Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!epistemi!edai!cam
From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Summary: The illusion of introspection
Message-ID: <215@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Dec 88 17:33:44 GMT
References: <562@metapsy.UUCP> <2732@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <563@metapsy.UUCP> <1841@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <817@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: cam@edai (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
Lines: 55

In article <817@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <1841@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu
>(Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>> .....
>>The behaviorists have shown that behavior which subjectively seems
>>to us to be caused by intention can be determined (even hypnotists
>>can demonstrate this), 
>
>Er, how do hypnotists demonstrate that?
> ....
>As for the first part of this, there is a philosophical tradition called
>"compatibilism", which holds that "it was caused by intention" and
>"it was determined" are not contradictory.

I think what Gordon Banks is referring to is the rationalisation of
post-hypnotic suggestion, where the victim is instructed under hypnosis
to do something mildly bizarre at a certain time, and also to "forget"
(have no conscious knowledge of) the instruction. At the appointed time
the victim will perform the bizarre act, and on being asked why, will
produce some spurious rationalisation, and insist under questioning
that this rationalisation is the true, real, sincere motive of an act
which was performed freely and with intention.

Exactly the same phenomenon is exhibited by split-brain victims, when
one half of the brain is asked to account for an action performed by
the other half, where the action was taken on the basis of perceptual
data only available to the performing half, and not to the explaining
half. Once again, a spurious and often ingeniously contrived
rationalisation is offered, with the speaker (speaking half) apparently
quite sincere in believing it, and without any sensation of strain or
puzzlement.

A natural conclusion is that introspection is not a privileged window
into the operations of the mind, but exactly the same kind of gifted
hypothesizing we perform when "seeing" the motives of others as revealed
by their behaviour in the context of our knowledge and suspicions, only
of course with access to a larger fund of knowledge.  In other words,
the "subjective seeming" of one's introspection has exactly the same
epistemic status as one's educated guess about the feelings, 
motivation, and mental processes of one's employer (for example).

If this is true - and I think it is - then the commonsense folk
psychology which is justified by appeals to our shared introspective
experiences, although very useful for negotiating with one another, is
dangerous mental luggage when doing AI research.

Supposing free-will to be contradicted by determinism has always seemed
to me to be due to confusing "determined" in the sense of "co-erced"
(which is not free behaviour) with "determined" in the sense of "in
principle predictable" which is quite another thing.  Anyone who
supposes that exercise of their free-will must depend upon some
essentially unpredictable (random) component is clearly suffering from a
shortage of good reasons for doing things, no?

Chris Malcolm