[alicebot-aiethics] FW: [alicebot-general] ZOMBIES

[eric thompson]

I apologize for my tardiness in responding.

Interesting. Though I would argue that to limit
yourself to one theoretical platform is to critically
limit the progress of ideas. 

Having never read the paper of course, I can't make a
truly critical or valid assessment of either argument
except by hearsay, which I am totally unwilling to do.
It seems, though, that the naysayer's fallacious
argument "style" is logically based near similar
arguments regarding the seemingly unanswerable
questions of human existence. Those arguments also
tend toward circularity (as well as other elements of
poorly founded logic) even at the best of times, and
grow even worse when pressed.

It seems to me that fundamentalists of either camp may
have a hard time if too vehemently gone after. The
foundations of either philosophy begin to get lost in
the arguing. Therefore, it seems to me that the best
approach to AI is the approach most ideal to any
scientific setting: Healthy, open minded skepticism.
Our beliefs regarding the validity of the study may be
here, there or in the middle, but it is our attitude
toward the science and our responsibility in the event
of whatever outcome that must be the backbone of any
debate. 

AI is far too important a question to be taken so
lightly as to miss the philosophical mark in our
discussions. The topics involved are diverse and
sensitive. We take for granted every day that humans
are conscious and aware (in most cases, any way)
because they exhibit behaviors that lead us to this
conclusion. This does not necessarily make it true.
It's an argument I have with myself on the highway all
the time. In my humble opinion, this is not the
question. I could be wrong. For now, though, I'll
submit my inexperienced opinion for consideration and
ask you all to fire away at me. I await conversation
on the topic excitedly. 

For now, if anyone has a copy of this paper and the
mentioned oppositional argument (and can spare the
time to send a copy), I would be quite pleased to read
them. 

Yours,
Eric

--- "Christopher Fahey [askROM]"
<askrom@graphpaper.com> wrote:
> Richard Wrote:
> 
> > Turing disposed of the "Lovelace objection" in his
> 1950
> > paper. 
> 
> I just re-read the paper - for like the 5th time.
> Turing's "Computing
> Machinery and Intelligence" is worth reading every
> few months or so just
> to see how cogent, thorough, and prescient it is. I
> can't punch a hole
> in it. And everything I've read where someone tries
> to punch a hole in
> it seems to use crazy circular- and overly-complex
> logic... or worse,
> relies on intangible, even mystical ideas of what
> consciousness is.
> 
> The most widely-accepted counterarguments appear to
> be of the "Argument
> from consciousness" and of the "Lovelace" variety
> (which Turing himself
> seemed to think was the counterargument most worthy
> of his attention):
> Machines can't possibly think, it says, because
> machines cannot
> originate ideas. Original ideas are a by-product of
> consciousness, which
> a machine cannot have (how's that for circular
> logic?).
> 
> What I really appreciated about Turing's paper is
> his forthrightness
> about where he stands personally. He believes that
> computers will win
> his challenge, and that they will, in fact, think.
> He writes: 
>      "The popular view that scientists proceed
> inexorably 
>      from well-established fact to well-established
> fact, 
>      never being influenced by any improved
> conjecture,
>      is quite mistaken."
> 
> What strikes me about his naysayers is this: I
> really can't tell where
> they stand on the nature of consciousness. They
> don't tell us where they
> fall on a core aspect of the definition of
> consciousness. It seems that
> you can only be in one of two camps: 
> 
> 1) Consciousness is a real phenomonon, inexplicable
> by the laws of
> physics (and very likely unique to humans).
> 2) Consciousness is not a real thing, but rather a
> perceived effect of
> an enormously complex mechanism. It is not
> necessarily restricted to
> human minds, or even to biological minds.
> 
> Camp #1 strikes me as a magical or spiritual belief.
> It's fine if that's
> how you see things, but you should at least say so
> so that people like
> me can know where you're coming from. Me, I'm with
> #2.
> 
> I'm very interested in the concept of ZOMBIES: A
> "Zombie" (in the
> AI-naysayer argument) is a creature/being whose
> outward behavior has all
> the trappings of consciousness - it walks, it talks,
> etc. But it's inner
> self is an empty place where it doesn't even know
> what it is doing or
> why it is doing it. It has no understanding of its
> own actions. The
> ZOMBIE argument says, essentially:
>      "Okay, so you've made a robot that passes the
> Turing 
>      Test (or even what is called the "Total Turing
> Test": a 
>      robot that is physically and behaviorally
> indistinguishable 
>      from a person but who is nonetheless
> artificial, 
>      engineered and built by humans.). But it does
> not have 
>      any awareness of what it does, so it is not
> really
>      conscious the way we humans are.
> 
> My counterargument to this is twofold:
> 
> 1) As Turing himself notes, there is no way of
> knowing the answer to
> this even with regards to other human beings - what
> goes on in someone
> else's mind is a (forever?) unsolvable mystery.
> 
> 2) Who is to say that real live humans even have a
> consciousness where
> we know what we are doing and why we are doing it,
> or that such an inner
> experience is all that much different from that of
> an ape or a pig? My
> mind is constantly doing things that I didn't
> necessarily ask it to do -
> I don't ask to fall in love or get angry, I just
> become in love or
> angry. We are beginning to understand the enormous
> degree to which an
> individual human's behavior is governed by
> often-volatile chemical
> activity and fragile psychological mechanisms - it
> seems inevitable that
> neurological research will eventually figure out the
> exact nature of
> friendship, decision making, contentedness, love,
> jealousy, thrills,
> fear, and all of the other things that humans think
> are somehow
> intangible aspects of human consciousness. Perhaps
> what we think of as
> self-awareness is simply an illusion, and that in
> fact we are 100%
> driven by explainable electrochemical forces, i.e.,
> a Turing
> state-machine.
> 
> Anyway, my real question is: Shouldn't AI theorists
> be required to
> choose which of the above two definitions of
> consciousness they
> subscribe to? I think many AI-naysayers subscribe to
> #1 (Searle, for
> example) but refuse to admit it since it is, at its
> core, utterly
> unscientific.
> 
> -Cf
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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