That's not too heavy. It's at least a useful suggestion that doesn't require one to believea lot of metaphysics.
> Could computers "disagree"? Of course: if we
> include computer
> output disparities in our use of the word
> "disagree". If we
> insist that there is some important ontological
> distinction
> between human disagreement and computer
> disagreement, we're
> just saying that we don't ordinarily apply the word
> "disagree"
> to machines. Is this because our language use is
> mapping
> an important ontological distinction, or is it
> arbitrary?
> I agree with Wittgenstein on this: what does it
> matter?
> (What is defined as real is real in its
> consequences, so
> the ontological status of the referent is
> irrelevant: cf.
> the practical reality of the Catholic church,
> whether or
> not God really exists.)
But there is a difference between saying: the theologians say that man is saved by grace and not by works, and the difference it makes is that you are in big trouble with the authorities if you deny it, and saying that, well, man is saved by grace and not by works, so that you can't go to heaven just because you do good things, but only if God gives you His OK. Those two things seem like a real difference.
>
> If everyone uses the terms "thinking" to apply to
> humans and not machines, then machines will never be
> able to "think".
Hence the Bladerunner problem. And it's not not science fiction. If we say that thinking is what men and not women do, the women will never be able to think. Etc. It does seem that loose and slippery and socially implicated as thinking is, there is something going on in the heads of people who do it, that we deny at the cost of error.
> In short: this whole debate is predicated on a
> misconception
> of how psychological terms like thinking,
> intelligence,
> and disagreement are actually used. The language
> leads us astray here.
So, while I approve of attention to the way we use language, I don't think it is dispositive of whether machines can think. Given the way we use the word, we might deny it and be wrong. Maybe they can't think, but they could "schmink," which is just like thinking, except it's done by them rather than by humans. . .
jks
jks
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