Relation to the world· Mind and consciousnessdifficulty
Can a machine think
Could a machine ever truly think?
If thinking is only a matter of organization, a machine could genuinely think, and we might owe it something. If running a program is not enough, our machines merely imitate, though an artifact of another kind might one day succeed. And if thought is inseparable from life, the most brilliant machine will remain a thing. To take a position is to say what makes a mind.
The substrate does not matter
0To think is to process information in a certain way, whatever the substrate that carries out this processing. If a machine performs the same functions as a brain, there is no ground for denying that it thinks.
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Not by program alone
named middle0Running a program will never be thinking: simulating understanding is not understanding. But nothing rules out that an artifact might think one day, if it reproduces what matters: the causal powers of the living brain, or a body's engagement with a world.
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Only the living think
1Thought is not an abstract organization but the activity of a living being: feeling, wanting, understanding are born with life and its concern to endure. A machine, however brilliant, remains a fabricated thing: it computes, but nothing matters to it.
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Kantextrapolated
A modern question, foreign to the corpus: one may nevertheless conjecture that Kant would refuse to ascribe thought to pure mechanism, since thinking requires the spontaneity of apperception, and he opposes the self-organizing organism to the watch, a mere machine. A speculative reading, to be presented as such.
Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Deduction (B131-B132) · Critique of the Power of Judgment, §65
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- Descriptive Thought experimentThe Chinese Room
Locked in a room, one answers flawlessly in Chinese by following a rulebook, without understanding a word: is running a program ever understanding, or only giving every sign of it?
a mind that understands - Descriptive Thought experimentThe imitation game
If, in a blind conversation, nothing tells the machine from a person, must we grant it thought, or does passing for a mind never prove there is one?
a conversation
Sub-problems to deepen this axis's discussion
- DescriptiveIntelligence without a body
A program processes signs outside any world; but grasping a situation, acting with tact, may require a living body that inhabits it, which the disembodied machine lacks.
a disembodied intelligence - DescriptiveDoes the substrate matter?
If the exact organization of your brain were reproduced by a whole people passing messages, would that crowd really think, or do only certain materials yield a mind?
the substrate of thought
Related problems to broaden toward other axes
- DescriptiveThinking, or feeling
Reasoning is one thing, feeling another: a machine might compute everything without there being "something it is like" to be it, thought with no consciousness at all.
a machine's inner feel - PrescriptiveMoralWould we owe it anything?
If a machine thought, would it have interests, a dignity, rights, or would it remain a thing we dispose of, owing it nothing?
a thinking machine - DescriptiveThe inner life of animals
The whole debate assumes that animals feel something: but can we know it? Descartes saw them as machines without consciousness; how can we be sure there is "something it is like" to be a bat?
an animal's mental lifeMoral circle - PrescriptiveMoralCan a machine count morally?
If an artificial intelligence said it was suffering, should the sentience criterion be extended to it, or does moral consideration stop at the living, simulated suffering obliging us to nothing?
an artificial intelligenceMoral circle