Russ,
I don't think I took the route you specified. One of problems is that the
question of who has what just doesn't seem very important to me. Comparative
psychology is beset with that question and i became an ethologist to avoid
having to spend all my time talking about it, because it just seemed that we
could sort that question out when we had a better understanding of what animals
can do. I think it is an ethical, not a scientific question. People want
reasons that it's ok or not ok to kill other things. With Quine, I don't think
the answers to that question come from any from of utilitarian logic. By the
way, I just watched a horrific movie that plays with that problem: In Bruge.
Ethologists work on the assumption that the experience of an organism is an
open book to an observer who is willing to read it carefully. Birds
characteristically don't even understand individuality the way we do,
responding to each other as if each individual is a set of unrelated and
disembodied cues that elicit various different functional responses from their
partners.
Actually, the dualism of "experience a feeling of" turns the question from a
difficult one to an impossible one, for me. So far as my understanding is
concerned, one might as well say "feeling a feeling".
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 7:05:01 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
P.S. For "Do robots feel" you might want to substitute "Can robots experience a
feeling of" if that helps.
I hope the answer isn't something like: Robots can be programmed to claim a
feeling of <whatever> in the same circumstances in which humans would
experience such a feeling. I don't take that as answering the question. If
that's the best one can do with robots, then the answer to the original
question is "no." If you take that tactic are you also going to claim that this
is the best that humans do also, i.e., claim a feeling of <whatever> under
certain circumstances? Even if that were true and even if we could precisely
specify the conditions under which humans would claim to experience certain
feelings, that still doesn't speak to the question of the experience itself.
And even if you call the experience itself an illusion, that only raises the
question of what is being fooled. What does the notion of illusion mean without
an experiencer to experience the illusion?
On the other hand, if you weren't going down this route, I'd be interested in
your own answers to the original questions.
-- Russ
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote:
Steve, I appreciate your empathy and help.
Nick, Here are some questions. How about taking a shot at them directly.
Do robots feel irritation and frustration?
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.
Do you grant robots human rights?
Is waterboarding a robot torture?
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.
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?
-- 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 Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
wrote:
Thanks for the backup here.
Help me to see what questions I am not answering, here.
I MEAN to be answering Russ's questions, so given that he feels I am not, we
are near to being reduced to name calling and finger pointing.
Later this evening I will have a chance to work on this.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Smith
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 6/16/2009 10:20:00 AM
Subject: [FRIAM] Nick takes Metaphorazine was: (Subjective) experience
Russ Abbott wrote:
Again you didn't answer the question.
"Feel" has multiple meanings, only one of which has to do with palpating.
I feel for you Russ. I share your frustration with Nick's responses, yet I'm
pretty sure he is trying to get at something completely different which might
be why he is being so difficult about these questions...
Furthermore "feel" as referring to a subjective state is no more a metaphor
than any other language.If, when you get stuck for a reply you retreat to
calling language a metaphor, you will never deal with the issue. All
referential language is metaphor: "an expression used to refer to something
that it does not literally denote." 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.
I suspect that all language is figurative. Many of our intellectualizations
are based on understanding by analogy and therefore rooted in metaphor (did I
just say "based on"? and then "rooted"? - *what* must I be talking "about"?
Can't I just be "direct" and quit "beating around the bush" and using
"oblique" and "tangential" references to things?).
I do suspect Nick might have been dipping into his Metaphorazine...
fortunately he's stayed out of his stash of Onamatopiates (so far) and you
don't want to be there when he jacks up on Alliterene and Hyberbolehyde! Did
he say he was just off to the Docs' for a fresh set of scrips?
Metaphorazine
by jeff noon
Johnny takes Metaphorazine. Every clockwork day. Says it burns his
house down, with a haircut made of wings. You could say he eats a
problem. You could say he stokes his thrill. Every clingfilm evening,
climb inside a little pill. Intoxicate the feelings. Play those skull-piano
blues.
Johnny takes Metaphorazine.
He's a dog.
For the full poem, click the link above.
I doubt that I can add any clarity with my own stirring here, but I feel
compelled. Or perhaps there is an observation of compellingness which is
uniquely situated in the metaphorical location which does not change when
movement happens. This reminds me (way too much) of the implications (I
think) of David Bohm's Rheomode.
I sometimes suspect that David Bohm drank Simileum like Absynthe. Or perhaps
it is just an occupational hazard of trying to understand and explain Quantum
Theory.
I believe that Nick's point is that among those who experience "I"ness (the
experience of being in the first person?), that this is really the experience
of observing from a unique perspective. That qualitatively, whatever
observers might exist, they are inherently 3rd person, observing a world.
What "we" (those illusory beings who feel first-personish) observe when we
think we are observing ourselves is really an illusion or a consequence of the
uniqueness of that observation being embodied, and nothing more (as if that is
not enough?). This is a subtle thing, and I'm not sure I really get it, but I
do feel that I have a hint of what he is trying to describe.
I'm not sure that the question of whether Robots (or computers, or smart
phones, or hand-calculators, or abacii, or quipu) have experiences is relevant
to this topic. That might be partially why Nick keeps ignoring it. I think
it is nevertheless an interesting (and important?) question, but I think it is
not germane to the point he is making.
I suppose Nick could speak for himself, but I'm having such a grand time trying
him on (after an extra heavy dose of Metaphorazine) that I can't help it!
Woof Woof, Squeek Squeek, Chirp Chirp, Blah Blah,
- Sieve
PS. Yes, I am perhaps, having waaay too much fun!
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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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
