Russ,
I am doing the best I can. Often, your questions don't make the kind of sense
to me that they make to you, and the framework that you employ to ask them,
while familiar to me, is baffling. So please, please, don't read my inability
to meet you on your own terms as stubbornness... blindness, perhaps,but not
stubbornness. You may need to draw the question out a little bit, tell me the
ways in which you find the answers un satisfying, etc. What we are doing here
is not easy and much harder than what usually happens on this list, which
usually amounts to neighboring gardeners throwing a few old turnips over the
garden wall and then going on with their gardening. We are truly trying to
grow a crop together.
Anyway, I will go through and answer the ones in the latest message simply and
directly.
Look for blue text.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 6/16/2009 8:24:46 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
Again you didn't answer the question. "Feel" has multiple meanings, only one of
which has to do with palpating.
well, remember, I am talking models or metaphors, not meanings. So the
question is, what model [scientific metaphor] does the word feeling invoke? Is
that image clear, or confused? Does it invoke different images in different
people? I think "feel" invokes only one model, which is then more or less
abused in our language: to explore with the fingertips; the others are attempts
to extend that image and some work well, some work ok, and some work horribly.
"I feel nauseous" is one of the latter.
Furthermore "feel" as referring to a subjective state is no more a metaphor
than any other language.
Absolutely!! that's why i say "it's metaphors all the way down". Even the
visual system uses metaphors to see with. So, you ask, if everything is
metaphors, what value is there in saying so. Well, to steal from my friend
John Kennison (who disagrees with me on most points but cannot defend himself
because his internet is down), metaphors have domains of utility. If one
strays outside a metaphor's domains of utility, you may either be saying
something fresh and brilliant or something really silly. I would argue that "I
feel nauseous" is in the latter category.
If, when you get stuck for a reply you retreat to calling language a metaphor,
you will never deal with the issue.
I dont think it is a retreat and I do think it is helpful to think that way.
But I am trying to convince YOU, so the burden of showing that it is helpful
lies with me.
All referential language is metaphor: "an expression used to refer to something
that it does not literally denote."
Hmmm! I wonder if we are using the same definition of metaphor. Let me define
by example. My favorite example of a [scientific] metaphor is darwin's Natural
Selection, which is a metaphor from the domain of pigeon breeding to the domain
of natural history. So making a metaphor (model) is the application of the
form, language, arguments, etc., of a familiar and well understood domain to an
ostensibily different one that is less well understood. Not clear to me how
that definition maps onto the one that you cited in quotes, below. Perhaps if
I used the term "model", that would help?
where "denote" means "to be a sign or indication of." All referential
language is intentional. It is never the thing to which it refers. Some
language, such as exclamations, e.g., of joy, pain, etc. are often an aspect of
the thing itself. But this is a tangent. I want you to deal with the issue of
experience.
In your message you completely ignored my other questions.
I really dont think I did, mostly, but I am sure it feels that way, so let me
take this task literally,
Please go back to my previous message and reply to the questions in it as they
are intended. Or here's a list that will do.
Do robots feel irritation and frustration? It depends on the design of the
robot. If a robot is designed to do the sorts of things that irritated and
frustrated organisms do, then my answer would be yes. The distinction between
original and derived intentionality is of absolutely no interest to me.
Do robots feel nauseous in the commonly understood sense of the terms "feel"
and "nauseous"? Most people have no trouble understanding what "feeling
nauseous" means. I have never heard anyone say that using the term "feeling
nauseous" is grammatically strange. Let's just use the common sense meaning of
the term. Or are you denying that the common sense meaning of the term has any
content, e.g., like Santa Clause if taken literally.
It isn't fair for you to be pissed at me for not understanding, unless you
suspect that i am being dishonest in some way. Since I think of myself as a
pretty honest person, I take it hard to be called dishonest. So please weald
that club only when you absolutely think you need to.
You are asking me to to do more than just play the language game that goes with
the expression "feeling nauseous". If you say that you are "feeling nauseous"
i will understand that your world seems like it is churning around but that
your visual cues do not confirm (i.e., you are dizzy) and that your stomach
feels the way it does when on previous occasions you have thrown up. I could
certainly make a robot that would clear it's energy source when its onboard
computers malfunctioned, so I guess the answer is yes. But you are almost
certainly asking me a "qualia"-type question, and i just dont understand how
those questions work.
Do you grant robots human rights?
I only grant rights to people who show up at my meetings and take on
responsibilities.
Is waterboarding a robot torture?
I think I could so design a robot.
Whether waterboarding a robot is torture or not would it be effective? If so,
why and how. If not. how does that distinguish between robots and humans--for
which waterboarding generally is effective.
There is some difference of opinion on that point, of course. But you can
predict my answers to any of these questions, by using the "quacks-like-a-duck"
test.
And your own question: do robots dream? Or are you denying that you dream? I
didn't understand your comment in that regard. Or were you acknowledging that
the line of thought you are taking leads nowhere?
The easiest thing to say would be no, I dont dream. In fact, I dream only very
rarely. That would leave you with the work of proving that I do. To do that
work, you would have to reveal that you dont trust my verbal reports... you
simply dont privilege the first person view in the way that your position
implies. Nobody does. You would have to bring EVIDENCE to bear, and that
evidence would inevitably be of the third person type. And then you would be
out sliding around on my miserable slippery slope with me. And misery loves
company.
But such an argument would not be quite honest. So, I have to say something
like the following. Some things that I have experienced appear, on sober
reflection, and gathering of all relevant evidence, not to have happened at
all. Often these happen while I am in bed.
Or perhaps, I could say that dreaming is a tough case and I dont know what to
do with it.
Now I have a question for you. What does subjective add to the phrase
subjective experience?
By the way, I think that the extensionless dot is actually probably a wrong
view, one that will fail in the long run. I "just" think it is a better place
to start than the Cartesian theatre.
Because I think it will fail, I am interested in what self knowledge means to a
computer engineer. Computers are full of systems that generate self knowledge
of various sorts ... if only the system manifest, and all of that. Right? And
gathering self knowledge, requires exploiting cues. So it is never quite SELF
knowledge ... it is not knowledge about the self-knowledge gathering system
itself. It must be knowledge gathered ABOUT the larger system that surrounds
it through the use of cues.
The list's response to this inquiry has been quite startling to me. Seems to
be of the form, "computers dont gather information about themselves!" They are
too dumb!
Frankly, I dont know what to make of that response. am I misreading it?
Nick
-- Russ
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:11 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
wrote:
Russ and Steve,
Seeing Drs in Boston today, so out of this wonderful loop for a day.
About "feeling nauseous". If a robot can DO nauseous, it can feel nauseous,
would be my first response. But notice what a strain on grammar is put by the
notion of "feeling nauseous". "feeling" is a metaphor, akin to touching with
the fingertips. How do I palpate "nauseous"? Something VERY STRANGE GOING ON
HERE.
Look, I stipulate that privileging a third person view (as opposed to the more
traditional practice of privileging a first person view) is not going to rescue
me (or us) from talking silly. But it will change the kind of silly talk we
do.
The tough one is dreaming. Do robots dream? Does Nick dream? One can either
launch into reams of inter psychic babble or one can "just say no"! It's a
different kind of silliness.
Anyway, this has been written in great haste and is probably of lower quality
than usual.
Do good, today.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: 6/16/2009 1:08:25 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
P.P.S. Do you think you could get a robot to provide information it "didn't
want" to provide (whatever you think that means) by waterboarding it?
-- Russ
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:36 PM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote:
P.S. Nick, Do you believe that robots are capable of feeling frustrated and
irritated?
-- Russ
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote:
See below.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
wrote:
See comments in Navy Blue below.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 6/15/2009 8:49:41 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
When "experience" is used as a verb, we don't add the word "subjective." We add
it when "experience" is used as a noun to refer to first person experience. The
broader word "experience" isn't that precise.
How could an experience not be the experience from the point of view of an
agent? I dont see what is being specified by the addition of "subjective".
Didn't I already respond to that? No point in doing it again.
But more to the point I'm still confused what you mean bv "I don't deny that
I, or the cat, or even the robot, experience (when all three obey the rules of
"experiencing"). What rules are you talking about?
The implicit rules anybody applies before they use a sentence like, "the cat
was aware of the mouse." What would we have to see before we would. Sadly,
there hasnt been much incentive to formalize those rules since we talk of
experiene as an event somwhere rather than as a relationship between an agent
and an event.
I don't believe I operate according to rules. So again, I don't know what rules
you are talking about. But more importantly, I'm more interested in a sentence
like "I was aware of the mouse." You keep changing the subject to an
observation of something else. The issue is what does it mean to say that I am
having an experience, e.g., "I feel nauseous." Does it mean anything to you? I
still don't know. Also, I still don't know whether you would understand a robot
that said "I feel nauseous" to mean the same sort of thing that you mean by
that sentence.
Furthermore, I don't agree that robots have the same sort of first person
experience that we and cats do. Is that really your position, that robots
"experience" the world the same way you do? If so, doesn't it follow that we
should be kind to robots in the same way we should be kind to people and cats,
that robots deserve humane treatment, etc.?
I was interested to see where you would draw the line. Some would draw it
between the cat and the human. What I can't understand is what committment --
other than a metaphysical one -- would lead one to draw it anywhere in the
absense of some empirical standard for what constitutes the act of
experiencing.
You are not answering the question. If a robot feeling nauseous means to you
the same thing as a human feeling nauseous, do you grant it the same sorts of
"rights" that we grant each other. I'd like to know your answer. For example,
would it be torture to waterboard a robot?
-- Russ Abbott
Thanks for hanging in, here, Russ. This is interesting.
I'm beginning to feel irritated. It seems to me you aren't engaging in an
honest dialog since you aren't responding to the questions I asked. I took some
time to construct questions that would help me understand your position. But if
you won't answer them I'm wasting my time, which I find frustrating, not
interesting.
Nick
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 7:09 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
wrote:
Russ,
I don't think I am bickering or splitting hairs; but then, people who are,
never do.
To put yourself in my frame of mind on these issues, start by saying what you
can say about what others "see". I see that my cat sees the mouse in the
corner of the room.
Anything I can say of the cat, I can say of myself.; anything I cannot say of
the cat, I cannot say of myself.... well, except for the fur part.
If all experience is subjective, then we probably don't need the extra word, do
we? I don't deny that I, or the cat, or even the robot, experience (when all
three obey the rules of "experiencing"). I just don't see what is gained by
adding the word "subjective" except a very confusing and inconsistent
metaphysics.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 6/15/2009 7:38:20 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The ghost in the machine (was 'quick question')
Nick,
In one of the previous messages, you said, "I don't know about you, but I
experience a world." Experiencing a world is a mark of subjective experience.
Robots don't experience; they have sensors that measure things and report those
measures, from which the robot may draw conclusions. There is a difference. I
don't understand how you can deny that difference.
After all, what do you mean by "experience the world" other than subjective
experience? Is this just a matter of terminological bickering? If you are
willing to say that you experience the world, then by my understanding of
"experience" you have subjective experience.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
