On 11 Jan 2013, at 14:07, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Friday, January 11, 2013 12:27:54 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 1/10/2013 9:20 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, January 10, 2013 7:33:06 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 1/10/2013 4:23 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Do you think there can be something that is intelligent but not
complex (and use whatever definitions of "intelligent" and
"complex" you want).
A thermostat is much less complex than a human brain but
intelligent under my definition.
But much less intelligent. So in effect you think there is a
degree of intelligence in everything, just like you believe there's
a degree of consciousness in everything. And the degree of
intelligence correlates with the degree of complexity ...but you
don't think the same about consciousness?
Brent
I was thinking today that a decent way of defining intelligence is
just 'The ability to know "what's going on"'.
This makes it clear that intelligence refers to the degree of
sophistication of awareness, not just complexity of function or
structure. This is why a computer which has complex function and
structure has no authentic intelligence and has no idea 'what's
going on'. Intelligence however has everything to do with
sensitivity, integration, and mobilization of awareness as an
asset, i.e. to be directed for personal gain or shared enjoyment,
progress, etc. Knowing what's going on implicitly means caring what
goes on, which also supervenes on biological quality investment in
experience.
Which is why I think an intelligent machine must be one that acts in
its environment. Simply 'being aware' or 'knowing' are meaningless
without the ability and motives to act on them.
Sense and motive are inseparable ontologically, although they can be
interleaved by level. A plant for instance has no need to act on the
world to the same degree as an organism which can move its location,
but the cells that make up the plant act to grow and direct it
toward light, extend roots to water and nutrients, etc.
Ontologically however, there is no way to really have awareness
which matters without some participatory opportunity or potential
for that opportunity.
The problem with a machine (any machine) is that at the level which
is it a machine, it has no way to participate. By definition a
machine does whatever it is designed to do.
We can argue that the "natural machine" are not designed but selected.
Even partially self-selected through choice of sexual partners.
Anything that we use as a machine has to be made of something which
we can predict and control reliably,
Human made machine are designed in this way.
so that its sensory-motive capacities are very limited by
definition. Its range of 'what's going on' has to be very narrow.
The internet, for instance, passes a tremendous number of events
through electronic circuits, but the content of all of it is
entirely lost on it. We use the internet to increase our sense and
inform our motives, but its sense and motive does not increase at all.
Our computer are not encouraged to develop themselves. They are sort
of slaves. But machines in general are not predictable, unless we
limit them in some way, as we do usually (a bit less so in AI
research, but still so for the applications: the consumers want
obedient machines).
You have a still a pre-Gödel or pre-Turing conception of machine. We
just don't know what universal machine/number are capable of.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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