Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!think!husc6!sri-unix!ellis
From: ellis@unix.SRI.COM (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: 1st person experience
Message-ID: <29103@sri-unix.SRI.COM>
Date: 30 Mar 89 05:34:04 GMT
References: <4395@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <280003@hplchm.HP.COM> <2574@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4278@xyzzy.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@unix.sri.com (Michael Ellis)
Organization: SRI, Menlo Park, CA.
Lines: 81

> Wayne A. Throop  >> Gilbert Cockton

>The gain in doubting people that think Eliza understands
>is that we don't cheapen what we mean by "understanding".  The gain in
>doubting that people that think the CR shows that the room/rules have no
>understanding even in principle is that we don't arbitrarily anthopomorphize
>what we will accept as an "understanding entity".

    One goal is indeed to make artifacts which can perform tasks that
    currently "require understanding". The success of this kind of
    research program is immune from CR considerations, just exactly
    as the success of chess computers is judged by the game they play
    and not whether they really think like us.
    
    But there is another question at hand, one which you refuse to even
    acknowledge, Wayne: Just what is the *human* thought process?
    What is that strange stuff (some of us call "understanding") that
    reveals itself to us in such an so incorrigibly first person fashion?

    In spite of the stunning success in computer chess technology, 
    it has taught us practically nothing about how human chess players 
    do it, and I fear that symbol crunching gadgets from the folks
    who make "Machines Who Think" will have a little else to add, 
    no matter how operationally they might resemble you.

    IMHO, phenomenological introspectivity is something that absolutely
    must be explicitly designed into the artifact. It's got to have qualia.
    Feelings, pain, consciousness. These are the *explicanda*, they are what
    we (or at least some of us) hope to have accounted for. 

    No phenomenology, no mind, no understanding. Just another toy doll that
    technicians from blighted backgrounds anthropomorphically project
    mind onto.

>> If your AI systems "work", all well and good.  But don't demand that
>> people call black white in the process.  If AI folk spent less time
>> trying to redefine everyday language, people might trust them more.

>This situation doesn't arise in the CR.  In fact, the CR's premise is
>that "people's intuition" from outside the room leads them to think
>the room understands, and "people's intuition" once they've seen inside
>the room leads them to think otherwise.  

    Searle's premises here are that:

	An entity is conscious if and only if it is like something
	to be that entity. 

	If you *are* the entity in question, your consciousness is the only
	one that can possibly be present: Same stuff, same consciousness.
	There is only one way to be the same thing. (This is my inferrence
	and not something I recall Searle saying, so I could be wrong).

    The systems response is equivalent to asserting: 

	There is more than one way to be the entity in question.
 	The same stuff "been in different ways" (first, qua intentional
        system, second, qua symbol cruncher) can give rise to distinctly
	different consciousnesses.
	There are different ways to be the same thing.

    Maybe the systems response is true. It's a wild leap of faith, as I've
    remarked before, which is not justified by any argument from its
    advocates.
   
>So, we aren't asking to call
>black white.  We are asking whether black should be defined functionally
>(in terms of the light it reflects) or structurally (in terms of which
>pigments it is constructed of).

    There's a third possibility that you have either forgotten
    or overlooked, Wayne:

	Black is a qualitative experience that is revealed to
	us via direct 1st person experience.

    Just how do you deal with qualia functionally or structurally, Wayne?
    Am I correct in inferring that you think we must, for ideological
    reasons, ban qualia from the study of the mind? 

-michael