Wittrs at ...
> http://undergroundwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/wittrs_undergroundwiki.org
>