Minds or Machines John Beloff (1988) Intro to Philosophy Professor Douglas Olena
The Computational Metaphor 415 The Strong Claim is the claim put forward by some proponents of artificial intelligence that nothing essential differentiates the human mind from a possible mind-like machine A perfect simulation of human mental activity using the hardware of a computer would in fact amount to an exemplification of such activity. This strong claim carries with it the corollary that there is no theoretical limit to what a machine could be expected to do.
The Computational Metaphor 415 Behavioristic and physicalistic theories of mind have been a recurrent feature of twentieth-century philosophy and psychology in the English-speaking world. So long as a traditional dualistic account prevailed the scope of A.I. was clearly restricted. The strong claim is closely bound up with the perennial mind-body problem and our assessment of it will depend on the position we take on that issue.
Functionalism 416 The current theory of mind that is most congenial to the strong claim is that which goes by the name of Functionalism. Briefly, it is the contention of a Functionalist that a mental event is to be understood in terms of the function it performs with reference to a given system or organism. Thus a pain should not in the first instance be thought of as some special kind of private event but as that which brings about avoidance or escape reactions.
Functionalism 416 The novelty of the Functionalist position is that it is neutral with respect to the composition of the system with whose operations one is concerned. That the system should in question should be made of neurons rather than wires and transistors, that should be a living organism rather than an artifact, is, for Functionalism, a matter of indifference The concept of the mental is to be defined in terms of function not in terms of the nature of the system in which it originates.
Mind-Body Problem 416 Can Functionalism resolve the mind-body problem? It cannot comprehend the universally accepted issue of conscious sensations (qualia). Functionalism can not be the whole truth about the nature of mental events. How does Functionalism do with respect to the nature of thinking itself?
Thinking 417 Such plausibility as attaches to the strong claim derives from the fact that computers solve complex problems often more successfully and always more rapidly than the unaided human intellect. If, therefore, what we mean by thinking is finding solutions to problems or answers to questions then we already have all the evidence we need to say that machines can think. But, if there is more to thinking than just informationprocessing in the widest sense, what is that something extra?
Self-Awareness 417 The least that we would require before we were ready to say of something that it was thinking is that it should be aware or what it is doing That it should know what it was thinking about That it should recognize when it has reached a conclusion And that, in general, it should have insight into what is going on.
Self-Awareness 418 Admittedly one cannot prove that this [self-awareness] cannot be the case but, at the same time, there is not the slightest reason for supposing that it does. The only case of self awareness we have is ourselves. We know we are thinking because doubting that fact is evidence of it. Admittedly self-awareness is circular, but every attempt to eliminate it as the central feature of our consciousness shows its centrality.
Emergence 418 Defenders of the strong claim have tried to restore a degree of symmetry by proposing a law of emergence such that, once a given system attains a certain level of complexity and sophistication, it is deemed to be conscious. This is difficult to defend since there is only one known example of self consciousness. And much of what takes place in our thinking process proceeds at an unconscious level.
Software Hardware 418 One of the current cliches about mind and brain is that the brain corresponds to the hardware of a computer while the mind corresponds to its software, that is, to the way in which it is programmed. 419 The basic deficiency of the Functionalist account of mind which allows for the comparison of mind with a computer program is that a program is a program only so long as there is a potential user; a mind, on the other hand, exists in its own right.
Functionalism A Conclusion 419 We may conclude that Functionalism can at best account for the functional aspect of mental life. It can provide no warrant for the strong claim that there is no essential difference between a machine and a mind.
Functionalism Its Corollary 415 There is no theoretical limit to what a machine could be expected to do. 419 The question here is no longer whether such machines will resemble minds, but rather whether they will be able to do everything and more than a human mind could do. This rebounds to another more obscure question: If thinking is an activity of the brain alone, why should we not have evolved with brains as we now possess but without minds?
What Is Mind Responsible For? 420 It now seems more plausible than ever that mind is responsible for just those aspects of thinking that are lacking in computer simulations notably the intuitive insights on which we constantly rely but which cannot be reduced to any set of explicit rules or the voluntary aspects of thinking such as attending to the task in hand and striving to attain its fulfillment.
The Mind-Body Problem 420 Any solution that rests on the denial of consciousness is a non-starter. Either consciousness is an entirely superfluous feature of the world, or consciousness could be taken to represent the incidence of mind when it intervenes in the physical world at the juncture we call the brain.
What Is Lacking 420 An artificial brain necessarily lacks one vital ingredient of a natural brain, namely its link with the non-physical mind or psyche that activates or animates it. This weakens the assumption on which the strong claim is based.
The Possibility of PSI 420 The possibility of PSI, however unlikely to be confirmed by science is nonetheless an additional note in the scale of mental events that reduces the possibility of defending the strong claim. Yet as Evans noted against Turing s objection in Can a Machine Think the analogy between psi powers and radio increases the likelihood that the strong claim is not incorrect.
What Mind is Not 421 It is my belief that the most important lesson we are likely to learn from A.I. is precisely what mind is not. It should enable us to see more clearly the distinction between the purely mechanical aspects of thinking which are presumably mediated for us by the brain, and what is intrinsically and irreducibly mental. Perhaps we shall even be able to lay down a general principle to the effect that whatever can be fully automated in a machine does not pertain to the mind.