Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/23/2010 8:26 PM, Rex Allen wrote: If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. And if that reaction is to manipulate it's envrionment is a way advantageous to it, it's intelligent. A rock interacts with its environment. A human interacts with its environment. The term manipulate is misleading...in that it adds nothing over interacts with except the implication of intentionality. Which assumes that which must be proven...that there is something intrinsically different in the rock's interactions and the human's interactions. Basically I am arguing that intentionality is epiphenomenal in a rule-driven universe. It has no causal power, it doesn't add anything to the underlying rules, and it isn't part of the underlying rule set. Intentionality is just part of how things seem to us...an aspect of our conscious experience. It is a concept that we are conscious of, but which has no existence outside of conscious thought. Since intentionality is merely experiential, epiphenomenal, and non-causal - an abstract concept - then intelligence is as well. Intelligence must always be relative to some situation or environment. That's where Putnam and Moravec go wrong and Merriam-Webster get it right. If you can find a Putnam-mapping that can extracts a representation of a conscious entity, you can also find a mapping that extracts a representation of an environment to go with it. The attribution of intelligence is just part of our experience. Which is just to say, that person seems intelligent to me. But the rule-generated belief that the person is intelligent is all there is to his intelligence. Therefore: No one is intelligent, but many people are believed to be. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. That's not a usable definition: internal=inaccessible. Knowledge must be expressible. It must be information that makes a difference. Otherwise you fall into the paradox of the rock that computes everything. A rock's internal state does make a difference in how it interacts with its environment. It's just that these differences are too subtle to be easily detected. The way the rock absorbs and emits heat and radiation, it’s response to vibrations, and even the precise way air molecules interact with it all reveal information about it’s internal state. To quote Jim Holt: Take that rock over there. It doesn't seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock's innards 'see' the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers's slogan, 'Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.' But the rock doesn't exert itself as a result of all this 'thinking.' Why should it? Its existence, unlike ours, doesn't depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. And you might draw the moral that the universe is, and always has been, saturated with mind, even though we snobbish Darwinian-replicating latecomers are too blinkered to notice. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 2:43 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The word 'universe does not refer to anything except the observable experiential first person plural (sharable among collection of programs) that arithmetic places on us as a consequence of addition and multiplication. I agree that first person experience can probably be represented that way, but I doubt that it is that way in an ontological sense. But that is not a reason to say that the universes and intelligence does not exist, only that they are not primitive. I think I agree. The term intelligence has meaning in the first person experiential sense, but not in the third person. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: The text is well done. Thanks. A question. What would be the consequence of the nomologicalism for a person that would like to earn some more money? Well, let us not consider the case when one successfully sells the text about nomologicalism. Hm. Well, I'd say the consequence is that whether you earn more money in the future is a function of the universe's initial conditions and (possibly probabilistic) causal laws. Either things will go your way, or they won't. To the extent that it isn't predetermined, it's random. Bottom line: At the end of the day, the day is over. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 9/25/2010 11:59 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/23/2010 8:26 PM, Rex Allen wrote: If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. And if that reaction is to manipulate it's envrionment is a way advantageous to it, it's intelligent. A rock interacts with its environment. A human interacts with its environment. The term manipulate is misleading...in that it adds nothing over interacts with except the implication of intentionality. Which assumes that which must be proven...that there is something intrinsically different in the rock's interactions and the human's interactions. Basically I am arguing that intentionality is epiphenomenal in a rule-driven universe. It has no causal power, it doesn't add anything to the underlying rules, and it isn't part of the underlying rule set. Intentionality is just part of how things seem to us...an aspect of our conscious experience. It is a concept that we are conscious of, but which has no existence outside of conscious thought. Since intentionality is merely experiential, epiphenomenal, and non-causal - an abstract concept - then intelligence is as well. Intelligence must always be relative to some situation or environment. That's where Putnam and Moravec go wrong and Merriam-Webster get it right. If you can find a Putnam-mapping that can extracts a representation of a conscious entity, you can also find a mapping that extracts a representation of an environment to go with it. Sure - but it's not our environment. The attribution of intelligence is just part of our experience. Which is just to say, that person seems intelligent to me. But the rule-generated belief that the person is intelligent is all there is to his intelligence. Therefore: No one is intelligent, but many people are believed to be. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. That's not a usable definition: internal=inaccessible. Knowledge must be expressible. It must be information that makes a difference. Otherwise you fall into the paradox of the rock that computes everything. A rock's internal state does make a difference in how it interacts with its environment. It's just that these differences are too subtle to be easily detected. The way the rock absorbs and emits heat and radiation, it’s response to vibrations, and even the precise way air molecules interact with it all reveal information about it’s internal state. To quote Jim Holt: Take that rock over there. It doesn't seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock's innards 'see' the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers's slogan, 'Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.' But the rock doesn't exert itself as a result of all this 'thinking.' Why should it? Its existence, unlike ours, doesn't depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. In some mapping it does. That's the paradox. If you allow arbitrary mappings then the rock is conscious, has intentions, actions, etc. But not in our environment. Brent If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. And you might draw the moral that the universe is, and always has been, saturated with mind, even though we snobbish Darwinian-replicating latecomers are too blinkered to notice. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: If you can find a Putnam-mapping that can extracts a representation of a conscious entity, you can also find a mapping that extracts a representation of an environment to go with it. Sure - but it's not our environment. Is our environment the only environment? Is the mapping that constitutes our environment priviliged in some way? Perhaps environment is relative to observer? But then from whence the observer? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 9/26/2010 12:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: If you can find a Putnam-mapping that can extracts a representation of a conscious entity, you can also find a mapping that extracts a representation of an environment to go with it. Sure - but it's not our environment. Is our environment the only environment? Is the mapping that constitutes our environment priviliged in some way? It is if we're the ones doing the mapping. Perhaps environment is relative to observer? But then from whence the observer? That's possible, but it's solipism. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 24 Sep 2010, at 05:26, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? it's a distinguishing characteristic that is detectable So your position is that there is an algorithm that would correctly detect all instances of intelligence with no false positives? If you possessed this algorithm, I could present you with a large cube of metal, silicon, and flashing lights, you could apply your algorithm to determine for certain whether any form of artificial intelligence was instantiated by the cube? No matter how obfuscated, encrypted, or abstract the representation used to instantiate the AI? This would be in contradiction to Hilary Putnam's work: Putnam's proposal, and its historical importance, was analyzed in detail in Piccinini forthcoming b. According to Putnam (1960, 1967, 1988), a system is a computing mechanism if and only if there is a mapping between a computational description and a physical description of the system. By computational description, Putnam means a formal description of the kind used in computability theory, such as a Turing Machine or a finite state automaton. Putnam puts no constraints on how to find the mapping between the computational and the physical description, allowing any computationally identified state to map onto any physically identified state. It is well known that Putnam's account entails that most physical systems implement most computations. This consequence of Putnam's proposal has been explicitly derived by Putnam (1988, pp. 95-96, 121-125) and Searle (1992, chap. 9). Or, as Hans Moravec puts it: What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings. As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings, regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe, open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory. Where do you think that Putnam and Moravec went wrong? That description is too vague. You may conclude that the movie graph is conscious from it. Which makes no sense. The mapping has to be computational or verify some causal/arithmetical links/relations so that we can ascribe intelligence/consciousness, but this leads eventually to attach consciousness to the logical relations, and not the physical activity. And in what sense is it different? it's not physically basic Then what is it? In what sense does it exist, if not physically? Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. I have no idea what that means Okay, so here's a definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests) But what is an ability in a deterministic universe? For any given input, a deterministic system can only react in one way. If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. This is true of a human. This is true of a bacterium. This is true of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. This is true of a hurricane. This is true of a rock. And, as I pointed out in the original post, probabilistic systems are no better. Intelligence is an arbitrary criterion
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
The text is well done. Thanks. A question. What would be the consequence of the nomologicalism for a person that would like to earn some more money? Well, let us not consider the case when one successfully sells the text about nomologicalism. Evgenii on 21.09.2010 19:10 Rex Allen said the following: What is the significance of intelligence in a universe with deterministic laws? Your performance on any IQ test is not due to your possessing some property called intelligence, but rather is an inevitable outcome of the universe's initial conditions and governing causal laws. The questions you are asked, the answers you give, the problems you are presented with, the solutions you develop - these were all implicit in the universe's first instant. You, and the rest of the universe, are essentially on rails. The unfolding of events and your experience of them is dictated by the deterministic causal laws. Even if time flows (e.g. presentism), the causal structure of the universe is static...events can only transpire one way. So, what can be said of intelligence in such a universe? Well...only what the deterministic laws require you to say about it. What can be believed about intelligence in such a universe? Obviously only what the deterministic laws require you to believe. Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. The word intelligence doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. =*= What about the significance of intelligence in a universe with probabilistic laws? The only change from the deterministic case is that the course of events isn't precisely predictable, even in principle. However, the flow of events is still governed by the probabilistic causal laws. Which just means that to the extent that the flow of events isn't determined, it's random. Again, the analogy with poker comes to mind: the rules of poker are stable and unchanging, while the randomness of the shuffle adds an element of unpredictability as to which cards you are actually dealt. So, to the extent that poker isn't determined, it's random. The questions you're going to be asked and the problems you're going to be presented with in a probabilistic universe aren't predictable...but neither are your answers or your solutions, which result from the exact same underlying rule set. Again, to the extent that any of these things aren't determined, they're random. Adding a random component to an otherwise deterministic framework does increase the number of possible states that are reachable from a given initial condition, but it doesn't add anything qualitatively new to the content of those states or to the process as a whole. Nothing new is added to the deterministic case that would give the word intelligence anything extra to refer to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 24 Sep, 04:26, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? it's a distinguishing characteristic that is detectable So your position is that there is an algorithm that would correctly detect all instances of intelligence with no false positives? no. that isn't possible for physical properties either, and in any case has nothing to do with determinism If you possessed this algorithm, I could present you with a large cube of metal, silicon, and flashing lights, you could apply your algorithm to determine for certain whether any form of artificial intelligence was instantiated by the cube? No matter how obfuscated, encrypted, or abstract the representation used to instantiate the AI? This would be in contradiction to Hilary Putnam's work: Putnam's proposal, and its historical importance, was analyzed in detail in Piccinini forthcoming b. According to Putnam (1960, 1967, 1988), a system is a computing mechanism if and only if there is a mapping between a computational description and a physical description of the system. By computational description, Putnam means a formal description of the kind used in computability theory, such as a Turing Machine or a finite state automaton. Putnam puts no constraints on how to find the mapping between the computational and the physical description, allowing any computationally identified state to map onto any physically identified state. It is well known that Putnam's account entails that most physical systems implement most computations. This consequence of Putnam's proposal has been explicitly derived by Putnam (1988, pp. 95-96, 121-125) and Searle (1992, chap. 9). Or, as Hans Moravec puts it: What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings. As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings, regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe, open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory. Where do you think that Putnam and Moravec went wrong? And in what sense is it different? it's not physically basic Then what is it? In what sense does it exist, if not physically? I assume your list of mass, charge, etc, were intended to be. Again, this has nothing to do with determinism Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. I have no idea what that means Okay, so here's a definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests) But what is an ability in a deterministic universe? It's something you can have, but not choose to have. It is not, in other words an achievement; one wuuld be no more responsible for ones rationality or intelligence than eye-colour For any given input, a deterministic system can only react in one way. If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. This is true of a human. This is true of a bacterium. This is true of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. This is true of a hurricane. This is true of a rock. ie they
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 9/23/2010 8:26 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 1Zpeterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allenrexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? it's a distinguishing characteristic that is detectable So your position is that there is an algorithm that would correctly detect all instances of intelligence with no false positives? If you possessed this algorithm, I could present you with a large cube of metal, silicon, and flashing lights, you could apply your algorithm to determine for certain whether any form of artificial intelligence was instantiated by the cube? No matter how obfuscated, encrypted, or abstract the representation used to instantiate the AI? This would be in contradiction to Hilary Putnam's work: Putnam's proposal, and its historical importance, was analyzed in detail in Piccinini forthcoming b. According to Putnam (1960, 1967, 1988), a system is a computing mechanism if and only if there is a mapping between a computational description and a physical description of the system. By computational description, Putnam means a formal description of the kind used in computability theory, such as a Turing Machine or a finite state automaton. Putnam puts no constraints on how to find the mapping between the computational and the physical description, allowing any computationally identified state to map onto any physically identified state. It is well known that Putnam's account entails that most physical systems implement most computations. This consequence of Putnam's proposal has been explicitly derived by Putnam (1988, pp. 95-96, 121-125) and Searle (1992, chap. 9). Or, as Hans Moravec puts it: What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings. As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings, regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe, open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory. Where do you think that Putnam and Moravec went wrong? And in what sense is it different? it's not physically basic Then what is it? In what sense does it exist, if not physically? Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. I have no idea what that means Okay, so here's a definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests) But what is an ability in a deterministic universe? For any given input, a deterministic system can only react in one way. If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. And if that reaction is to manipulate it's envrionment is a way advantageous to it, it's intelligent. Intelligence must always be relative to some situation or environment. That's where Putnam and Moravec go wrong and Merriam-Webster get it right. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. That's not a usable definition: internal=inaccessible. Knowledge must be expressible. It must be information that makes a difference. Otherwise you fall into the paradox of the rock that computes everything. Brent This is true of a human. This is true of a bacterium. This is true of a Roomba vacuum cleaner.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:14 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 21 Sep, 18:10, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: What is the significance of intelligence in a universe with deterministic laws? Your performance on any IQ test is not due to your possessing some property called intelligence, but rather is an inevitable outcome of the universe's initial conditions and governing causal laws. it is of course both I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? it's a distinguishing characteristic that is detectable And in what sense is it different? it's not physically basic Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. I have no idea what that means -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? it's a distinguishing characteristic that is detectable So your position is that there is an algorithm that would correctly detect all instances of intelligence with no false positives? If you possessed this algorithm, I could present you with a large cube of metal, silicon, and flashing lights, you could apply your algorithm to determine for certain whether any form of artificial intelligence was instantiated by the cube? No matter how obfuscated, encrypted, or abstract the representation used to instantiate the AI? This would be in contradiction to Hilary Putnam's work: Putnam's proposal, and its historical importance, was analyzed in detail in Piccinini forthcoming b. According to Putnam (1960, 1967, 1988), a system is a computing mechanism if and only if there is a mapping between a computational description and a physical description of the system. By computational description, Putnam means a formal description of the kind used in computability theory, such as a Turing Machine or a finite state automaton. Putnam puts no constraints on how to find the mapping between the computational and the physical description, allowing any computationally identified state to map onto any physically identified state. It is well known that Putnam's account entails that most physical systems implement most computations. This consequence of Putnam's proposal has been explicitly derived by Putnam (1988, pp. 95-96, 121-125) and Searle (1992, chap. 9). Or, as Hans Moravec puts it: What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings. As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings, regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe, open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory. Where do you think that Putnam and Moravec went wrong? And in what sense is it different? it's not physically basic Then what is it? In what sense does it exist, if not physically? Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. I have no idea what that means Okay, so here's a definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests) But what is an ability in a deterministic universe? For any given input, a deterministic system can only react in one way. If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only way it can to that set of inputs. Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system. This is true of a human. This is true of a bacterium. This is true of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. This is true of a hurricane. This is true of a rock. And, as I pointed out in the original post, probabilistic systems are no better. Intelligence is an arbitrary criterion based only on how things seem to you, and which has no other basis in how things are. So, that is what I mean by: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On 21 Sep, 18:10, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: What is the significance of intelligence in a universe with deterministic laws? Your performance on any IQ test is not due to your possessing some property called intelligence, but rather is an inevitable outcome of the universe's initial conditions and governing causal laws. it is of course both The questions you are asked, the answers you give, the problems you are presented with, the solutions you develop - these were all implicit in the universe's first instant. You, and the rest of the universe, are essentially on rails. The unfolding of events and your experience of them is dictated by the deterministic causal laws. Even if time flows (e.g. presentism), the causal structure of the universe is static...events can only transpire one way. So, what can be said of intelligence in such a universe? Well...only what the deterministic laws require you to say about it. What can be believed about intelligence in such a universe? Obviously only what the deterministic laws require you to believe. yep. and it's still nintelligence, just as a deterministically falling stone is still falling Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement The word intelligence doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. =*= What about the significance of intelligence in a universe with probabilistic laws? The only change from the deterministic case is that the course of events isn't precisely predictable, even in principle. However, the flow of events is still governed by the probabilistic causal laws. Which just means that to the extent that the flow of events isn't determined, it's random. Again, the analogy with poker comes to mind: the rules of poker are stable and unchanging, while the randomness of the shuffle adds an element of unpredictability as to which cards you are actually dealt. So, to the extent that poker isn't determined, it's random. The questions you're going to be asked and the problems you're going to be presented with in a probabilistic universe aren't predictable...but neither are your answers or your solutions, which result from the exact same underlying rule set. Again, to the extent that any of these things aren't determined, they're random. Adding a random component to an otherwise deterministic framework does increase the number of possible states that are reachable from a given initial condition, but it doesn't add anything qualitatively new to the content of those states or to the process as a whole. Nothing new is added to the deterministic case that would give the word intelligence anything extra to refer to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and Nomologicalism
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:14 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 21 Sep, 18:10, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: What is the significance of intelligence in a universe with deterministic laws? Your performance on any IQ test is not due to your possessing some property called intelligence, but rather is an inevitable outcome of the universe's initial conditions and governing causal laws. it is of course both I guess I'd have to hear your definition of property to make any sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge, mass, spin, or color? And in what sense is it different? Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude: The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Intelligence and Nomologicalism
What is the significance of intelligence in a universe with deterministic laws? Your performance on any IQ test is not due to your possessing some property called intelligence, but rather is an inevitable outcome of the universe's initial conditions and governing causal laws. The questions you are asked, the answers you give, the problems you are presented with, the solutions you develop - these were all implicit in the universe's first instant. You, and the rest of the universe, are essentially on rails. The unfolding of events and your experience of them is dictated by the deterministic causal laws. Even if time flows (e.g. presentism), the causal structure of the universe is static...events can only transpire one way. So, what can be said of intelligence in such a universe? Well...only what the deterministic laws require you to say about it. What can be believed about intelligence in such a universe? Obviously only what the deterministic laws require you to believe. Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than rain falling correctly. You answer the question in the only way the deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the deterministic laws allow. The word intelligence doesn't refer to anything except the experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a consequence of its causal structure. =*= What about the significance of intelligence in a universe with probabilistic laws? The only change from the deterministic case is that the course of events isn't precisely predictable, even in principle. However, the flow of events is still governed by the probabilistic causal laws. Which just means that to the extent that the flow of events isn't determined, it's random. Again, the analogy with poker comes to mind: the rules of poker are stable and unchanging, while the randomness of the shuffle adds an element of unpredictability as to which cards you are actually dealt. So, to the extent that poker isn't determined, it's random. The questions you're going to be asked and the problems you're going to be presented with in a probabilistic universe aren't predictable...but neither are your answers or your solutions, which result from the exact same underlying rule set. Again, to the extent that any of these things aren't determined, they're random. Adding a random component to an otherwise deterministic framework does increase the number of possible states that are reachable from a given initial condition, but it doesn't add anything qualitatively new to the content of those states or to the process as a whole. Nothing new is added to the deterministic case that would give the word intelligence anything extra to refer to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
