My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligence of computers

[Roger Clough]

Hi

I was wrong.

According to my own definition of intelligence-- that it is the
ability of an entity, having at least some measure of free will,
to make choices on its own (without outside help)-- a
computer can have intelligence, and intelligence in no small measure.

The ability to sort is an example. To give a simple example, a
computer can sort information, just as Maxwell's Demon could,
into two bins. Instead of temperature, it could just be a number.
Numbers larger than A go into one bin, smaller than A go
into another bin. It does it all on its own, using an "if" statement.





Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
11/11/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

[Craig Weinberg]

Doesn't mean that a coffee filter is intelligent too? If so, is a series of coffee filters more intelligent than one? What about one with a hole in it?

Craig

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

Everything has at least some intelligence or consciousness, according to Leibniz's metaphysics,

even rocks.  But these "bare naked monads" are essentially in deep, drugged  sleep and darkness,

or at best drunk. Leibniz called such a state the unconscious way before Freud and Jung.

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/15/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-12, 09:54:53

Subject: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligence of computers

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/4uRvNZH9oIsJ.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, November 15, 2012 9:42:25 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

Everything has at least some intelligence or consciousness, according to Leibniz's metaphysics,

even rocks.  But these "bare naked monads" are essentially in deep, drugged  sleep and darkness,

or at best drunk. Leibniz called such a state the unconscious way before Freud and Jung.

I believe that there is an experience on the micro-level of what the coffee filter is made of - molecules held together as fibers maybe, bit I don't think that it knows or cares about filtering. It's like if you write the letters A and B on a piece of paper - I think there is an experience there on the molecular level, of adhesion, evaporation, maybe other interesting things we will never know, but I don't think that the letter A knows that there is a letter B there. Do you? I don't think the letters have a consciousness because they aren't actually beings, the patterns which they embody to us are in our experience, not independent beings.

Craig

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

I agree with what you say, but there's no need to humanize

the coffee filters nor humanize intelligence or consciousness.

I'm not talking here about IQ. My point (speaking here as Leibniz)  is that

nature down to the lowliest beings (a grain of sand) has intelligence

of some sort. Nature is alive, and life is intelligence.  

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/16/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-15, 13:53:48

Subject: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligence ofcomputers

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Ewl6J7rU8jgJ.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, November 16, 2012 5:55:41 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

I agree with what you say, but there's no need to humanize

the coffee filters nor humanize intelligence or consciousness.

I'm not talking here about IQ. My point (speaking here as Leibniz)  is that

nature down to the lowliest beings (a grain of sand) has intelligence

of some sort. Nature is alive, and life is intelligence.  

My point though is just because we put fibers into a mold or dots on a page into a form we can recognize doesn't mean that we have created new life and intelligence. There is a difference between assembling something from tiny spatial-object parts and something reproducing itself from teleological-experiential wholes. A mannequin is not a person. The plaster and steel the mannequin is made of may certainly have a quality of experience, and although it is hard to speculate on exactly what kinds of experiences those are or what level of microcosm or macrocosm they are associated with, one thing that I am quite certain of is that the plaster and steel mannequin is not having the experience of a human person, no matter how convincing of a mannequin it looks to us to be. The same goes for cartoons, drawings, photos, movies..those things aren't alive or intelligent, but they are made of things which, on some level, are capable of sense participation. Computers are just a more pronounced example. As they improve they may be more convincing imitations of our human intelligence, but that quality of awareness is only a recorded reflection of our own, it is not being generated by nature directly and it is neither alive nor intelligent.

Craig

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

When I say that all bodies live, I failed to state that they must be monads, which

means that that they must be of one part.  I don't think mannekins would qualify,

nor cartoons, which aren't even bodies.  " Of one part" I think means that there

is something holding the thing (then a substance)  together in some way, like life.

Or an electromagnetic, biological,  or chemical field. 

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/16/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-16, 07:16:17

Subject: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligenceofcomputers

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/CcSHB3_y74QJ.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, November 16, 2012 8:42:24 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

When I say that all bodies live, I failed to state that they must be monads, which

means that that they must be of one part.  I don't think mannekins would qualify,

nor cartoons, which aren't even bodies.  " Of one part" I think means that there

is something holding the thing (then a substance)  together in some way, like life.

Or an electromagnetic, biological,  or chemical field. 

But mannequins are held together by chemical and electromagnetic fields.
 

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

But not ONE field.

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/17/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-16, 15:57:06

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of theintelligenceofcomputers

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/X0PwB_Wq7RsJ.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Saturday, November 17, 2012 6:26:12 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

But not ONE field.

Neither is the brain or body held together by one field.
 

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

You hit on a weak point. There is no agreed-upon version of Leibniz's definition of substance.

 

Here's two versions, which do not contradict each other when adjusted (see below).

1. Leibniz [snip] considers substance as "a being gifted with the power of action".

 

2) L's substances are "complete concepts" , those being corporeal (extended) bodies,

so are not ideas and such inextended subjects.

 

L's substances are similar in that respect to Aristotle, except that while Aristotle's substances are

of the same stuff, Leibniz says that they must all be different, and not only that, they keep changing.

 

L's MONADS are substances without parts (with no internal boundaries).  Two rocks cemented together

would have an internal boundary, and each part would be a substance, the whole body being

a composite monad or two substances. 

 

IMHO mannekins are not wholes, as, say, Caesar is whole, and they also have internal boundaries.  

By whole subject I mean that to which predicates can be attached.

Below an author discusses five versions Leibniz gives of substance and

allows for them if the fifth, conflicting version, is omitted.  

 

http://www.ditext.com/russell/leib1.html#4

"4. His premisses

      The principal premisses of Leibniz's philosophy appear to me to be five. Of these some were by him definitely laid down, while others were so fundamental that he was scarcely conscious of them. I shall now enumerate these premisses, and shall endeavour to show, in subsequent chapters, how the rest of Leibniz follows from them. The premisses in question are as follows:

1. Every proposition has a subject and a predicate.
2. A subject may have predicates which are qualities existing at various times. (Such a subject is called a substance.)
3. True propositions not asserting existence at particular times are necessary and analytic, but such as assert existence at particular times are contingent and synthetic. Thc latter depend upon final causes.
4. The Ego is a substance.
5. Perception yields knowlcdge of an external world, i.e. of existents other than myself and my states.

The fundamental objection to Leibniz's philosophy will be found to be the inconsistency of the first premiss with the fourth and fifth; and in this inconsistency we shall find a general objection to Monadism.

5. Course of the present work

      The course of the present work will be as follows: Chaptcrs II.-V. will discuss the consequences of the first four of the above premisses, and will show that they lead to the whole, or nearly the whole, of the necessary propositions of the system. "

 

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/18/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-17, 09:58:35

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding oftheintelligenceofcomputers

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/5MPdS3kYjC4J.

[Craig Weinberg]

Hi Roger,

I think it's circular to define a monad as a being gifted with the power of action if we are using the monad hypothesis to try to explain consciousness, which can be considered the power of action in the sense that L intends here. I don't think that in that sentence he is suggesting that the mechanical automatons which were built in his lifetime would be beings gifted with the power of action. Machines don't exactly have a 'power' of action, but their operation results in the effect of the action of their parts.

In the 17th century, it was easier to say that rather than having the power of actions, machines are simply subject to reaction, and as such are not beings and not monads. However, it can be said that since that time the gap has closed, because

1. Genetics and evolution reveal mechanistic sub-personal and super-personal levels which paint our power of action as dual mechanisms of reaction. Scripted from below and selected naturally from above, we are functionally indistinct from a machine, or so it would seem logically.

2. Nuclear physics reveals a microcosm replete with action-reaction dynamism. If they are monads, then the question of why some of their configurations are gifted beings and others are reactive non-beings becomes the more relevant question.

3. Fully automatic mechanisms; everything from automatic transmissions to Google computer driven cars show that mechanical reactions seem to be a fair substitute in many cases for the functions and behaviors of gifted beings. We now have interactive machines and the promise of robots and even nanobots which can seek out their own energy sources and reproduce.

Those three add up to a pretty strong case for functionalism ruling out any meaningful difference between man, monad, and machine. Most people who understand that case are understandably persuaded that it must be the case, especially with what seems to be a strengthening of the case continuously with studies which seem to undermine the authenticity of free will and the veracity of our personal perception. At the same time, AI would seem to be making gains in the application of mechanically-intelligent systems, at least to a wider and wider range of technologies.

Why I think that this is actually not the whole truth is that because of

1. The Hard Problem and Explanatory Gap. Logically, and with automatic mechanism, there is no reason for any such thing as experience to exist in the universe and no justification for strong emergence. Not only is there no reason for an eyeball to open the brain up to a world of color and images, and nothing for color and images to be made of, and nowhere for them to exist in the universe, even the idea of something like geometric logic to exist in the universe is ultimately as superfluous as consciousness. There is simply no plausible function for any kind of aesthetic richness. There is no material support for any more than a single channel of information transfer, as is revealed by the lack of utility within computers for anything other than invisible, intangible execution of binary coded voltage manipulations. The computer doesn't need to experience anything visual, you do. But why?

2. The Brain as Reducing Valve. Studies such as the recent one on psilocybin (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/17/1119598109), the 1995 Crick & Koch study showing that the visual cortex doesn't contain visual experience (http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/26/1/69.pdf), and now this study on neuroimaging trance states (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0049360) are part of a body of evidence suggesting that activity in the brain is not correlated with what we might expect. Complex, aesthetic experiences like a psychedelic trip or composing an intricately worded message seem to coincide with lower activity in the relevant areas of the brain rather than higher levels. The Koch study tells me that the visual cortex is about using our brain to pay attention to visual patterns, but not about actually seeing. The images are not there in the brain, despite those blurry blobs (http://us.gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity) which are being extracted by analyzing the neural evidence of that attention. I think that we are painting digital pictures based on where we are looking, not what we are seeing, and that these blurry images, rather than heralding an age of better and better images lifted from fMRIs of brain activity, should be understood to be the end of the line for phrenological assumptions about the brain where images literally reside inside the brain. This ultimately is no different from looking for small kitchens in the brain where the smells of remembered aromas are cooked up. It's a category error. Stop it.

3. The Fundamental Wonder of Consciousness. Awareness is not remotely like anything else from our perspective. The visceral depth of realism cannot be easily accounted for by mere arithmetic equivalences. For a computer, 'trying harder' simply means allocating more resources to a job. If you want your human robot to lose weight, you simply instruct the robot to do so programmatically, and it will consume less calories and exercise more. What we face as conscious beings is much different. We may logically understand that it is critical to our survival and well being to lose weight, yet in practice, we are loathe to actually do the simple tasks which we know will cause that to happen. What stops is is a feeling which, like pain or blue, has to be experienced to be understood. We are compelled by a subjective, semantic experience which we not only find unpleasant and therefore modifies our behavior mechanically, but it has qualities that somehow compel the interpretation of the experience as being unpleasant in the first place. The qualities can even be separated out so that we can learn to like the unpleasant sensations and addicted to them as in anorexia or bulimia. Besides the Hard Problem question of 'Why does experience exist in the universe?' and the Explanatory Gap of 'How is qualia appearing from my brain?', the nature of qualia itself is orders of magnitude more subtle and interesting than any underlying information-theoretic function behind it. It's like creating a symphony orchestra to play every time a traffic signal turns red, or a thousand traffic signals turn red in a row. Where are these qualities coming from? Why are they so wonderful and awful?

4. Multisense Realism. I have put together what I think is a better explanation which makes sense of all of the above. By placing sense or experience itself as the fabric of the cosmos (not matter, not information, not quantum), then it makes sense that aesthetic richness rather than pure function would be the primary product of the cosmos. This, product, which I call significance is accomplished through the juxtaposition of one kind of presentation (of private sequential experiences of a highly plastic, dynamic, and multivalent nature) with its opposite (a public spatial relativity of objects in discrete, static, literal positions and scales). This juxtaposition of presentations and nested meta-presentation levels give rise to analytic geometry vs algebra on one 'side', and synthetic metaphor and gestalt on the other. The interplay not only created significance in the form of more meaningful subjective experiences for evolved living organisms, but a more magnificent collection of objects on the exterior side. The felt ordinality of our superior interiority (we're number one!) is matched in some ways by the known cardinality of our place in an increasingly vast exteriority. The quantitative and qualitative sides both make their own aesthetic contribution, but ultimately it is the aesthetics of the thing and not the computable function of the thing which is worthwhile. Without the subjective experience, the vastness of stars in the universe or molecules in a grain of sand on a beach is indistinguishable from nothing at all. Without either the sense of a universe within us or a universe without us, there would be no possibility of what we know as 'realism'. Significance alone can create a beautiful experience, but without the appearance of entropy and loss, that significance can gain no traction, grounding. I suspect that it's not the Higgs Boson or any other partical, but external realism itself which 'causes', or rather embodies gravity.

Craig

[Roger Clough]

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-18, 10:28:36

Subject: Re: Leibniz's definition(s) of substance

CRAIG: Hi Roger,

I think it's circular to define a monad as a being gifted with the power of action if we are using the monad hypothesis to try to explain consciousness, which can be considered the power of action in the sense that L intends here. I don't think that in that sentence he is suggesting that the mechanical automatons which were built in his lifetime would be beings gifted with the power of action. Machines don't exactly have a 'power' of action, but their operation results in the effect of the action of their parts.

 

ROGER: In Idealism no forces can be used, so action is always done "as if".  Similar to representative government,

where our representative, the Supreme Monad, acts by means of legislation in terms of our wishes. This is all indirect,

but the result appears "as if" we had acted directly. The issues you raise below are in terms of mechanistic philosophy,

and no doubt correct in those terms. But Leibniz's "as if" philosophy achieves the same results in terms of ideas,

not forces. That's apples, you're arguing oranges.  So it is impossible for me to reply to your arguments,

since they apply to the physical world, but Leibniz dealt with the nonphysical world.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

CRAIG: In the 17th century, it was easier to say that rather than having the power of actions, machines are simply subject to reaction, and as such are not beings and not monads. However, it can be said that since that time the gap has closed, because

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/iKCEgnjazI4J.

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

Hi

I was wrong.

According to my own definition of intelligence-- that it is the
ability of an entity, having at least some measure of free will,
to make choices on its own (without outside help)--  a
computer can have intelligence, and intelligence in no small measure.

The ability to sort is an example. To give a simple example, a
computer can sort information, just as Maxwell's Demon could,
into two bins. Instead of temperature, it could just be a number.
Numbers larger than A go into one bin, smaller than A go
into another bin.  It does it all on its own, using an "if" statement.

Roger,

It takes bravery to admit one's own mistakes.  However, it surprised me that it was the sorting of numbers into two bins that changed your mind, rather than the more impressive feats, such as this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf49AAi6FeU&feature=bf_prev&list=PLEB3FD7F6911027E4

Perhaps it was that you did not realize computer's make decisions independently when they evaluate condition statements (such as if statements), and therefore everything computers did was pre-set by the programmers?

Thanks,

Jason

[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, November 19, 2012 6:25:51 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-18, 10:28:36

Subject: Re: Leibniz's definition(s) of substance

CRAIG: Hi Roger,

I think it's circular to define a monad as a being gifted with the power of action if we are using the monad hypothesis to try to explain consciousness, which can be considered the power of action in the sense that L intends here. I don't think that in that sentence he is suggesting that the mechanical automatons which were built in his lifetime would be beings gifted with the power of action. Machines don't exactly have a 'power' of action, but their operation results in the effect of the action of their parts.

 

ROGER: In Idealism no forces can be used, so action is always done "as if".  Similar to representative government,

where our representative, the Supreme Monad, acts by means of legislation in terms of our wishes. This is all indirect,

but the result appears "as if" we had acted directly. The issues you raise below are in terms of mechanistic philosophy,

and no doubt correct in those terms. But Leibniz's "as if" philosophy achieves the same results in terms of ideas,

not forces. That's apples, you're arguing oranges.  So it is impossible for me to reply to your arguments,

since they apply to the physical world, but Leibniz dealt with the nonphysical world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------t http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

What's the difference whether it is us directly or us as proxy who exerts the force of ideas on to physical matter? The hard problem works the same way in either case, and my model explains that relation better than idealism or materialism can.

Craig