Hi Ian
]
Is there intelligence at life's lower levels or only
with the higher animals do you think?
David M
Matt, Krim, DM,
(Sorry been outta circulation for a week)
Not quite Matt.
I'm saying even the "life" does not (necessarily) have to be
biological. That could arise in complex systems. My point is that life
will preceed intelligence (as it does in the MoQ) wherever it arises.
The "artificiality" is simply a matter of perception (was my other
point). ie seeing non-biological-life and thinking-with-non-meat as
"artificial" is just our anthropocentic perspective. Being
"engineered" is only one possible take on being artificial. - I don't
believe life or intelligence will ever be "engineered" - not directly
anyway ... as I went on to say.
Ian
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Matt Kundert
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hey Krimel,
Krimel said to Ian:
You are right I must be missing your point. If you are saying that "life"
or "intelligence" can arise "naturally" out of printed circuits then I
don't think we are even using the same language. When you say
intelligence is not inherent in biological systems or that genes produce
brains but not intelligence this just seems to be adding subtlety at the
expense of intelligibility.
Matt:
To intercede in a conversation I haven't been following closely at all, I
think Ian's point is that the idea behind the natural/artificial
distinction may be misplaced when talking about the idea of robots
someday having minds/consciousness like humans. As a pragmatist, I think
Ian's stance is that the mind/consciousness evolved naturally out of
biological evolution, that cultural evolution is predicated on
biological, that whatever the mind is, it is basically what happens when
biological processes get really, really complex. For pragmatists,
traveling up what used to be called the Great Chain of Being, or up
Pirsig's static levels, is at root a continuum of complexity.
I think the example that is in point is Asimov's story that got made into
the Will Smith movie, I, Robot. At that level of robotic complexity,
we--as viewers in addition to the characters--have trouble knowing
whether we should treat them as "one of us," i.e. whether moral/legal
categories apply to them and how. _This_ is the pertinent question--not
how they came to be. The natural/artificial distinction becomes
outmoded.
Besides, I think Ian might also be playing at breaking down the
distinction along the lines of, "When did our activities cease to be
natural?" One can cry foul for common sense, but as a philosophical
point, I have some sympathy because of our Enlightenment philosophical
heritage, which treats "natural" as a moral category of approbation, and
hence Will Smith's difficulty in treating robots morally (ya' know,
feeling remorse for shooting them in the head and such).
Matt
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