{"id":366,"date":"2022-06-28T16:22:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T16:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/?p=366"},"modified":"2023-02-23T09:02:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T09:02:17","slug":"why-the-machines-dont-have-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/2022\/06\/28\/why-the-machines-dont-have-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Machines Don&#8217;t Have Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Minds From Brains<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Minds &#8212; by definition &#8212; are the product of physical biological processes<br>happening in the brain.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As of right now the only type of thing we know of that is capable of<br>producing a mind (mental activity (<a href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/intentionality\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/intentionality\/\">Intentionality<\/a>)) is a brain.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As an abductive answer to the question of other minds we can be<br>reasonably certain that other brained things have other minds.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That is, the edge of what we can be reasonably certain is minded is that<br>which is brained.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Now here&#8217;s the real question, could non-brained things produce mental activity?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Here&#8217;s the problem, (other minds) we could never know inductively (ie. we<br>could never observe directly) another mind in the first person.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To do so would require complete desolation of the self and a<br>total transfiguration into the other.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Probably not super easy to do on a casual Sunday afternoon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So could other complex information dense structures produce Intentionally, qualia, Dasein, what it is like, a sense of being?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Possibly, but we could never know.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Perhaps dogs smell scents we never could.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Perhaps mantis shrimp see colors we could never dream of.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So what type of systems can we say are likely to produce a mind?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Something that works like a brain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Brains Are Not Computers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Do computers work like brains?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Short answer, no\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How do I, someone who is not a computer scientist or neurophysiologist, know this?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Because we designed computers from nothing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We know intricately how they work in an exact deterministic fashion to<br>produce a given output from a given input.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Even if the program is ML (non-deterministic) the hardware is always<br>fixed. We can log everything. We can trace all of the bits.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This is not the case for brains!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Obviously, we don&#8217;t fully yet know how the given inputs for brains (sense<br>datum) produce the given outputs (conscious mental expierence).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So it definitely isn&#8217;t the same type of system or the brain would already<br>be solved.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>All those neurophysiologists and philosophers trying to crack the hard<br>problem of consciousness could go home and be replaced by CS dropouts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Intentionality Bias \/ Fallacy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As humans we have a bias toward ascribing Intentionality onto clearly<br>non-Intentional things.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Gods of the Clouds, Mountains, Rivers, Stars, Ect.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>People name their Roombas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Computers are the most sophisticated form of input \/ output copiers we&#8217;ve<br>ever seen.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It can Moo.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It can Howl.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It can even speak Chinese!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We ought to be careful not to ascribe Intentionality onto a sophisticated<br>trickery box.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They are built to do that, ya know?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The program is always a hack because doing it the real biological<br>way is expensive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Parable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Words are a bad measure of Intentionality because they&#8217;re so abstract.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>So lets abandon the traditional Turing test.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And instead use a different example of human emotional state communication\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Facial expressions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Say we built a 100% mechanical human head on a table that can exactly mimic<br>the facial expressions of a person.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If you smile at it, it smiles back.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you come at it with aggression, it reacts with fright.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It doesn&#8217;t speak, but it looks at you confused.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Perhaps he&#8217;s mute?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It passes the human facial equivalent of a Turing test.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Say then out of nowhere David Lynch comes into the room with an Axe and<br>violently chops the hyper-realistic mechanical head clean in half.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You see inside not a bloodied bashed brain, but instead an intricate<br>network of strings and fishing line.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You hear some giggling from under the table and decide to investigate.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Upon pulling back the heavy red velvet table skirt you see seven skilled<br>marionette artists, who happen to be dwarfs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They&#8217;ve each been watching your face through a different hidden mirror<br>pulling their strings accordingly making it appear as if it was one face.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Of course the mechanical head isn&#8217;t an intentional agent.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is a machine built to look like an intentional agent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To say a chatbot is an Intentional agent is exactly like saying the<br>mechanical head is an intentional agent.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They both work by completely differently means than the real biological<br>analog.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They both communicate what appears from the outside (behavioristic view)<br>to be possession of Intentionality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And in both situations it is absurd to ascribe the phenomena of mental<br>experience to the mimicry device.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">But Perhaps They Could Have Their Own Minds&#8230;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Well okay, maybe they don&#8217;t have minds like ours,\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Maybe they don&#8217;t see colors like us.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Or feel joy or anger or fright like us.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But maybe there is still something going on behind the eyes?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A ghost in the shell.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Perhaps there is still something <em>that it is like<\/em> to be an AI?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Perhaps, but such a position has no real means of verification.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>We could never see the world from their perspective, assuming they even have one.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It would be so total foreign from our own mental frames of reference that to even consider it a state of being would require a generous extension of that general (brain based \/ biological) concept.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Without an inductive means of verification, or an abductive argument of minds from brains, what are we left with?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Computational neo-behaviorism.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>One thing we do know from the history of behaviorism and from the examples of the Chinese Room and the Lynchian Head is that the behavioral input \/ output patterns of the system alone are not enough to draw a determination about the presence or absence of some internal mental state.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Presently, the language we have for dealing with philosophical theories of mind cannot be applied directly (that is without the use of analogy) to the field of computation generally or specifically to the field of AI development. The abstractions are incompatible and the underlying mechanisms are not the same.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Without behaviorism, what other reason do we have for concluding that a computational system possess Intentionality?\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>My argument is, none.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There is no good reason to conclude that computer systems are capable of being minded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minds From Brains Brains Are Not Computers The Intentionality Bias \/ Fallacy A Parable But Perhaps They Could Have Their Own Minds&#8230; Final Thoughts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theories-of-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnlradford.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}