On 11/25/2014 2:00 PM, LizR wrote:
On 26 November 2014 at 04:38, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
> I don't think John's post implied that "conscious" was another word
for
"intelligence". I think his position is that a being could be
conscious without
being intelligent (which would be consistent with "aware of one's self
and
surroundings"), but not vice versa.
Exactly.
Ah, well that is a matter of opinion. It would mean that all the tests so far devised
for intelligence that have been passed by computers, including some versions of the
Turing test, may not in fact detect intelligence after all, if those machines aren't
actually conscious, which they may well not be.
Intelligent behavior is observable, so it doesn't make sense to say maybe it isn't really
intelligence because there's a missing but unobservable property "consciousness". Since
the consciousness is unobservable the more sensible assumption would be that the machines
are conscious.
However, I don't agree with John that intelligence is necessarily accompanied by
human-like consciousness. His argument is based on evolution, i.e. that if intelligence
could exist without consciousness then it would evolved that way. But evolution can be
driven by historical accident. So I think his argument only shows that intelligence as it
developed in humans is necessarily accompanied by human-like consciousness that includes
an inner narrtive. Julian Jaynes has a theory about how this happened. But I think there
can be different kinds of consciousness; so I think that there could be intelligence which
is not associated with human-like inner narrative for example. John recognizes that the
human brain has multiple modules which may compete in deciding actions. Watson, which has
a certain intelligence, probably doesn't have this kind of modular competition and so
would have a different kind of consciousness.
This seems to me to be redefining intelligence (and perhaps consciousness). Personally,
I think machines can behave in an intelligent manner without being conscious - or at
least in a manner than most people not used to computers would consider intelligent
(e.g. performing huge mathematical calculations very fast would be considered
intelligent by most people before the advent of computers, as would winning the world
chess championship).
I agree, except to qualify that as without being conscious the way people are with an
inner narrative. I think any intelligent being must have a world-model which includes
itself.
But this is getting very semantic-quibbly. If you guys want to redefine intelligence as
being something that only conscious beings have, then fine, as long as you make it clear
that's what you're doing I have no objection. We'll find another word for what machines
(and unconscious parts of the brain) can do that merely looks intelligent.
> I don't think "being conscious" is a simple unitary attribute. I
think there are
different kinds of "being conscious"
Yes and I have rock solid, I would even go so far as to call it perfect,
evidence
that the above is true; but unfortunately that evidence is available only to me.
You may have a corresponding sort of evidence, I strongly suspect that you do, but I
don't know it for a fact.
This is also a matter of opinion. Some would say that one is either conscious or not,
although what one is conscious /of/ can vary a lot.
Yes, that's Bruno's idea. But he supports it by taking a very weak definition of
consciousness so that it is essentially just awareness of self as distinct from environment.
Brent
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