In a comment to a prior post StephenB raises some interesting questions:
{1}Free will requires the presence of a nonmaterial-mind independent of the brain. {2}a non-material mind independent of the brain indicates free will. . . . In philosophy, [this type of proposition] is known as a bi-conditional proposition, which means, If A/then B. Also, If B/then A. Usually, that pattern does not hold in logic, but it does hold here. [If one disavows] the existence of the mind, it is time to make the corresponding assertion about volition—go ahead and reject free will and complete the cycle. Take the final step and concede that all of our attempts to persuade each other are futile. We are nature’s plaything, and the laws of nature operating through our “brain” dictate our every move.
Given [the materialist’s] perception of reality, why [does he] bother to raise objections at all [to the proposition that mind exists independently of the brain]. If your world view is true, then [all the commenters] on this blog do what we do only because fate requires it of us. We are, for want of a better term, determined to think and act as we do. Since we have no volitional powers, why do you appeal to them? Why raise objections in an attempt to influence when it has already been established that only non-material minds can influence or be influenced? Why propose a change of direction when only intelligent agencies have the power to do that? Since brains are subject to physical laws of cause and effect, they cannot rise above them and, therefore, cannot affect them. Brains cannot influence brains. Why then, do you ask any of us to change our minds when, in your judgment, there are no minds to change?
Surely we all agree that the output of a computer is utterly determined in the sense that the output can be reduced to the function of the physical properties of the machine.
Note that this does not mean that the output of a computer is always predictable. “Determined” is not a synonym for “predictable.” An event may be completely determined and utterly unpredictable at the same time. In other words, it might be “determined” and also “indeterminate.” Example: Say a bomb explodes. It is impossible to predict where any particular piece of the bomb shell will land. Therefore, where the piece of bomb shell will land is indeterminate. Nevertheless, where the piece of bomb shell winds up landing is purely a function of the laws of nature, and is in that sense determined.
Now assume we have two computers that can communicate in machine code across a cable. Assume further that the computers are assigned the task of coming to a conclusion about the truth or falsity of a particular proposition, say “The best explanation for the cause of complex specified information X (“CSI-X”) is that CSI-X was produced by an intelligent agent.” Say computer A is programmed to do two things:
1. Respond “true” to this proposition.
2. Communicate a list of facts and arguments its programmers believe support this statement.
Here’s the interesting question. Can computer A “persuade” computer B to accept the “true” statement?
The answer, it seems to me, is obvious: No.
Computer B’s output is completely determined. It has no free will. It has no “mind” that may be persuaded. The facts and arguments communicated to it by computer A trigger a subroutine that produces the output “yes it is true” or “no it is false.” The result of that computation is utterly determined in the sense that it is reducible to the operation of computer B’s software and hardware. Computer B has no meaningful choice as to how to respond to the information provided to it by computer A.
This brings us back to StephenB’s questions. If the brain is nothing more than an organic computing machine, why do materialists bother to try to persuade us of anything?
BarryA, I didn’t see in your presentation that computer A and computer B were necessarilyl comparable in ability. I’ll assume they are for my response. Also, when you mentioned that in point 1 that it is programmed to respond “true”, I assume you meant “if the conclusion is true” in support of the part that “the computers are assigned the task of coming to a conclusion”
If computer A has access to data, and upon processing the data arrives at a conclusion, and then sends the conclusion and same data to computer B, then we can assume computer B is solving the problem the same as A. That is, using the same data as A, it is almost defined that B will arrive at the same conclusion as A. No independence, and no pursuasion, as you indicate.
If less or more than the same data is sent to B, then it is possible that B arrives at a different conclusion than A, and experiences a form of discordance.
Also, since you mentioned that both computers “are assigned the task of coming to a conclusion”, I’m asking if we can explore the scenario where computer B has also gathered data and performed comparable processing as computer A. This is like two people getting together on a blog. If so, then we can be pretty sure that B’s access to data is not identical to A’s access to data. In other words, B will have different inputs than A, will use A’s input in addition to his own, and will arrive at a similar, or even different conclusion. This conclusion will be sent to A for A’s evaluation.
In effect, after each of them have a chance to evaluate the problem, based upon their own inputs coupled with the output from the other machine, then it is quite possible for both A and B to arrive at a third conclusion after an iteration. Or, they may stay diverged. Or, they may oscillate over several iterations. (Dampening conditions of feedback systems enter here.)
If A’s output is the only input to B and B is comparable to A, no pursuasion occurs.
If A’s output is added to B’s input, and B’s output is added to A’s input, “pursuasion” might occur, I suggest.
So when you ask If the brain is nothing more than an organic computing machine, why do materialists bother to try to persuade us of anything? , my answer is to hopefully arrive at a feedback process which dampens towards a conclusion. BTW: if we are talking about observations about the material world, even ID advocates must be somewhat “materialists”. Very few ID advocates argue from a wholly transcendental state of being for all things.
Hmmm… maybe not persuade in the common sense of the word but there are three flight control computers on board the space shuttle. The hardware and software in each was independently developed to the same specification. Before flight controls are actuated the computers are polled and the majority rules. Not quite “persuasion” but one might say the master control circuitry of the flight controls are persuaded by the number of computers that agree on what to do. More like the tyranny of the majority than the gentle art of persuasion, or like so-called scientific consensus which amounts to the same thing as a tyranny of the majority.
Greetings!
Okay! What if they have the exact same data and the exact same access to data, but the core framework for determining the “value” of the data is fundamentally difference? Would they come to the same conclutions? Also, Could Computer A “persuade” Computer B, if they recognized different “qualitative values” for the data? The parameters for calculating the information’s worth and analysis would lead to very different conclutions, would they not? If computer A determined Data “X” is worthless, and Computer B determined Data “X” important, then no “persuasion” would take place. There would be constant rejection and both sides.
Really though computer’s don’t compare to the brain. They won’t until we can create a computer that’s software could manipulate it’s hardware, and re-program itself.
But if we were to compare the materialist brain(?) to a computer, first of all it would be an ENIAC. Taking long and slow complicated procedures to perform simple tasks.
Barry A: One quick note: Line one should read “free will requires the presence of a {non-material mind]independent of the brain— not a {non-mind] independent of the brain.
I’m sorry but if we are going to compare computers to humans, we are definitely going to have to deal with computers running some manner of AI, or learning software.
I have a good example of such software on my computer in the form of anti-spam software. Not only does my anti-spam software “learn”, it does so, in part, by having another computer “convince it” that e-mails of certain forms are “spam”. This process happens almost invisibly. My e-mail software receives packets of “known spam” from the software developer’s central computer on a regular basis.
Alas, there are at least two factors beyond “determinism” that must be factored in with simple logic before making the leap to conclude that brain and mind are separate because choices are made. One of those factors is the random number generator. I see humans, including myself, often making decisions in an “at the moment I feel” sort of way. This can be very accurately simulated by invoking a random number generator.
Secondly, we learn. Basic to semi-advanced learning algorithms are certainly available to modern computers. As such, we can see that as a computer can learn to filter spam better because it was informed by another computer that certain e-mails are spam; likewise we need not abandon a fully naturalistic explanation when considering that humans can learn and be taught. If humans can learn, if humans are influenced by case data, and if we factor that in with the previous case data that we already have, then even if we are totally logical, one of us can be “convinced” by new case data and another can remain “unconvinced”.
I personally don’t find this line of reasoning to be compelling.
About four years ago a friend asked me to read THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle, a “new age” thinker who proposed some interesting ideas. One in particular he wrote in the introduction.
While experiencing a long bout with depression, he awoke early one morning and decided that he could no longer live with himself; suicide would be the best solution to his problem. It then dawned on him that he was faced with a problem of his own dichotomy — a meta-self and also a physical or emotional self. Which “self” could he no longer live with? Obviously he was on to something (at least he still lives to think so).
This appears to be analogous with two computers; merely tools to process a programmer’s code. The only way for two discreet machines to connect is to execute written procedural instructions. If there are two programmers they must be in agreement (persuaded) to collaborate. Hard Drives and CPU’s do not execute nothing. Materialism affirms that DNA ultimately comes from nothing; no meta-narrative going on there. I suppose Pinker and Weinberg might blow my thinking to pieces, but frankly, I simply don’t get it.
Surely Computer B, if properly acknowledging Computer A’s input and adding it to it’s list of information could come to a different answer than if it wasn’t receiving that information?
If you assume both computers have identical beginning knowledge or Computer B ignores Computer A’s facts, then yes I think you are right, Computer B won’t be “persuaded” in the slightest. However this is not how most conversations between people go and they hope to impart some new piece of information which when added to that person’s list of known information produces a different response.
And I think this mirrors real debates when no new views or information is provided, or the debaters are not listening to and accepting the others points, you have a stalemate with each having their own view.
But, if people are honestly participating in a debate then there is the possibility of a change of opinions.
Barry, computer behavior is not necessarily deterministic. If the sensory inputs are probabilistic, then the outputs will be probabilistic as well. Besides, the timing of operations in a computer can be based on a true random number generator that uses quantum uncertainty.
The way I (and some others) see it, there can be no free will in a purely deterministic universe. This is the reason that classical physics (both Einsteinian and Newtonian physics) are in dire need of being replaced or, at the very least, modified. I have excellent reasons to believe that the universe is necessarily discrete and probabilistic. In this light, free will is the ability to manipulate the probability of certain neural phenomena at the quantum level. Some researchers are already looking into that aspect of it.
Having said that, I think you touched on a very interesting aspect of consciousness, one that brings up the concept of yin-yang complementarity. Briefly, consciousness consists of a knower and a known. The two are complementary opposites. That is to say, neither the knower nor the known can know itself; only the knower can know the known and the known cannot know the knower. When we truly understand the nature of the known, we will also understand the knower.
The point I’m driving at is this. The brain cannot know itself because it is the known. It needs a knower, i.e., a spirit. The latter can be neither known, nor created, nor destroyed, not even by God. It can only be known by its actions. This is the reason that God cannot create evil. He must test us in order to know our spirit. One Christian’s opinion.
Bfast: “there are at least two factors beyond “determinism” that must be factored in with simple logic before making the leap to conclude that brain and mind are separate because choices are made. One of those factors is the random number generator.”
Mapou: “Barry, computer behavior is not necessarily deterministic. If the sensory inputs are probabilistic, then the outputs will be probabilistic as well. Besides, the timing of operations in a computer can be based on a true random number generator that uses quantum uncertainty.”
Both of you are making the exact mistake I warned against in the post. Read it again. “Determined” does not mean the same thing as “predictable.”
The original question of the thread: Can computer A “persuade” computer B to accept the “true” statement?
I agree with BarryA – obviously no, because the terms “persuade” and “accept”, like “intend”, “desire”, “wish”, “feel”, etc. are all describing attributes of (human) conscious agents, not the execution of computer software processing data input. There is a fundamental ontological gulf between the qualia of consciousness and matter including computers and the running of their programs.
I agree with BarryA – obviously no, because the terms “persuade” and “accept”, like “intend”, “desire”, “wish”, “feel”, etc. are all describing attributes of (human) conscious agents, not the execution of computer software processing data input. There is a fundamental ontological gulf between the qualia of consciousness and matter including computers and the running of their programs.
I see no reason that an intelligent non-conscious machine cannot persuade another. I disagree that “persuade” necessarily implies consciousness. Intelligent machines will use logic (reason) and have motivations just like us, even if they’re not conscious. In fact, there can be no true intelligence without both. Motivation only means that the intelligent agent can undergo operant conditioning and that’s a purely mechanical process in my opinion.
Mapou: “I disagree that “persuade” necessarily implies consciousness.”
From Dictionary.com:
1. to prevail on (a person) to do something, as by advising or urging: We could not persuade him to wait.
2. to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince: to persuade the judge of the prisoner’s innocence.
The term clearly implies conscious intent, requiring a conscious agent that intends to persuade and another that consciously considers the argument or information proferred. This is that issue of the ontological difference between the qualia of consciousness and the inner experience of self awareness, and matter. Matter in this case of the computer being the operation of multitudes of logic gates processing data.
In The General, a movie based on the true story of a notorious Irish hoodlum, the title character nails the hands of a new young recruit to a pool table and watch silently for five minutes as the poor wretch writhes in agony. Finally he announces, “Alright, I’m persuaded – he’s not the informer. No one could stand that much pain .” So, our hero was following a very simple rule – “If the suspect is guilty he’ll confess after a certain amount of pain. If he’s not guilty he won’t.” Is someone really asserting that this simple, straightforward deliberative process took place in some supposed nonmaterial mind or other unspecified spiritual realm?
In a professional context, people are obliged to follow quite specific criteria in order to be persuaded, in order to come to a conclusion about anything pertaining to their professional realm of responsibility. To not be able to stipulate explicitly, “Here is why I was persuaded, here is why I came to the conclusion that I did” is to immediately indicate deriliction and/or incompetency. So whenever a decision really matters, people are following a quite specific program of some sort to reach their conclusion.
It is sometimes necessary to employ more subtle forms of persasion with the uneducated and unskilled. When flattery, conveying feelings of affection, empathy, etc. must be employed to persuade, what does that tell you about the intelligence and self-awareness of the person who is being persuaded? It tells you he is manipulatable, naive, and not a serious person who decides matters on the basis of objective criteria. So, maybe a computer cannot be pursuaded by flattery or manipulation per se, but neither are serious, intelligent, competent people.
As far as the scenario of one computer persuading another, just purely of the top of my head, say you have one computer that is given information by another computer about some state of affairs that the first computer does not know about. The first computer must decide whether to believe this other computer, to accept as reality the state of affairs as conveyed to him (in some appropriate format.) The first computer might give some precedence to some particular computer by rule, “If computer N says one thing and some other computer says something else, go with computer N.” Aha you say, the first computer was merely hard coded to believe. Yes, but aren’t children told (e.g.) to always trust policemen? (or some other specified authority figure, e.g. teacher, clergy, etc.) So certainly a child can be persuaded by such a hard coded rule. But do adults not have rules? Of course they do. They have many, many more rules (hopefully) so that their decisions are harder to predict. Computers can of course be much much more compex as well in their deliberative process. I don’t know how much information is necessary to persuade you people that human decisions don’t eminate from some inscrutable nether world. But I’ll keep trying.
People undoubtedly have a hierarchy of criteria with perhaps personally experience at the top of the list. But the default assumptions they have about they world are many and specific and come from a number of sources, religion parents, politics world-view and so on.
As to why people would bother to try to persuade anyone if free-will does not exist – OK I’m persuaded. Free will exists and therefore none of what I said above has any chance of persuading anybody. And I am persuaded of this fact not on the basis of anything specific that BarryA or anyone on this thread said, but completely at random. That’s intelligence for you.
Never underestimate the properties we can project on a totally undirected process. Because we know something happened, and unless we’re ready to prove it was directed, it’s a pretty good bet it happened that way, that is if we understand what happened.
And that’s really kind of iffy as it really isn’t the purpose of the brain to understand (whatever that abstraction means), just the purpose we leverage it to with enough success to survive.
magnan: The term clearly implies conscious intent, requiring a conscious agent that intends to persuade and another that consciously considers the argument or information proferred.
I’m sure it does as far human interactions are concerned. However, what is wrong with my saying that I persuaded my chess program to move its rook from its previous location? Unless you are willing (like some materialists I know) to ascribe consciousness to my chess program, it is a perfectly logical statement about the behavior of a machine that most people who play chess will have no trouble understanding.
But then again, maybe I’m guilty of looking at the letter of Barry’s article while ignoring its spirit. I can always be persuaded to change my mind in the face of contrary evidence.:-)
JT: “In The General, … the title character nails the hands of a new young recruit to a pool table and watch silently for five minutes as the poor wretch writhes in agony. Finally he announces, “Alright, I’m persuaded – he’s not the informer. No one could stand that much pain .” So, our hero was following a very simple rule – “If the suspect is guilty he’ll confess after a certain amount of pain. If he’s not guilty he won’t.”
Does that make someone nailing another’s hand to a pool table “rational”? How, would you feel about this person’s authority in general? I would not doubt that there is a high correlation between his theory and the majority of situations he would be faced with. So it’s likely to be rather successful. But it’s hardly a defining case. I think it’s somewhat conditional on the average dedication of thugs in the first place, as they don’t get in it for conviction but for weakness to vices. But besides that, it is hardly more than a semi-anecdotal case that many of us would tend to buy.
However, not just to leave it at some nitpicks, there is still the question of whether or not pain is physical. What makes a lump of carbon blaze a message to another lump of carbon to say that the integrity has been violated?
Notice, also you say he struggled. Not that the disturbed neurons sent messages to his spinal cord, and the body convulsed with too many messages.
Before you tell me how axons work, I can warn you that I can tell you about the and-gates in your computer and how a feedback loop keeps a byte of memory in your computer (I’m assuming you are using a computer to write a post on the net.) a 1 or 0. Yet, I’m guessing that you wouldn’t argue that the mechanical function of a computer makes its product entirely physical.
The typing process and the keyboard are designed to transfer your words into signals. The interrupt architecture is designed to receive those pulses and store them in silicon circuits. Your NIC is designed to send the binary state of those circuits as pulses onto a wire…my screen is designed to send patterns of light and dark stored elsewhere in my computer to represent those letters to me. It goes from neuron impulses, to working levers (keyboard) to a network of reflecting electrical signals (sometimes stopping off as a magnetic charge on a disk somewhere) to electrical pulses to color in excited crystals, through the air into your retina…. All of those have their own physical modes, but the signal is never any of those, because it gets replicated on as many media as we like and can control.
Imagine that I suspect that my computer is intelligent (it might be and I just don’t know it) and it is lying to me. What’s it going to do if I nail its mouse cord to a table? Computers just stop working. I’m not likely to find out the goods on my computer just by nailing part of it to a table.
But imagine the novelty of this idea: that kid seems to be the first person in history to realize that pain can be a way to overcome what was seen as willful resistance.
(jjcassidy – Just now saw your post.)
The following are some additional comments to my previous post.
Maybe I was a little cursory on the specific subject of Computer persuasion.
Say Computer A receives a signal from Computer X, “There is an emergency in Sector 8”. So say computer A has more computational resources, i.e. more memory, more processing speed, and thus is given more responsibility. So it receives a signal from some peripheral computer: “Emergency”, and it must decide whether it really is an emergency and thus whether to allocate resources, notify automatically by phone various relevant human individuals, shut down access to the plant from outlying gates and other points of entry, and so on. So computer A goes through a battery of verification procedures with this other computer as well as gleaning information from other sources it has access to. “What is the nature of the emergency?” Answer: “Intruder highly probable.” “On what evidence?” “Two sensors activated in different parts of the building.” “Is there confirmation from another computer?” “Has there been any false alarms from computer X in the last few days? And so on, and so on. And why could not all this criteria be hard coded into Computer X? Of course my operational scenario was purely speculative, but can anyone not be aware that there are computer systems that are much, much, much more complex than this. And why could Computer A not be persuaded concerning the emergency merely becuase it was operating according to rules? Wouldn’t any human operative working for the company also be operating according to rules? When he left work for home, would his behavior suddenly become random, or just be operating under a different set of rules and constraints? So, frankly I am mystified why people would be treating the whole subject as some sort of philosophical conundrum.
jjcassidy:
I think it’s somewhat conditional on the average dedication of thugs in the first place, as they don’t get in it for conviction but for weakness to vices
I would say (parenthetically) that “weakness to vices” is a rather prejudicial unenlightening explanation for the behavior of “thugs”. Did the Roman Empire have a “weakness for vice” when it went into other countries and took by force things that it wanted? I think all of us want more – not only for ourselves, but also for our family, and for those who we feel we have a responsibility for. The character in this movie rose up from a permenant Irish underclass and pulled off multi-million dollar art robberies the proceeds of which he distributed to others. As far as torture – surprised that offends you. Its a permenant part of American foreign policy now.
However, not just to leave it at some nitpicks, there is still the question of whether or not pain is physical. What makes a lump of carbon blaze a message to another lump of carbon to say that the integrity has been violated?
I’d like to respond in a roundabout way: So you’re implying that biological things were designed, but the rest of the universe – coal, carbon, metal, water, planets, galaxies, stars, quasars, and so on could just exist by chance and were not designed. So IOW, you think all those things would exist whether there was a God or not. But if on the other hand, even the universe had to be designed, then to what end?
Notice, also you say he struggled. Not that the disturbed neurons sent messages to his spinal cord, and the body convulsed with too many messages.
I can hardly think of anything more involuntary than the spasmodic reactions to intense pain. Or maybe you thought those were intelligently designed as well.
The typing process and the keyboard are designed to transfer your words into signals. The interrupt architecture is designed to receive those pulses and store them in silicon circuits. Your NIC is designed to send the binary state of those circuits as pulses onto a wire…my screen is designed to send patterns of light and dark stored elsewhere in my computer to represent those letters to me
OK, but designed by whom – One incredibly gifted genius (utilizing a nonmaterial free-will)? A keyboard was not designed for use with computers. When computers came along it already existed and was close enough for what was needed so it was put to use. But over time, a computer keyboard has changed, ergonomically, as well as with the addition of new keys and so on. Many, many people make these changes – those that are popular are preserved. I’m typing on a keyboard now that has about 300 keys, about 200 of which I have never touched. Do you think those keys have been preserved on other keyboards? Maybe one or two of them. (The legacy of whichever genius dreamed it up.) But all those incremental haphazard changes to keyboard over time aren’t the work of one individual genius and his free will. And what about your own brain – it as well is a collection of nuerons.
“Imagine that I suspect that my computer is intelligent (it might be and I just don’t know it) and it is lying to me. What’s it going to do if I nail its mouse cord to a table? Computers just stop working. I’m not likely to find out the goods on my computer just by nailing part of it to a table. “
What is pain – it is a signalling system – “Warning, stress to this area of the body is exceeding acceptable limits.”
So what could be the most direct analogy pertaining to computers. Say a computer is hard-coded with a rule, “Avoid being shut down at all costs.” Perhaps it operates in a hazardous environment and performs some crucial task… Well maybe someone else can flesh this out.
Sorry if there’s any other points I missed but its late.
jjcassidy:
Notice, also you say he struggled. Not that the disturbed neurons sent messages to his spinal cord, and the body convulsed with too many messages.
(Me:)
I can hardly think of anything more involuntary than the spasmodic reactions to intense pain. Or maybe you thought those were intelligently designed as well.
I think my comment above was out of line a little bit, because you were in fact already admitting that the reaction was involuntary.
Maybe I need to read all a person’s posts before deciding what philosophical position there coming from. Oh Well.
The typing process and the keyboard are designed to transfer your words into signals. The interrupt architecture is designed to receive those pulses and store them in silicon circuits. Your NIC is designed to send the binary state of those circuits as pulses onto a wire…my screen is designed to send patterns of light and dark stored elsewhere in my computer to represent those letters to me. It goes from neuron impulses, to working levers (keyboard) to a network of reflecting electrical signals (sometimes stopping off as a magnetic charge on a disk somewhere) to electrical pulses to color in excited crystals, through the air into your retina…. All of those have their own physical modes, but the signal is never any of those, because it gets replicated on as many media as we like and can control.
OK maybe I agree with you here:
What is a memory in a brain of some event – a direct mapping from that event into another medium. So therefore if current conditions are the result causally of whatever preceded them, then however far you go back, there’s something equating to the current biological world in precisely the same sense that a person’s memory in his brain equates to the actual event.
Just a simple way to put this (which neverthless seems to elude most people) is that if f(x) outputs y then f(x)and y equate. y cannot be more complex than f(x), because we can always use f(x) to refer to y. (Think of the most accurate simulation of evolution – or whatever mechanism it is – with f(x) and the output y both being very very long binary strings)
So for f, plug in the natural laws and x, plug in the mutations (if mutations and natural laws is what it was) and you still have something that is directly equivalent to the biological world today. Is this vacuous? It doesn’t seem vacuous to me.
“What makes a lump of carbon blaze a message to another lump of carbon to say that the integrity has been violated? “
When I first (mis)read the above, I thought your point was that a lump of coal doesn’t signal anything to another lump of coal, not realizing you were in fact alluding to the nervous system.
But anyway, as far as your point about mappings, I think I definitely agree with you, except that, if part of a human is not mechanical than a part of a human cannot map to anything (as it cannot even potentially be encoded) and therefore how can you talk about the code of humans being transmitted from somewhere else previously. So it seems ID should in fact be insisting on the computability of a human being, i.e. a completely deterministic nature, however you want to put it. And furthermore – have no idea whether this is even relevant to most ID’ists – but absolute determinism is what the Bible in fact teaches. Hopefully thats the last comment I make tonight.
Onlookers:
Re JT:
I see this commenter has now resurfaced, and has made further ill-informed statements, such as . . . absolute determinism is what the Bible in fact teaches.
[FYI, JT: There may be a few hyper-calvinists who teach that, by scooping some texts out of contexts and making them into a “golden key” but they are as rare as hen’s teeth — for good exegetical reasons.]
He has done so after an interval of discreet silence over unapologised for false, utterly unfounded accusations of plagiarism.
You should know this background in evaluating his onward remarks.
GEM of TKI
Sorry people, I am stuck on the whole Turing machine thing. (Not the Turing test, just the Turing machine analysis of computers.) I find that once we are reminded that computers are nothing more than physical embodiments of Turing machines, that is, a strict subset of Turing machines, then the rest of the discussions are very much simplified.
Here now are two definitions of “persuade” from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com.
(1) to prevail on (a person) to do something, as by advising or urging
I’m going to leave this one alone for a moment
(2) to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding
In this definition of persuade we read of an appeal to reason or understanding, but computers do neither. They only follow. Absolutely everything a Turing machine “does” is a directed response to the “tape”. Remember, the Turing machine can only read, and follow (write and move) — nothing else. It reads 100% of the locations on which it lands. It moves to the directed location 100% of the time. It writes what it is told to write and moves on. That is it. Therefore, there can be no appeal to reason because there is no reason. There can be no appeal to understanding because there is no understanding.
I like to keep things simple (so I can understand them) All that discussion of whether Searle is a materialist or a whateverist (from some earlier thread) really seem like frosting on a cake I wouldn’t eat. No matter how much AI proponents complicate the matters, we are still talking about Turing machines.
As for the first definition, the tape does not advise or urge. It offers no options. GAME OVER.
OURSELVES
On the other hand, we persuade and are persuaded all the time. It seems obvious to me that this means that we can not be reduced to mere computers. If we were, then we would be Turing machines. The only way out of it is to claim that being persuaded or having volition is illusory. And that gets me back to . . . oh yeah the question posed at the beginning of this post.
Re JT:
I see this commenter has now resurfaced, and has made further ill-informed statements, such as . . . absolute determinism is what the Bible in fact teaches.
(Eccl 1:4-7) A generation goes and a generation comes, But the earth remains forever. Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there. Blowing toward the south, Then turning toward the north, The wind continues swirling along; And on its circular courses the wind returns. All the rivers flow into the sea, Yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, There they flow again.
(Eccl 1:9-10) That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, “See this, it is new”? Already it has existed for ages Which were before us.
(Prov 16:33 NKJV) The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the LORD.
(Rom 9:20-23 NKJV) …who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,”will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,
(Isa 63:17 NKJV) Why O Lord does thou cause us to stray from thy ways and harden our hearts from fearing thee…
He has done so after an interval of discreet silence over unapologised for false, utterly unfounded accusations of plagiarism.
I will admit it was a careless comment I originally made. I didn’t originally understand that the piece was written by you, but once I did, I shouldn’t have made the comment I made unless I was prepared to back it up. I thought there were plagiarism detectors already in existence that would search the web for every phrase in a document. However, there doesn’t appear to be any such thing. So I decided to write my own. However, it only does about one search phrase per second, and therefore I would have to run it all night long. I also realized that if you search on some specific phrase, Google will return pages with the exact phrase first, but if there aren’t any it will return pages that contain any of the words. (So you can’t just look for “Did not mach any documents”.) So I’m at an impasse at this point. The fact is, I would have liked to have such a program to examine my own posts because I am constantly wondering where something I said originally came from. I read voluminously on the net, and am self-aware enough to know that many of my brilliant ideas didn’t actually originate with me, but I can never remember where I encountered them first.
Cheers.
They generally seem to discourage extensive Bible quoting on this site, JT, but I can see how you had no choice but to respond in the way you did!
To KF:
I did actually just fire up this program I wrote and its about 1/10 of the way through your paper in 45 minutes, searching against designinference.com. I will admit my original comment amounted to an insult, but in my defense I had just woken up.
Junkyard, your private interpretation of those Bible verses notwithstanding, it remains that the universe is necessarily probabilistic. The simple reason is that time is abstract. It can only be obtained abstractly from the measurement of change. Time cannot exist as a dimension of nature because, as improbable as it sounds, that would make motion impossible. Why? Because changing time is self-referential; it is an oxymoron. Don’t laugh. This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper (the philosopher who made ‘falsifiability’ famous in science) compares spacetime to “Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning)”. Quoted from Conjectures and Refutations.
This is also the reason that time travel is pure crackpottery. This nasty little truth does not seem to have deterred spacetime physicists in the least. They’re still talking about time travel as a possibility, including the little guy in the wheelchair. See Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics for more on this subject.
So why does an abstract time mean that the universe is necessarily probabilisitic? Simply because reality cannot compute exact temporal intervals for interactions. All intervals are equal and abstract. The problem with that is that it quickly leads to violations of the principle of energy conservation. So, in order to conserve energy over the long run, reality is forced to use the next best thing, probability. By the way, this the reason that the decay of certain subatomic composite particles (e.g., neutrons and muons) is probabilistic. It has nothing to do with state superposition, an illogical conjecture of QM that is the basis of the current hype about quantum computing. Am I claiming that QC is crackpottery? Yes I am.
In conclusion, I will add that crackpottery and dishonesty are not the exclusive hallmarks of evolutionary biology. It’s all over the place. The physics community is a bastion of crackpottery and political bias. Something about human nature. We can’t help it.
Mapou: Just a few comments and questions as I attempt to digest all this.
First of all, I do understand that Einstein’s theories are just mathematical models and only as good as what they are able to predict. I understand that there are several “anomolies” not accounted for by his theories. So as soon as someone comes along with a simpler model that has fewer anomolies, Einstein’s theories will be discarded. That much I certainly appreciate.
As far as time, it occurs to me that whereas it is possible to be at rest in 3-D space, you cannot be at rest in time. You cannot come to a halt and halt time as well, I don’t think. So that right there is an indication that time is a completely different animal. Also the fact that the first 3 dimensions are measured in the same units, and time is not.
your private interpretation of those Bible verses notwithstanding, it remains that the universe is necessarily probabilistic. The simple reason is that time is abstract…So why does an abstract time mean that the universe is necessarily probabilisitic? Simply because reality cannot compute exact temporal intervals for interactions. All intervals are equal and abstract. The problem with that is that it quickly leads to violations of the principle of energy conservation. So, in order to conserve energy over the long run, reality is forced to use the next best thing, probability
Don’t really grasp all this yet, except that you’re saying because time is abstract, the universe must be probabilistic. I don’t see why time would be more abstract than probability.
Sir Karl Popper (the philosopher who made ‘falsifiability’ famous in science) compares spacetime to “Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning)”.
I don’t consider the notion of a block universe inherently absurd or an indication that the Universe must therefore be probabilistic.
Greetings!
To be or not to be?
Will does it exist or does it not? Will is the ability to “cause.”
Free Will does it exist?
Free Will is the ability to make a “choice” in addition to a “cause.”
Choice is based on a set of rules (laws or principles). The rules can be physical or mental or emotional or spiritual. The rule of gravity, and the rules of chemical reations are a couple of physical rules that give rise to “choice” but also limit our “choices.” One may choose to ignore the rule and jump of a sky scrapper, and “cause” the result of “death.” One could “choose” to ignore these physical “rules” of the universe, but that does not change them. Further, the same rules that limit us, also give rise to our existance.
It is also interesting that these same “rules” may be utilized to give rise to abilities that seem to defy one or two “rules.” Flight seems to defy gravity. However, without gravity flight would not exist, nor we.
With the physical “rules” another factor enters into the equation of “choice” and “cause.” If any one physical “rules” are breached then not only do we not exist, but the choices and causes becaome nil.
We exists and functions according to the “rules” of the universe to which we cannot change. Therefore we must work within those parameters. There is no “choice” because our very existencs depends on the “rules” that limit us. A purely materialistic deterministic view is true in a limited sense. This is the level to which the computer is limited, nothing more. However, within the parameters much is possible. The factors of freedom and restriction define our “choices” and “causes” but do not eliminate them.
There still exist the non-material dimensions that further define our “choices” and “causes.” The mental dimension, governed by logic, analysis, synthesis, mathematics, grammar, and language. Each with a governing set of “rules.” Abilities to learn, to discern, and to decide, are required for mental activity. With this new dimension, what new factors enter into our equation of “choice” and “cause.” “Rules” that define the physical stucture of everything in the universe, do not apply to the mind. The mind is a universe of its own.
The human brain and mind do not and never will compare to computer hardware and software. Computer hareware is static, computer software is also static. The human brain is adaptive, and also human mind is adaptive, there is and exchange of information between the mind and brain and vica versa. This is not equivalent software to software alteration. It would be equivalent if the computer’s software could generate and exchange information with its hardware causing the hardware to rearrange itself. As well as the hardware generating and exchanging information with its software causing the software to rewrite new “rules” and recalibrate according to those “rules.”
Perception, perspective, awareness, imagination, and free will are one and bound to a physical body bound to governing pysical universal principles.
“Persuasion” is providing information to another entity along with a logical appeal. It is up to the other entity to interpret the information and logical appeal according to their own set of “rules” or “parameters.”
A computer simply exchanges information, and based on core programming analyses the data and based one the preset protocols organizes the information. A logical appeal is non-existant and therefore irrelevant.
MEANING NO PERSUASION POSSIBLE.
Greetings again!
“Choice” only extist if there are options to choose between, but still based on rules (laws or principles).
Hence, to be or not to be?
Mapou:
a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories [empasis added]. Examples are Empedocles’ theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning).
Science, Pseudo-Science, and Falsifiability,
Karl Popper, 1962
There is no indication that I can see that Popper disagreed with the idea of a Block Universe.
So he wasn’t ridiculing the concept of time as a dimension, or the concept of a block universe. Nor is a block universe a consequence of the supposed self-referential attribute of time
But I agree that change in time with respect to time doesn’t seem to make any sense, and since motion is gauged wrt time, how can we talk about motion in space-time.
Of course you can have dt/dx or dt/dy, etc. I’ll have to think about all this.
Junkyard wote: There is no indication that I can see that Popper disagreed with the idea of a Block Universe.
Makes no difference. Being a close friend of Einstein, Sir Karl was not about to publically disagree with him (and ruin his reputation). Even philosophers of science can be biased. A block universe is soundly falsified by trivial observation: things do change.
Some people have suggested that reality is like a pre-existing infinite movie that we (our consciousness) just move through one frame at a time so as to create the illusion of motion. This is, of course, untenable since, in a block universe that forbids change, consciousness cannot move either.
JT:
I: First, in re the backhanded, implicit acknowledgement of false accusation in [27]:
Sir, you accused me of plagiarism [cf what you said and what that term means], no ifs ands or buts. This is one of the worst of academic sins.
You should not have done so without clear and convincing evidence, but did so — at whatever time of the moring — appatrently not even realising that my own approach is materially different from that of Mr Dembski’s. But, you accused me of using major unacknowledged extracts from Dembski.
FYI: My insistence on the development in my always linked of my own term for the relevant type of information of interest, Functionally Specified, Complex Information [FSCI] — which traces to OOL work circa 1970’s – 80’s and e.g. to Orgel and Yockey and Wickens etc [duly acknowledged] — should have served as a clue that I am coming from a different angle. (You will note that I only make reference to WD’s characteristic term CSI, en passant.) So also should have my strong focus on key basic concepts in information theory and use of statistical thermodynamics foundational principles. I agree with Dr Dembski on many key points, but my thought is largely independent of his. Even, the idea of the UPB, from my view goes back to sitting in Dr V.D.’s lectures on stat thermodynamics and hearing him talk about the probabilistic view of thermodynamics, e.g. the odds of the Oxygen molecules in our lecture room separating out and all going to one end of the theatre. Kittel’s Thermal Physics has a similar remark. Indeed, odds of 1 in 10^50 are generally viewed as sufficiently low that one should not expect such to happen. (I just happen to find WD’s 10^150 calculation useful.]
FYI 2: I do cite WD at several points, with appropriate attributions and/or links. Any plagiarism program of your and its outputs, on the track record of the above and on what I know about my work, have utterly no credibility for me.
II: Now, In re texts cited in 25:
a –> It seems you are playing the hoary old rationalist’s village atheist game — currently being revived by Dawkins et al — of “Sunday School ticklers.”
b –> Let us first note that such scooping out of context and presenting of proof texts as you have now indulged is a notorious basic error in simple, vernacular language Bible Study, much less Exegesis . Kindly observe, it is to an introductory level exegetical presentation on the classic case in point on “predestination” that I pointed you in 23: Pharaoh(which sets the context for Paul’s discussion of attitude — pace exegetical errors of hypercalvinists — in Rom 9).
c –> Sadly, instead of responding to the exegetical level, you have resorted to proof-texting out of context. For instance, Rom 9 speaks to the improper attitude that would put God in the dock, not to the underlying claim on the merits — it being obvious to Paul that if one is accountable over one’s behaviour, one is a responsible agent. Indeed, the classic NT call, to METANOIA, to change of attitudes and thought [thence of way of life] in light of the impact of truth and duty to the right, implies that one has an ability to so change one’s mind. [Acts 11:18b, FYI: “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles [nations — ethnoi] repentance unto life.”]
d –> In short, in the Judaeo-Christain worldview, BOTH the sovereignty of God and the responsibnility of man — which entails significant freedom of thought and action — are underscored. And, they are actually logically and dynamically compatible [though of course wondrous and even for many of us paradoxical], as man is a creature whose freedom does not allow him to go beyond ultimate accountability before God. This is brought out in huge swathes of Biblical history and accounts of key individuals. On e may not properly scoop out a few verses out of context to insist on what is contrary to the whole tenor of the work.
e –> Now, too, the matter of correcting proof texting is plainly beyond the proper focus of this blog on general terms, but rationalist abuse of proof-texts does serve a certain rhetorical agenda to insinuate that ID thinkers are imposing a religious agenda in the name of science.
f –> That is, the rationalists’ tactic is to pull attention away from the hot-pursuit trail of truth, to head out for a handy strawman to be soaked in oil- of- slander and spectacularly ignited, clouding and poisoning the atmosphere. NCSE-ACLU slanders on “theocracy” serve admirably for this. All, to neatly distract from the imposition of a philosophically unjustified, historically inaccurate evolutionary materialist agenda-serving tendentious redefinition of “science,” such that it is no longer to be seen by the victims of this con-game as . . .
g –> FYFI, the core ideational roots of the inference to design on the implication of FSCI in digital data strings traces to say Cicero, 50 BC [as heads my always linked]:
h –> For the sake of onlookers who may be confused by the proof-texts being trotted out, I note in brief:
III: Finally, on the matter of the main issue at stake, Unlettered has put it well [albeit it helps to make a few adjustments!] — and I speak here as one who has designed and built computers from the ground up, including machine code programming:
Precisely.
If, as I discuss over in the Big Blue thread, we can create an Intelligent Director capable of self-awareness and feeling and judgement, then those conscious AI computers will be capable of being persuaded. but let us not fool ourselves that we are even beginning to be nearish to being on the long path to that!
R Daneel and co, you will have to rest for now on the pages of Science Fiction and on the silver screen.
GEM of TKI
KF mentions, in 36, If, as I discuss over in the Big Blue thread, we can create an Intelligent Director capable of self-awareness and feeling and judgement, then those conscious AI computers will be capable of being persuaded
Isn’t that a defintional position, and not even a logic-based one?
I mean, if you define “persuasion” as a term that only applies when Intelligent Directors are involved, then by definition, your claim is right. But, if we broaden the definition of “persuasion”, to providing input to another which results in a modification of a conclusion – as BarryA seemed to be positing – then there is nothing in the process that limits pursuasion to the involvement of Intelligent Directors.
Look at the quote you provided from Unlettered, for instance. In it, one claim is made that “It is up to the other entity to interpret the information and logical appeal according to their own set of “rules” or “parameters.”” Since the other entitity is a computer in this scenario, the computers are, by construction of the scenario, able to interpret the information according to their own rules.
Given that the next condition, as pointed out by you and Unlettered, is that the computers can communicate, then the computers can also communicate their conclusions. There is no reason to assert, or even expect, from this discussion that one of the computers “simply exchanges information”. Conclusions can also be exhanged. (If by “information” you and Unlettered already meant the difference between raw data and information in that information has an interpretation applied, as per the language of computer science, then the computer’s conclusions would already be information, and we are already in agreement.)
This means that if we can create computers that can arrive at conclusions, and can communicate, then they can perform the steps necessary to persuade another. An Intelligent Director or a computer with consciousness, while also being able to be persuaded, isn’t an essential aspect of the scenario or logical conclusion.
Which gets to the essential part of claim question – can computers be constructed that can perform the steps necessary which qualify as “persuasion”, but without being computers that are necessarily Intelligent Directors? If, from your experience, it is necessary to define “persuasion” as requiring Intelligent Directors, please state that as well.
kairosfocus wrote: FYFI, the core ideational roots of the inference to design on the implication of FSCI in digital data strings traces to say Cicero, 50 BC [as heads my always linked]:
Is it possible for any man to behold these things, and yet imagine that certain solid and individual bodies move by their natural force and gravitation, and that a world so beautifully adorned was made by their fortuitous concourse? He who believes this may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them. How, therefore, can these people assert that the world was made by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, which have no color, no quality-which the Greeks call [poiotes], no sense? [Cicero, THE NATURE OF THE GODS BK II Ch XXXVII, C1 BC, as trans Yonge (Harper & Bros., 1877), pp. 289 – 90.]
So according to Cicero, it is impossible that planets move merely by the force of gravity.
More words of wisdom from Cicero:
the world has virtue, and it is also wise, and consequently a Deity.
XV. The divinity of the world being now clearly perceived, we must acknowledge the same divinity to be likewise in the stars
I cannot, therefore, conceive that this constant course of the planets, this just agreement in such various motions through all eternity, can be preserved without a mind, reason, and consideration;and since we may perceive these qualities in the stars, we cannot but place them in the rank of Gods
His fourth cause, and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the distinctness, variety, beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and all the stars, the appearance only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of chance; as when we enter into a house, or school, or court, and observe the exact order, discipline, and method of it, we cannot suppose that it is so regulated without a cause, but must conclude that there is some one who commands, and to whom obedience is paid. It is quite impossible for us to avoid thinking that the wonderful motions, revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which is impaired by the countless and infinite succession of ages, must be governed and directed by some supreme intelligent being.
The first point, then, says Lucilius, I think needs no discourse to prove it; for what can be so plain and evident, when we behold the heavens and contemplate the celestial bodies, as the existence of some supreme, divine intelligence, by which all these things are governed? Were it otherwise, Ennius would not, with a universal approbation, have said,
Look up to the refulgent heaven above,
Which all men call, unanimously, Jove.
This is Jupiter, the governor of the world, who rules all things with his nod…
Onlookers:
A few further remarks are required, especially given the onward attempt of JT to pretend that the material issue in the citation of Cicero was that he had a classical pagan cosmology — and BTW one innocent by 1700 years of the modern concept of gravitation — and so can be dismissed on what he did have to say on inference to design on observing what we now term digital data strings of sufficient complexity.
Indeed, let us suitably emphasise the sentences to highlight the inference to agency across chance-necessity-agency:
Observe how JT — now our resident expert on reading into texts to suit his agendas — almost predictably fails to see that Cicero here infers to agency from the set: chance, necessity agency, on the grounds of functionally specified complex information, understood intuitively.
Further to this, JT fails to notice that Cicero speaks — using “AND that joins equals” — of “certain solid and individual bodies [which] move by their natural force and gravitation. With very slight modification that would still be true today — considering that there are four known major forces that span from the subatomic world of “atoms,” to the cosmological scope of the “world” [understood as “comsos”]. And indeed, to be consistent, JT would need to object that we use a word that means “uncuttables” or “indivisibles” to speak of what we now know is a composite whole that is very splittable: the A – TOM[os]. (A- means not, and tomos means cut. All, duly in Greek.)
Then, too, having acknowledged but not taken responsibility and apologised for “insult,” — instead, trying to excuse such misbehaviour, JT now wioshes to erngavce in a discussion as if he had not grossly and willfully violated serious principles of civility, making a damaging false accusation in defiance of plain duties of care.
Sorry, JT will therefore now only be discussed in the third person, pending a plain acknowledgement of responsibility and apology therefor, on the road to his operating a more civil keyboard.
Thus, re his onward:
1 –> Persuasion is inherently an interpersonal term, so one may not twist lanfgualge to suit one’s rthetorical agendas:
2 –> in short to anthropomorphise the programmed input-output action of interacting computers [cf. what is happening at assembly language, registers and microcode, architectural level] is where the obvious word-twisting and question-begging lie. That is, we see here the persuasive use of the corruption of language, the better to lead the naive to assume what should be proved.
3 –> To pretend that those who insist that persuasion is reserved for known persons — and not for machines known to be simply executing algorithms mindlessly — are the ones begging the question is to try by turnabout accusation to attempt to improperly shift the burden of proof.
4 –> When we see intelligent, creative action coming from computers, a la the Smith model further discussed this Am in the Big Blue thread, then we will accept that they have become artificial persons with artificial intelligence. Until that happens, we will reserve the language of persuasion for persons, which is where it belongs. Indeed if R Daneel comes along one day, to speak of persuading him would be to acknowledge that he is a person. [In the world of fiction, he already is.]
5 –> This of course is the current tactic of choice of the radical ultra-/post- modern relativists [cf my critical assessment here from an intro to phil course], who have tried for instance to redefine marriage on the pretence that all is opinion and politics. (So: is THIS just highlighted claim only opinion and politics too? The self-referential incoherence and agenda games emerge at once. Cf how they try to redefine science, marriage, torture etc etc to suit their current agenda. The epitome of this nonsense is “it all depends on what the definition of “is” is . . .])
GEM of TKI
I begin with two peripheral matters out of necessity.
[1] Anyone who reads kairosfocus’ links and studies his posts will understand that he has developed his own analysis through long and hard study. The finished product of this kind of effort is reflected in his ability to respond immediately with relevant scientific facts grounded in common-sense philosophy. I have found that some critics seem to resent this kind of ability. One of the consequences of post-modern non-thinking and its nonstop tentativeness is to confront intellectual confidence with the charge of arrogance. The charge is almost always accompanied with a whole series of nitpicking objections that seldom have any intellectual value. This is the first time, though, that I have witnessed accusations of “plagiarism” as a means of avoiding the force of an argument. What is called for here is an outright admission of guilt and an abject plea for forgiveness.
[2] On the problem of Bible and “determinism.” The scriptures teach plainly that “God wills all men to be saved.” Obviously, that fact cannot be reconciled with the illogical notion that some are irretrievably lost even before they enter the arena. Apparently, not all will be saved, but that fact is due to an abuse of free will after the fact, not a “stacked deck” set up by God before the fact. Many things about our existence are indeed predestined, such as the place of our birth, our race, our social context, our talents, and even the texture of our personality. Also, we are severely limited and influenced by biological, environmental, and psychodynamic forces—but are character is not determined by them. What has not been pre-established is the way that we decide to develop morally. True, God knows in advance what will happen, but that doesn’t mean he is responsible for our choices. God’s foreknowledge does not compromise our free will. God may know that the stock market is going to crash, but that doesn’t mean that He caused it. The idea that the Bible teaches determinism is absurd on the face of it. No one will wake up in hell one morning and ask, “Wow, how’d that happen.” Those who find themselves there will be able to trace their condition back to long series of conscious choices, none of which were forced on them. They will know that it could have been avoided, and that will make their situation all the more tragic.
Now to the relevant subject matter:
There seems too be some confusion over the question about “mind” and “free will.” Barry A has wisely introduced both concepts in his post, which means that it is fair game to make the distinction, especially for those whose inclinations are to “personify” computers and elevate artificial intelligence to a level of awareness similar to that of human consciousness. While computers do perform calculations that resemble human ratiocination, they do not have the potential to exhibit moral judgment.
Unlike humans, computers do not have anything equivalent to the dual and complementary faculties of intellect and will. In humans, these functions are distinct in a vitally important way. In terms of moral judgments, the intellect provides the conceptual “target” and the will shoots the “arrow.” In other words, the intellect understands the proposition and the will decides whether or not it likes the proposition and whether or not it will go along with it. To persuade a human in the optimal way, one must provide both logical and emotional arguments. Logic alone may not be enough. Even if both elements are present, it still may not be enough. The intellect can present a “target” proposition to the will, and the will can decide on its own behalf whether or not it would prefer not to “shoot the arrow.” Thus, an individual can know that he/she should stop smoking, but may refuse to act on that knowledge. A reasonable proposition is thus rejected on behalf of a perceived emotional need. (How often do ID critics reject reasoned arguments for the same reason?)
Unlike humans, a computer will not reject a reasoned argument for petty reasons, nor will it become emotionally attached to its “status quo.” Unlike humans, it will not change its mind after repeated appeals and finally be “won over.” Unlike humans, it will not accept a proposition for the wrong reasons or be moved by sophistic arguments. More to the point, you cannot persuade a computer to put aside its personal preferences and embrace a “higher cause.” It could, under some circumstances, be programmed to self destruct to protect the interests of the programmer, but it would not be an act of moral conviction. In fact, computers are not, nor can they ever be, moral agents.
Since they have no “will,” computers cannot be programmed either to love or hate truth; they can only process logical conclusions from previously established premises. Thus, in spite of the ever-present enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, the gap between computers and humans is insurmountable. The fact is computers do not have motives, noble or ignoble. Persuasion is a moral enterprise because it always involves intent. Computers simply cannot share that kind of life, either with humans or with each other.
junkyard
On google, put the phrase you’re looking for inside quotes if you only want matches on that exact phrase.
With regards as to whether or not the universe is deterministic, I was wondering why the ID movement seems to be more concerned with biology and astronomy than with fundamental physics. The reason I am asking is that there is something about physics that the physics community has absolutely refused to investigate, something that, in my opinion, would lead inexorably to the conclusion that the universe was created. I’m talking about the causality of motion. Sir Isaac Newton gave a cause for acceleration (Newtonian force f = ma) but declined to do the same for inertial motion. For centuries, physicists have operated under the assumption that bodies in motion remain in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic. This, of course, is unacceptable because it violates the law of cause and effect. I have reasons to belive that a careful examination of the causality of movement will reveal that we are moving in a highly energetic sea of particles (a lattice) and that the primary purpose of this lattice is to serve as a causal substrate for movement. Of course, the lattice must precede the initial creation of normal matter (big bang, if you will) because there can be no motion without it. This ultimately leads to a design hypothesis.
My point is that I wish that the ID movement would conduct research into the foundational issues of physical matter with the same zeal that it investigates the foundational issues of biology. There’s something fishy in physics.
Mapou, in 42, stated ” I’m talking about the causality of motion. Sir Isaac Newton gave a cause for acceleration (Newtonian force f = ma) but declined to do the same for inertial motion. For centuries, physicists have operated under the assumption that bodies in motion remain in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic. This, of course, is unacceptable because it violates the law of cause and effect.”
Umm… But the cause is the force. The effect is the inertial drag.
You already mentioned F=ma. F is the cause of motion. At the same time that something is accelerating, its inertia has the effect to push back. We also know the relationship of movement with inertia: P = mv. So using calculus, F = mdv/dt, and thus F = dP/dT. The cause which is the applied force has the effect of changing a body’s inertia.
Since you’ve already answered that cause and effect increases or decreases the velocity of a bodies motion (F=ma), then “bodies in motion remain in motion” is already answered. If no force is applied, then the velocity doesn’t change. In other words, without a cause of change of motion, there is no effect of changing the motion (motion, not position).
Is there something else you were looking for, like the means to break the purely causal nature of a pinball-machine universe as suggested by Newtonian mechanics? I suspect that the break would need to be found elsewhere than breaking F=ma, or F=dP/dT.
Greetings!
I want to add “Free Moral Agents” to “moral agents” for emphasis.
Language, although words are transmitted through sound waves, with out meaning they are just sound waves nothing more. It is only when meaning is applied to those words, do they become more than sound waves. The meaning is non-material, the sound wave is material. Without the non-material the material is nothing. The same goes for the letters that I have written, you only have use for these words because you have applied a meaning to them.
The “fact” that everyone on here can challenge the definition of the word “persuasion” proves this. It requires an intelligents to provide meaning. A computer cannot do this.
If any doubt the existences of a non-material world they need not look further that the internet, for it exists bound to the physical universe, but also transcendent of it. It is suspended in the information realm.
Can you touch, taste, see, hear, smell meanings? No! Because what you see, taste, touch, hear, or smell is given a meaning after it is transmitted to your brain/mind. You cannot physically touch the mind, or see it, or taste it, or hear it, or smell it. Does it exist?
If you believe the non-material does not exist, you are an idiot. (It is ment for offence) The “fact” you would take offence to the term “idiot” implies you have a mind to process and apply the “meaning” intended to the word “idiot” proves you have a non-material mind.
A computer cannot take offence to anything.
Greetings!
Predestination is as pointless as materialism. So those two worldviews are perfectly compatible with each other. The very Idea of a Designer is incompatable with predesination. Things are designed for a purpose and a meaning; for a reason. Why would a designer create an intelligence only for it to be a puppet? There is no point. Why create something that is conscious then contol it, giving the illusion of free will? Also pointless.
There is one attribute that requires “Free Will” in order to be real and that is love. I am not taking about emotions here, but actions. Specifically, deliberate self-sacrificing actions. The non-material mind can be broken down into three categories: Mental (thoughts and comprehension), Emotional (desires and motivations) and Spiritual (morals and inclinations). Love exists in all areas of the non-material mind. Firefighters, police, coast guard, and life guards risk thier lives to rescue perfect strangers. People grieve for the losses of strangers on different parts of the planet, (the Tsunami in 2004, Katrina).
No computer can do this. No computer has any of these areas.
StephenB:
I must first of all thank you for the statement of confidence and appreciation in no 40 just above.
You are right that where I am today is as a result of decades of my own thought and investigations beginning with my decision at about age 14 to become a physicist. That has been augmented with studies in allied and applied disciplines, and linked to the worldviews core issues on the underlying paradigms. The issues, arguments and points presented in my always linked and in associated materials reflect that process of study. (Yes, 75 or so pp in a pdf print-off is long, but in fact that is a LOT shorter than the 10,000+ pp of directly related readings that underly it.)
On the matters of primary interest to this blog, it was some three years ago that I first decided — for various reasons — to probe the US debates on ID, at first tentatively taking up the general ID position. As I looked more and more deeply into the matter and examined the ways in which it was responded to by critics, I drew thew conclusion that it has a solid core. That core starts from the pervasiveness of information in functional systems in the universe and the implications of the inference to message in the face of the possibility of noise mimicking message. This is also reflected in the implications of the principles on which statistical thermodynamics has been constructed. It is as a result of these that you will see my characteristic terms: functionally specified, complex information [FSCI] and configuration spaces [a version of phase spaces that takes out the issues connected to motion and is similar to state spaces in control systems analysis etc.].
The fruit of that work, I summarised in the online always linked note, which I have continued to update as further interaction suggests.
You have also spoken to several other interesting points:
1] On the problem of Bible and “determinism.” The scriptures teach plainly that “God wills all men to be saved.” Obviously, that fact cannot be reconciled with the illogical notion that some are irretrievably lost even before they enter the arena. Apparently, not all will be saved, but that fact is due to an abuse of free will after the fact, not a “stacked deck” set up by God before the fact . . . . True, God knows in advance what will happen, but that doesn’t mean he is responsible for our choices. God’s foreknowledge does not compromise our free will.
Excellent, sadly easily overlooked, basic point.
Further to it, we can see that morality and rationality require freedom of intellectual action to be credible. And, for that to be so, we need to live in a world in which there is sufficient stability that actions by and large can have reliably predictable consequences.
It is obvious that we find ourselves to be incorrigibly reasoning and moralising creatures. Even the most radical relativists find themselves seeking to correct those who differ with them, and typically hold that “tolerance” is the most absolute of virtues.
That is, our intellectual and moral agency are personally experiences a and routinely observed facts of an unshakable character, absent resort to such absurdities that the one who asserts such plainly removes himself from what he inevitably tries to engage in: reasoned discourse and moral suasion.
No worldview, whether evolutionary materialistic and driven by chance + necessity across time and space, or deterministic- theistic that cuts across such can be factually adequate or coherent. Such, plainly and simply are non-starters.
2] Unlike humans, computers do not have anything equivalent to the dual and complementary faculties of intellect and will. In humans, these functions are distinct in a vitally important way. In terms of moral judgments, the intellect provides the conceptual “target” and the will shoots the “arrow.” . . . . Unlike humans, a computer will not reject a reasoned argument for petty reasons, nor will it become emotionally attached to its “status quo.” . . . . Since they have no “will,” computers cannot be programmed either to love or hate truth; they can only process logical conclusions from previously established premises.
Excellent and sobering points.
I do put forth that we can see a way to make a sufficiently sophisticated computerised servosystem autonomous, but the underlying programming will derive from agents and in the end the last level of programming will be unquestioned. An algorithmically programmed digital computer is an instruction executing device.
Where there may be interesting opportunities is in the world of neural networks which allow for learning and adaptation. A nerual network based intelligent Director supervising the servosystem’s i/o controller would make for an interesting path to self-directed learned behaviour on the part of a new generation of robots. [NB: such networks can be programmed in digital computers but that would just be the material cause of their behaviour, not the goal or the intent or the actuation of the neural network process].
Pardon a bit of a lengthy Wiki scoop-out . . .
3] Wiki primer in brief on neural networks . . .
This all brings us back to the power of the Derek Smith sophisticated servo-system model being discussed over in the Big Blue thread, esp his fig 2.
My thougfht is that if we are ver going to get to really autonomous artificial intelligences, it is goinf to be as a result of creating robots based pretty much on the DS architecture, and with a set of goals and cost-functions that reflect the characteristics of a moral creature and with initially realistic moral-physical-cognitive world models as adaptable templates, then allowing them sufficient freedom of action to move out from there. Such robots would then in effect imagine multiple what-if scenarios, map out paths to the future based on finite, bounded artificial and initially imported rationality [subsequently developed further though learning and experience], and then would probably have to decide based on an internal voting process of governance across competing models — worldviews and programmes of action connected thereto if you will.
Thence we come to some of the debates on the ethical laws of robotics, and on the dynamics of governance.
So, we come to the relevance of Acts 27 as a case study of such [semi-] democratic governance — government is of course closely tied to kubernete, the steersman who navigates and steers the ship — in a dynamic world . . .
4] Ac 27:
Here is a partial scoop, from the point where in Fair Havens the decision on where to winter in light of the risky environment was at stake, from v 8, NKJV:
We can see diversity of world models and agendas, persuasion, decision making, action with a cost in light of the environment, the re-emergence of initially rejected anointed leadership in a crisis, leaning of which advisor to trust and protect, resulting changed decision strategy and better — though now constrained by previous bad decisions — consequences.
BTW, observe here the interplay of real decisions by real men acting responsibly [though not always disinterestedly or morally] in a real, partly predictable but partly chancy world [sometimes you get away with folly, sometimes not], and God’s overall sovereignty. This is a paradigmatic case of the Bible on determinism, in fact. God controls but in a situation where we as intelligent actors have considerable but constrained freedom of action and consequences.
______________
Now, can we capture all this in an AI? If we can, then it will be worthy of being designated a person.
GEM of TKI
PS: I should note on:
They had probably just rounded a nearby cape, only to run into the start of an early winter storm nor’easter — it is clear from the context that it was driving them ~ SW towards the bay of Sidra in what is now Libya.
The sandbars were their fear and the ship handlers took down every stick they could on the mains’l then dragged a sea anchor and used a heads’l on the bowsprit to try to pull off the sand bars.
They drifted generally WNW [ie.. were reaching relative to the storm, with a ship in probably slow-sinking condition]; and as Smith worked out over 100 years ago now, ended up on N coast of Malta where they ran around on a beach in what is today called, I believe, St Paul’s cove.
If they had listened to Paul to begin with they may well have lost the ship [the bay at Fair Havens was open to the sea on a 120 degree arc] and would have had to have wintered in a less than happily rustic situation, but they would not have run the risk of losing their lives.
My reasd is that he owner wanted to save his ship even at the risk of lives of crew and passengers. The Kubernete knew on which side his bread was buttered. The Centurion did not spot the risk as he was not sufficiently familiar with sailing conditions to fully realise what Paul was warning of. [This is like the post-election situation with public opinion and various interest groups vying to influence the gov’t.]
The majority were simply looking out for their comforts and were probably in a very grumpy condition after weeks of being buffeted by westerlies and not finding sea and land breezes to work west along Anatolia to cut across to probably Corinth at least.
So, money, tech and majority all lined up against the lonely voice of experience and prophetic counsel.
But hen when disaster struck and all hope was lost, there was now a good man in the storm — and the centurion knew who to trust, even in the teeth of money interests and technical capacity on the other side. [Notice the ruse on which the sailors would have abandoned the passengers to death, and the selfish ingratitude of the soldiers who wanted to kill the prisoners among the passengers — including the one who just saved their ungrateful necks!]
Resemblance to the long running story and current situation of government, politics and resulting history in Western culture especially is NOT coincidental.
[NB: This case study is my first pick on teaching decision-making and management under risk and uncertainty. I use it to also teach another path: what if the centurion had forced the Kubernete to give him reasonable probabilistic estimates on likely states of nature and on decision alternatives? Then in effect they would have been playing a “game” against nature and could see what was at stake and which decision strategy should have been chosen, relative to possible outcomes, probabilities and benefits/costs. Sadly, even today when we DO have these techniques easily available, we don’t do it . . . and pay a terrible price, repeatedly and needlessly. For why, cf the personification of Wisdom in Prov 1: 20 ff, cf. vv 1 – 7.]
GEM of TKI
Q wrote: Umm… But the cause is the force. The effect is the inertial drag.
You already mentioned F=ma. F is the cause of motion.
Not at all. There are two types of motion, accelerated and non-accelerated motion. The Newtonian force only causes accelerated motion. It does not cause non-accelerated or inertial motion. This is a deep lacuna in physics, in my opinion. The current notion that bodies in motion remain in motion for no reason at all will turn out to be worse than the flat earth hypothesis. Future generations will laugh at us for having been so blind.
I am convinced that the universe is discrete for the simple reason that continuity leads to an infinite regress. This means that motion consists of a series of minute jumps at the Planck level. Every jump is an effect that requires a cause. Note that a cause in physics is an interaction between particles. This means that a particle in motion must be continually interacting with other particles. This is the reason that I have concluded that we are moving in a highly ordered multi-dimensional expanse of wall-to-wall energetic particles.
As an interesting aside, there are Biblical passages that allude to this expanse. I’m referring to the sea of crystal in the books of Revelation and Ezekiel.
Mapou says “There are two types of motion, accelerated and non-accelerated motion. The Newtonian force only causes accelerated motion. It does not cause non-accelerated or inertial motion.”
OK. “Accelerated motion” is acceleration: dv/dt. Non-accelerated motion is velocity: dx/dt. Velocity can be from 0 to speed of light, toward or away from something. All Newtonian observations have shown that a velocity of 0 is fundamentally the same as a velocity of non-0. (Einstein shows a bit of a difference, but he also shows that there is no absolute frame of reference, so that a velocity of 0 is simultaneously a velocity of non-0!)
It is the force that causes acceleration or “accelerated motion” which becomes the “cause.”
Essentially, nothing causes velocity to continue, in Newtonian mechanics. Only with the application of force, which changes velocity, is a new non-accelerated motion caused. With force, things speed up or slow down. Without force, things coast – again, because there is no absolute frame of reference for non-accelerated motion.
The current notion that bodies in motion remain in motion for no reason at all will turn out to be worse than the flat earth hypothesis.
But coasting is observed, on earth and in space. A flat earth isn’t.
“This means that motion consists of a series of minute jumps at the Planck level. Every jump is an effect that requires a cause.”
It may also be that motion is strictly a propogating wave, in which no “jumps” in coordinates actually occur. But, if you’re jumping down to the Plank level, you’re no longer talking about Newtonian mechanics. Quantum mechanics gives you that means to break Newtonian causality.
Q: Essentially, nothing causes velocity to continue, in Newtonian mechanics. Only with the application of force, which changes velocity, is a new non-accelerated motion caused. With force, things speed up or slow down. Without force, things coast – again, because there is no absolute frame of reference for non-accelerated motion.
Forgive me if I sound arrogant and dismissive but I’ve heard every argument there is for the non-existence of absolute motion/position before. Not one of them holds water. I am no longer really motivated to argue the point like I used to. Let me just say that it is easy to show that a universe that only allows relative position/motion is a self-referential and illogical universe. Besides, how can a particle have access to an infinite number of FORs so as to move relative to them? It’s all illogical relativist dogma that borders on pathological denial and, frankly, I’m tired of it.
The truth is that every physical property in the universe, inluding position, is absolute (whether or not we can measure it). The relative is abstract and, as Newton tried to explain, does not even make any sense unless it is based on a fundamental absolute.
I’m not normally given to conspiracy theories but it almost seems as if there is a powerful invisible cosmic force that conspires to prevent certain truths from entering the public’s consciousness. Makes no difference though. Truth overcomes all obstacles in the end.
Mapou, in 50, “The truth is that every physical property in the universe, inluding position, is absolute”
Cool. Can I always be at the origin of all positional frames of reference? 🙂
I think your analysis is off by one degree of derivative. I.e force, which is Newtonian cause, is related to d2x/dt2, and not dx/dt. I disagree with your claim because it doesn’t match observation. But, as you request, we can end in disagreement.
Q: Cool. Can I always be at the origin of all positional frames of reference?
Well, consider that there are no such things are frames of references in the universe. FORs are entirely figments of our imagination. The universe could not care less about them and yet, the universe works just fine. Isn’t that strange?
If relativists only want to admit that which is observable (it’s a subtle lie), they must isolate FORs in the lab and show us what they are made of.
I think your analysis is off by one degree of derivative. I.e force, which is Newtonian cause, is related to d2x/dt2, and not dx/dt. I disagree with your claim because it doesn’t match observation.
This is exactly what I have been saying. Where is the disagreement? We need a cause for dx/dt. Physics not only does not provide it but the physics community frowns on anybody who has the temerity to suggest that such a cause is necessary. It reminds me of Darwinists. It’s dogma all over the place.
kairosfocus and all:
I haven’t read much pertaining to this issue in the last couple of days, so I don’t know exactly where it has evolved to.
I had to stop my program again because there was this huge memory leak I couldn’t account for. Then I discovered that it was the browser itself, which keeps in memory every single page that is downloaded until you shut it down. (All IE-based browsers do this, and the only one that isn’t IE-based is Mozilla.) So after I wasted several hours to figure out the problem wasn’t in my code, I started it back up again. Its only through 93000 of 25000 bytes, looking for any seven word phrase or longer that can also be found at designinference.com. Thus far it has found two or three such phrases (each of them seven words) which are not quoted or attributed. There are of course a couple of much longer passages you quote directly, and of course it found those as well.
The fact is, I never suspected you of copying and pasting from Dembski to begin with, primarily because most everything he has is in PDF with copying turned off.
Just to reiterate the exact sequence of events, I woke up and went into UD, and saw a really long response from you, as well as the link from your site (which I don’t think you identified as your site). So I went there, and there is this 100 page long essay with no author’s name attached. I did a google search and found the same paper on an evangelical website, also with no author’s name attached. And I thought to myself, “Well, these are just Dembski’s ideas being presented as received Truth.” And in crafting my response to you, I made some snarky comments to that effect. Then after finally finishing my comments, (which were not all that good, a fact to which I ADMITTED at the end of the post), I went back to the website and saw that you, ‘kairosfocus’ had written the paper. I had not even eaten breakfast yet, so with some hasty amendments to my own comments I went ahead and posted them anyway, thinking, “Well, we’ll see what happens.”
What happened is that it appears I have offended your sacred honour, and in a different era you might have already challenged me to a duel (I did notice you spell color, ‘colour’). Then I guess I would have to decide, whether to acquiese to this guy’s demand for an apology or risk his death or mine. Or maybe as your inferior, you would merely have me siezed and turned over to the authorities for a good beating. All I can note is that the governing authority in this case (UD) saw no reason to penalize me in some way.
I would note that several days ago, someone made a sarcastic comment to AIGuy that he did a good job of cutting and pasting from Google. His reply was a bemused dismissal with a brief reference to his credentials.
But at any rate, I have no desire to continue running this program for the next few hours to prove you’re a plagiarizer, something which I never thought you were anyway.
What I should have said to begin with is that your writings reflect such a singleminded vociferous commitment to the ideas of one individual that they could have been written by that individual. Perhaps that would be pretty inflammatory as well. Or maybe you’re saying that Dembski’s ideas are so self-evidently true, its only natural that his ideas would coincide with many, many persons including yourself who were already thinking along the same lines. I’ll leave it with one question, Is there any substantive area on which you and Dembski disagree?”
If you want me to keep running this program and report the final results to put this matter to rest, I will. I will also turn over the source code (or paste it here) along with the executable to anyone who might want a copy for some reason. As I’ve already said, its too slow. It only does one search per second, whereas I was thinking it would be faster. So maybe someone could improve the speed for me. (It uses the COM interface to Internet Explorer, which may be kind of old, but I don’t know how else to do it at this point.)
As far as my primary disagreements with Dembski (and you):
While I certainly agree philosophically (i.e. God does exist), I think the argument has been severely misstated (by Dembski and others), primarily as it relates to probability and mechanism.
The whole reason of science is to deduce mechanisms that account for observed natural phenomena.
Even supposing there is some divine aspect to man – then if that aspect cannot be explicated as a mechanism, it cannot be understood at all from a scientific standpoint.
Any mechanism can be output by some other mechanism. The reason is simple. Any mechanism can be exactly represented as a program and any program can be represented by a binary string. Any binary string can be the output of some other program. So all we can possibly know about man scientifically could of course have been output by a mechanism.
Gregory Chaitin and many others assert that every scientific theory equates to a program, and to me at least this is self-evidently true, in that there cannot be some string of english symbols that exceeds the capability of a program to describe accurately (And for a program let’s presume one of the known formalisms, e.g. The Unlimited Register Machine, in which any conceivable program can be represnted as a string of instructions chosed from an instruction set of only three.)
If at some point in a regressing causal chain leading to the biological world there exists a cause that cannot be explicated as a mechanism then it is completely outside the realm of science. If the point of ID is to prove such a point exists, its utility is in question, because from a practical standpoint, that point always exists, as ignorance always exists in our world, and thus there is always something we have not yet been able to explain. Furthermore, it would not be science to point to intelligence as a cause of anything, because the whole point of science is to explain, in other words to deduce a mechanism, but according to ID, intelligence is not a mechanism.
Suppose a chimp is a mechanism so it thus can be exactly represented by some binary string Ch. Obviously there is a mechanism that can output that string. e.g. “output Ch”. There are in fact an infinite number of programs that can output that string, transforming their input in any one of a number of different ways to output a chimp. If you want to call that mechanism intelligent because it output a chimp, that’s your prerogative (and I would probably agree). But then you’re saying a mechanism can be intelligent.
Also note that if you had some program that output a chimp merely because it contained the code for a chimp to begin with, you could almost say that a chimp already existed to begin with. Or OTOH, suppose the program was given input so that f(x) = Ch, and the input x had most of the code for a chimp and the program f just tinkered around the edges a bit to produce the final output. You would still have to say that f(x) equated to a chimp to begin with.
There are an infinite number of arcane methods by which some program could map its input to some other output and that output be a chimp.
However it happened, and whether the input was more complex or improbable, or the the program f was more complex or improbable, f(x) would still in fact equate to the output y.
To use another example, Say you are sitting in your study and get cold and so you get up and walk to another part of the house to turn up the thermostat. When you reach the thermostat, you suddenly have a brilliant insight how to turn lead into Gold. So lets say that f is you sitting in your study and the input x was a change in the environmental conditions. (Or you could turn it around somehow and make you the input and environmental conditions f.) But at any rate, f(x) was already a human to begin with, and already had the ability to turn lead into Gold. In the same way, whatever mechanism and input f(x) existed in the past that output mankind, etc. that f(x) already equated to mankind.
So one can see how in a framework of mechanistic determinism, its easy to make relevant observations that point to the existence of God, in that whatever preceded us has to equate to us.
But what about Quantum Indeterminism? Someone may have to correct me if I’m wrong, but with “Superdeterminsm”, in which even a person’s choices of what to observe are predetermined, any supposed problems with quantum indeterminism completely disappear.
The probability argument of ID is flawed, I think, because NOTHING could exist without God: Someone makes the argument, “Suppose God did not exist – then this rock, that volcano, this planet that star could exist, but this chimp could not exist because he’s too complex.”
No.
You cannot postulate a reality in which God does not exist, as nothing could exist without God.
Furthermore ID, avoids having to account for the probability of God, by saying that intelligence is not a mechanism and therefore cannot be encoded, so for ID nothing called God can be encoded, so we don’t have to address the probability of God.
For the record, I absolutely believe the Genesis account of creation is divine truth, But the whole matter is correct interpretation (and I’m not alluding to some simplistic “day-age” scenario.) However, I really think it is creationists (and ID’ists) that need to start thinking in terms of a purely natural mechanism that would coincide with the Genesis account. There are many, many things that can be said about the Biblical account of creation (not only in Genesis but many other references) that I think elude ID’ists, because they seem to want to ignore scripture altogether, and Creationist’s, because they are wedded to a “literal” (i.e. simplistic) interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis.
Just a few other remarks- I would say man is the endpoint of Creation because God was manifested as a man. Then why does the rest of the universe exist, if Man is the endpoint? Why are we an infinitely miniscule spec in a sea of energy 50 billion light years in extent? Did God create the universe as well? If so, to what end? If ID’ist have no trouble seeing DNA and cell-replication as mechanism resulting in man, why can they not see another mechanism behind that, and ultimately the largest mechanism of all, the phyisical universe – a very simple mechanism with lots and lots and lots of energy.
(Eccl 10:10) “If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge then he must extert more strength…”
(I’ve mentioned Ecclesiastes before, a book which has a lot of cryptic wisdom about the nature of the universe.)
There is trade-off between energy and “intelligence” but if you have an unlimited amount of either, what difference does it make which you use. What if God just did everything with a lot of energy? (And this I have somewhere before, but where I can’t remember.) But as far as this tradeoff – You can have a brute force algorithm based on an exhaustive search, which will take forever to complete (e.g. consume a lot of energy), or you could write something really clever and obscure that does that same task (e.g. sorting) in an instant. But if you have unlimited energy why not use it. As I said, I don’t have time to get into the Bible here, but there’s a lot it says about the heavens, (as well as another Psalm that equates the voice of the Lord to energy, giving us insight into what could be meant by God “speaking things into existence” as the creationists say.
I don’t know how much time I have to defend every single one of these ideas. (Frankly, I don’t know how much time any of us have.) I think others have said similar things though, and I wanted to get them into circulation here. I’ll try to defend them as time permits. Maybe I’ll learn something as well.
If I don’t respond to something, it won’t be because I didn’t read it. It could possibly be a compelling argument for which I don’t have an answer for, and am thus still thinking about it. Or possibly not.
KF, maybe even some of my above comments at this point may not be appropriate, because I didn’t read but a couple of posts pertaining to this yesterday, so maybe you’ve already said something conciliatory that would put this whole matter to rest, and I would hope we could keep it that way. I will try to only make comments conducive to rational discussion, and refrain from scurilous unfounded charges.
Sincerely,
J. Tornado
Mapou, in 53, mentions We need a cause for dx/dt.
Then perhaps we also need a clarification of what you mean by “cause”. In the scientific domain – i.e. the observable domain – cause equates to force. Effect equates to the changes resulting from the application of force. Action is the result of applying force. Reaction is the opposition to to that application of force.
If you mean “cause” to be something unrelated to force or acceleration, you’ll need to explain it – and quite possibly co-opt a word and break its meaning.
edit: There is trade-off between energy and “intelligence” but if you have an unlimited amount of either, what difference does it make which you use. What if God just did everything with a lot of energy? (And this I have read somewhere before, but where I can’t remember.)
(Quite a bit of it I think I’ve read elsewhere before, in one form or another.)
Just one other point that didn’t originate with me but I appreciate – if there is part of man that is not physical at all, then it seems physical mechanisms would not be able to account it. (But certainly everything biological other than maybe part of man is a physical mechanism).
JT mentions “if there is part of man that is not physical at all, then it seems physical mechanisms would not be able to account it. “
My point has been that an investigation should be able to locate the boundary between physical and not physical.
Q: In the scientific domain – i.e. the observable domain – cause equates to force. Effect equates to the changes resulting from the application of force…
If you mean “cause” to be something unrelated to force or acceleration, you’ll need to explain it – and quite possibly co-opt a word and break its meaning.
I think you hit the nail right on the head here. Once one accepts that nature is discrete and that a particle in motion undergoes a series of discrete jumps, then one realizes that it’s all acceleration. So-called inertial motion is a macroscopic illusion. At the quantum level, it always takes a force to accelerate a particle across a fundamental distance (possibly the Planck length). After the interaction and the resultant movement, the force is no longer there and the particle comes to an absolute halt. It takes another force to cause the particle to move to the next discrete position.
If all the jumps last the same duration on average, the particle’s macroscopic movement appears to us as inertial motion. But deep down it’s a series of discrete accelerations. These require a constant input of energy. This is why I maintain that we are moving in an ocean of energy. I believe that, in the not too distant future, we will understand the composition of this ocean and the properties of its constituents. Then we’ll learn how to use it for propulsion and power generation.
As an aside, I believe that the sea of particles consists of photons. I also believe that the interactions of normal particles with this ocean is responsible for both the electrostatic and magnetic forces, and for gravity as well. But that’s another story.
The relevance of this to ID is that the sea of energy must precede whatever event (big bang) created normal matter. This requires an intelligent designer/creator.
Mapo At the quantum level, it always takes a force to accelerate a particle across a fundamental distance (possibly the Planck length).
At the quantum level, particles are simply waves, which propogate. No “jumps” are necessarily needed to keep particles bumping forward. Your “ocean of energy” fits the propogating wave model much better than the bumping particle model.
But, even the particle model you mention doesn’t require the constant application of force for velocity to continue. Imagine a bunch of bricks linked with springs (bricks=particles, springs=binding mechanism). Tap a brick on the end. It pushes on its spring, and may stop. But, that spring transfers the movement to the next brick, andso on, and the chain of bricks moves forward like an inchworm. When the movement gets to the frontmost brick, it has nothing pushing back, so gets to move even further. Now, by going further, it pulls on the second behind brick, which a moment later pulls on the brick behind it, continuing the inchworm movement. As long as the energy is not lost (as in radiation or friction), that chain of bricks will keep oscillating with an average forward direction related to the impulse of that first tap. This explanation even holds at the micro scale.
But, I like the wave model better.
sorry typo above: Mapo s/b Mapou.
KF: “It is obvious that we find ourselves to be incorrigibly reasoning and moralising creatures. Even the most radical relativists find themselves seeking to correct those who differ with them, and typically hold that “tolerance” is the most absolute of virtues.”
In Pensees Pascal put a similar thought this way:
“We have an incapacity for proving anything which no amount of dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth which no amount of scepticism can overcome.”
KF wrote: I do put forth that we can see a way to make a sufficiently sophisticated computerised servosystem autonomous, but the underlying programming will derive from agents and in the end the last level of programming will be unquestioned.
I cannot think of a more unsupernatural process than programming. I just don’t think mystical unexplained flashes of insight from some spiritual dimension are in any way involved in programming, if that is in fact what “agency” is. But since agency isn’t a mechanism, I don’t know what it is exactly. To me programming is just a mechanical, time-consuming laborious, detail oriented, mind-numbing process.
Furthermore as far as I’m concerned, programs themselves performs all sorts of programming tasks all the time.
To me, just the compilation process itself, taking some program description in a high-level language and translating it into machine code seems to be a very complex task. At least the optimization part is: “Go through this 100,000 line program and analyze it to optimize it for speed and space usage. Optimize every loop, translate controls structures into the most optimal form possible for speed, – and do it in 15 seconds.” Optimizing compilers do this all the time. Automated theorem proving equates to programming as well.
Any time a program is given a high-level goal and can translate into a series of instructions necessary to achieve that goal, then it is programming.
Thought I’d mention that the image of the Beast in Revelation might be some supercomputer or network of supercomputers tied to incredibly sophisticated sensors on a network of satellites, and used to automatically monitor and control the populace world-wide. That will certainly be an “agent”. Probably is already nearing final completion, too.
Historically, computers evolved from the von Neumann architecture, which is based on sequential processing and execution of explicit instructions. On the other hand, the origins of neural networks are based on efforts to model information processing in biological systems, which may rely largely on parallel processing as well as implicit instructions based on recognition of patterns of ’sensory’ input from external sources. In other words, at its very heart a neural network is a complex statistical processor (as opposed to being tasked
There’s nothing a neural network could do that a Turing Machine for example, could not. (Maybe that’s already obvious.)
Onlookers:
Pardon the following in re Re JT at 53. I comment, not because they are so much interesting in themselves; rather, that they give us a cross-section on how those who object to the design thinking are thinking. This will help us better respond – especially for the onlooking general public.
Okay, pardon me:
1] I never suspected you of copying and pasting from Dembski to begin with, primarily because most everything he has is in PDF with copying turned off
Original accusations, from the Epistemology thread, linked through my reply at 100:
NB: the note in question is HEADED and initialled similar to all my comments at UD (and links to where you can contact me directly as several UD readers and commenters have. In the site linked it is easy enough to find my name. I have found tat since this is in the low traffic end of the net, keeping my name off the posts in more high traffic sites such as blogs, is good enough to reduce spam and harassment):
2] I went there, and there is this 100 page long essay with no author’s name attached. I did a google search and found the same paper on an evangelical website, also with no author’s name attached. And I thought to myself, “Well, these are just Dembski’s ideas being presented as received Truth.” And in crafting my response to you, I made some snarky comments to that effect
Of course the relevant context that the page in question explicitly states why I took my name off it [for harassment avoidance reasons], invites to contact me directly [with email contact] and links onward to pages that give my name etc, is neatly omitted
Further to this, observe the underlying the accusation that my work is just WD presented as received truth – implying the strawman “fundy” mindset as imagined by too many secularists – rather than what it is, my own take on a serious issue of major significance for any serious thinker in early C21.
Observe the focus as well, not on apology for wrongful slander, but on self-justification and exculpation – and indeed on persistence (a la Rathergate) in trying to back up a charge that it should be manifestly obvious, is ill-founded. [JT, IMHBCO, should simply acknowledge he did wrong, apologise and move on . . . that would be fully acceptable.]
3] there is this 100 page long essay with no author’s name attached. I did a google search and found the same paper on an evangelical website, also with no author’s name attached.
First we have a note not a polished essay.
Second, it is long but not overly long considering the context and the scope involved. Third, it leads with the name of the relevant site and organisation, gives my initials and links to contact details and a site that does give my name. So it is not as “anonymous” as is suggested. AND EVEN IF IT WERE, GIVEN THE CAREER-BUSTING TACTICS AT WORK ON THE PART OF DARWINISTAS, THAT WOULD BE JUSTIFIABLE.
Third, of course, the focus on anonymity is a neat diversion from the issue on the merits, which leads out to conveniently slander-oil soaked strrawmen waiting to be ignited..
Fourth, I did a Google and a Yahoo search just now by title, opening words and the like. Google rarely hit the briefing note anywhere near the opening page. Yahoo hit it first hit, on my site – which is indeed that of an evangelical Christian who happens to also be a scientist. I could not find it anywhere else on the web up to 70 deep in the relevant searches; and have given no-one else permission to post it – if it appears elsewhere without my knowledge, strictly, that is a violation of my reservation of rights. [Note, the note is fairly regularly updated as my thought evolves . .. ]
4] I guess I would have to decide, whether to acquiese to this guy’s demand for an apology or risk his death or mine. Or maybe as your inferior, you would merely have me siezed and turned over to the authorities for a good beating.
A gentleman, on seeing that he has acted wrongfully or irresponsibly, acknowledges and apologises for the wrong. In JT’s case, sadly, he has falsely accused me of plagiarism – a grievous academic sin that can cost one his career, and at the very least his reputation.
I have pointed out that this claimed platrgiarisation is not so and have given evidence on why. Others have corroborated my remarks. To date, even after days of trying very hard, having written a program to do so, JT has been unable to find unacknowledged excerpts from WD [or doubtless other ID leaders etc] in my work. That is evidence that he has thought the accusation above was justified on the merits – as he has said in so many words as I have again excerpted — and has sought to “back” it, but has consistently failed.
One would expect a reasonable and respnsible person would accept wrong and apologise. Yet, still we see attempts at excuses and evasion of responsibility for ill-founded, potentially damaging remarks against another. Meanwhile the search for evidence of plagiarism continues . . .
That tells us all we need to know. And, it is occasion for prayer as Kairos reminds us ever so aptly.
[ . . .]
On a point of semi-substance:
5] maybe you’re saying that Dembski’s ideas are so self-evidently true, its only natural that his ideas would coincide with many, many persons including yourself who were already thinking along the same lines.
I have never assumed or advocated that Dr Dembski’s ideas – here the genetic fallacy is at work, compounded by past successful slander in the form you Americans call “well-poisoning” [BTW, the basic fact that I am a Caribbean national should easily enough explain peculiarities of my spelling relative to your Americanisms] — are self-evidently true.
Instead I have addressed the matter as a matter of science, on inference to best explanation. On what that entails, cf my remarks here in a developed form of a briefing note for a course I once taught:
No-one who has simply followed up this link – which I have repeatedly used in the recent context of discussion, could reasonable infer that I am seeing the inference to design as a matter of mere self-evident truth – truths obvious on reflective inspection of the meaning of what is entailed [e.g. a finite whole is greater than its proper parts, e.g 2: error exists], and which are rejected on pain of absurdity.
Instead, I have adverted to empirical evidence on the significance of information and how we reliably see that it is a case of messages not lucky noise . . . .
6] The argument of the note in a nutshell:
I point out that the concept of functionally specified, complex information and the difficulties of getting to islands of functionality in the config spaces leads to the reliability of such inferences. I then address cases that are relevant. I used the Dembski formulation of a common enough statistical thermodynamics point – that specified and statistically highly improbable results [cf app 1 point 6] are hard to come by through random processes as the relative statistical weight of other macrostates vastly overwhelms them. Just look up the concept of fluctuations in stat thermo-D if you doubt me.
I then infer on a provisional basis to message in DNA, in body plan level biodiversity and on the organised complexity of thephysics of htre cosmos.
So, how are these addressed by JT and his ilk? Not on the merits but on the strawmen, having first tracked out to them via red herrings.
That tells us something about the underlying basic strength of the case as an inference to best explanation.
GEM of TKI
PS: I will take some time later to speak to points of substance on the main flow of the thread.
–> Suffice to say for the moment that JT’s remark just above on inference to the SUPERNATURAL as opposed to agency and mind is highly revealing red herring leading out to yet another Darwinista strawman.
–> Likewise Turing machines in effect have to be explicitly programmed, neural networks of the types we are interested in LEARN.
Okay:
On substantial points . . .
First, let’s set a context for further discussion here and in parallel threads, by going back to a point in my always linked, section A and a remark by good old materialism-leaning prof Wiki on Instincts [and along the way, DV, we will make reference again to Ac 27 on governance by competing agents in a situation that exhibits tracking in the short term and navigation in the long term relative to an intended path]:
These — together with the DS architecture of a complex servo-system with a controller bases on input-output comparison to projected track, and with the projected track being creatively supplied by what I have called an intelligent director – will form a context for the further remarks.
But first, a quick aside on the Q-Mapou exchange:
1] M, 52: If relativists only want to admit that which is observable (it’s a subtle lie), they must isolate FORs in the lab and show us what they are made of.
First, of course it is by now well-known that while scientific theories and models more broadly [which make no claim beyond mere reliable utility] may be empirically, observationally anchored many of the core concepts and terms are precisely not observable in themselves. That is why I hold that sci theories are in effect inferences to best explanation as constrained by empirical data. [Thence my selective hyperskpeticism objection to those who would strain at the gnats of ID while swallowing camels in their evo mat “science” and day to day life. But such are the ways of the denizens of Plato’s Cave of shadow shows.]
Inertial frames of references [IFRs] of course are observable to the extent that we can sense that something is not subject to acceleration and/or a gravitational field [in that lies a lot of the General Theory of Relativity]. Under such circumstances, per Einstein’s postulate [which is an objective, not relativist claim . . . as is the point that C is constant in vacuo for all IFRs] we see the laws of physics taking the simplest form. A semi-trivial example is that under curved motion, Coriolis [virtual] forces appear – as significant as the formation of hurricanes!
Relative to us, an object may seem at rest or to be in uniform motion. If we see by our instruments that we are effectively non-accelerated and/or not immersed in a gravity field equivalent to such acceleration, we then are in a position to say that the other object is also in an IFR. Of course, we are now deep, deep into the world of thought experiment idealisations that dog even basic mechanics. [Q, are you listening . . .? I well recall my first ticker-tape timer experiments with “crash trolleys” and inclined planes 30+ years ago, and how much fiddling had to be done to get to pseudo-inertial results!]
My own best comment is that in the end much of what we view as theories in physics are really models that with the various semi-empirical adjustments, give good enough results for practical cases, and help us make sense of them.
2] Re JT, 53: The whole reason of science is to deduce mechanisms that account for observed natural phenomena . . . . Any mechanism can be output by some other mechanism. The reason is simple. Any mechanism can be exactly represented as a program and any program can be represented by a binary string. Any binary string can be the output of some other program. So all we can possibly know about man scientifically could of course have been output by a mechanism.
This commenter has here made a basic confusion between explanation and mechanism.
Not all explanations, including not all empirically anchored inferences to best explanation, are mechanistic. To see this, consider again the simple example of a die being tossed as I have discussed in my always linked section a and mentioned many times in recent weeks in this blog’s coments:
As I went on to observe, [t]his concrete, familiar illustration should suffice to show that the three causal factors approach is not at all arbitrary or dubious — as some are tempted to imagine or assert. Indeed, explanations in the various sciences routinely infer to one or more of the causal factors above: initial conditions may be brute givens or random. Dynamical forces and inertia may be at work. An agent may be involved. All can be relevant and it is not a given that any of the three is reducible to one or more of the others. And, as noted already, FSCI is a known characteristic of agents, precisely because highly contingent results that can occupy at least 10^150 – 10^300 cells in a config space, are traceable in this regard to chance or agency – by reliable observation of many actual cases, and observations that have no known exception.
When in addition, the observed configs are functional in such spaces, we reliably observe that the cause is agency. On the statistical thermodynamics principles of searching such spaces within the probabilistic resources of the observed universe, the plain best reason is simple. For, random walks starting from arbitrary initial conditions cannot reasonably be expected to get to the shores of islands of functionality to START hill-climbing by competitive selection in plausible environments, without exhausting the credibly available probabilistic resources.
This commenter should re-examine his thinking in this light,a nd will then see that WD et al have a far more telling point than he currently realises.
3] If at some point in a regressing causal chain leading to the biological world there exists a cause that cannot be explicated as a mechanism then it is completely outside the realm of science.
Question-begging, factually [historically and currently] and philosophically ill-founded, attempted materialism-serving redefinition of science.
[. . .]
4] ID, avoids having to account for the probability of God, by saying that intelligence is not a mechanism and therefore cannot be encoded, so for ID nothing called God can be encoded, so we don’t have to address the probability of God.
First the intelligent design inference is an empirically anchored inference to just that: Intelligence. Intelligence is equally empirically known to be a product of intelligent agents.
It is the particular context of such inferences that is the real problem for evo mat advocates and their fellow travellers, as in certain contexts the inference may make worldview level philosophical inferences to God – i.e the context is now phil not sci — seem too plausible for their comfort. So they resort to selective hyperskepticism etc. So in the end it is the ID thinkers who are saying: stick to the empirical data and what we credibly and reasonably know about the cause of FSCI etc!
5] What if God just did everything with a lot of energy?
As the always linked App 1 discusses, dumping raw energy into a system tends to increase its disorder, per Clausius’s basic example on defining entropy. Observe what happens to the subsystem that receives raw energy and why.
For energy flows to lead to increased specified complexity, on experience and the principles of stat thermo-d, we need to have intelligent direction.
6] Re JT, 62: I cannot think of a more unsupernatural process than programming. I just don’t think mystical unexplained flashes of insight from some spiritual dimension are in any way involved in programming, if that is in fact what “agency” is. But since agency isn’t a mechanism, I don’t know what it is exactly. To me programming is just a mechanical, time-consuming laborious, detail oriented, mind-numbing process.
The highlighted gives the game away. Here JT knows that programming is a meticulous and exacting creative task, one fit for mind only but for which many minds have but little interest.
Boredom is of course a feature of intelligence! [And the inference to agency on observing programs is an inference to agency not the supernatural. It is the context of he agent in question that leads us to infer whether the agent is within or beyond the physical cosmos or may be a bit of both.]
Also, this commenter knows it from the first person experience of being an agent, i.e he knows what agency is and so he DIRECTLY IN THE FIRST PERSON knows that intuition, creativity and intelligence are features of agency that routinely act effectively into the world.
Thence the DS framework and the relevance of an intelligent director – or of a collective of such directors [per Ac 27] — supervising and guiding the i/o processor controlling the servosystems: robot of the future, body in the present, or ship in the past of October 59 AD makes little difference.
7] as far as I’m concerned, programs themselves performs all sorts of programming tasks all the time
And the cascade of programs [each acting in accord with its own instructions], on observation, terminates in . . .? [Hint: it is an intelligent agent.]
8] There’s nothing a neural network could do that a Turing Machine for example, could not.
The crucial difference between the two – that suitably programmed neural networks can learn without having to be given algors in detail for the specific task to be carried out — is captured in this already given Wiki excerpt [cf 46]:
In the case of our imaginary prototype ancestor for R Daneel, someone would have to give him the basics of operating in the real world – a big task indeed. An unmanned UAV set up as an intelligent surveillance platform, would be a much simpler task.
Ac 27 shows such agents in action in a governance situation that sets up the technical task of guiding the ship along track in its environment. Something went wrong – badly wrong with the decision-making on risk taking behaviour in the interests of certain agents who hoped to save their ship by running a gamble with the lives of the passengers – and the ship then had to shift to a survival mode, ultimately being shipwrecked. [Notice how the same set of agents then tried to again save their interests at the potential expense of the passengers.]
Add this in: notice how in Ac 27, most gave up hope in the storm. This is a first person experience of a characteristic of agency. As the account gives us, a prophetic word, duly delivered to God’s man on the spot, then reignited hope and moved the man to the position of leader who is the needed good man in the storm.
I think a pretty direct implication holds for Western democratic cultures today as we face elections and need to pick our leaders not for the desired smooth sailing days – which in the end are not under human control, however much we may wish to imagine — but for the possible and even highly probable storms ahead.
_____________
BOTTOMLINE: The DS model and the use of neural networks thinking allows us to think in fruitful details about agency and inference to agent action. In particular, they points to the creative provision of tracks and targets, frameworks for making estimates of environments and associated dynamics, projections of on-track sensor patterns, cost-benefit functions to assess hill-climbing to more/less desirable or even in lucky cases optimal outcomes, etc etc as likely roles for intelligent directors. All of which require complex, highly contingent, functionally specified information.
In short, we see again that FSCI is a reliable sign of agents in action. And — absent imposing worldview level question-begging — we have no good reason to confine such intelligence to material entities.
GEM of TKI
OOPS: Point 4 should read:
KF asked [Q, are you listening . . .? I well recall my first ticker-tape timer experiments with “crash trolleys” and inclined planes 30+ years ago, and how much fiddling had to be done to get to pseudo-inertial results!]
Yup. And, you exactly illustrate the limits of thought experiments. The real world doesn’t operate as cleanly as thought experiments would suggest – the predicted path of the trolley did not match the observed path of the trolley. Thus, the prediction made by thought experiments must be modified by the results of the experiment.
KF: 5] What if God just did everything with a lot of energy?
As the always linked App 1 discusses, dumping raw energy into a system tends to increase its disorder, per Clausius’s basic example on defining entropy.
Well, in the material side of a dualistic philisophy, observation suggests an increase of disorder. But, on the non-material side of the duality, the actions of the God need not abide by the same rules. Or are you binding the God to be material?
KF wrote: So, if we see evident active, intentional, creative, innovative and adaptive [as opposed to merely fixed instinctual] problem-solving behaviour similar to that of known intelligent agents, we are justified in attaching the label: intelligence. [Note how this definition by functional description is not artificially confined to HUMAN intelligent agents: it would apply to computers, robots, the alleged alien residents of Area 51, Vulcans, Klingons or Kzinti, or demons or gods, or God.]
OK, so now you’re making clear that mechanisms can be intelligent designers. So in the explanatory filter, the choices are: 1)chance 2)mechanisms that do not have the property of being intelligent designers 3)Mechanisms or non-mechanisms that do have the property of being intelligent designers.
As far as “fixed and instinctive”, If an organism doesn’t have much in the way of saved internal state, then we can track its behavior but just looking at what’s external to it. I think that’s what most people mean by “fixed and instinctual”. If an entity has a memory, then it is operating according to something that is not apparent to us externally. So if there is an external stimulus, an entity is also keying that to some past experience which guides its behavior as well – still all mechanical though. The more memory it has, the more it can store about a stimulus and the more unpredicatable it will be.
As far as terms like “creativity” “intuition” “insight” “wisdom” and so on, to me, these are very vague terms that serve to obscure, not clarify, cognition. You can give some complex behavior of a computer some convenient label as well – at the machine level it would still be, “mov,mov,cmp,inc,mov,cmp,inc…” OK maybe those terms (“wisdom”, etc.) are convenient, but they are not indivisible primary conceptual entities themselves.
But also, in so solving their problems, intelligent agents may leave behind empirically evident signs of their activity;
So considering DNA and cell-division – Are you saying that this process is an intelligent designer itself merely by the nature of its output? Actually I might personally say it is, because to me consciousness may not be an objectively definable property, so it makes no difference if that mechanism is accompanied by the subjective experience of the average human adult or not.
This commenter has here made a basic confusion between explanation and mechanism.
Not all explanations, including not all empirically anchored inferences to best explanation, are mechanistic. To see this, consider again the simple example of a die being tossed as I have discussed in my always linked section a and mentioned many times in recent weeks in this blog’s coments:
But the quote you included previously (to which I assume you subscribe) says that intelligent agents can be mechanisms. (So is the EF just chance,mechanisms, and other mechanisms.) By calling one aspect of your explanation an “agent”, and leaving it at that, you’re just black-boxing it. Of course that’s done all the time in explanations. But we assume that the blackbox is operating in a potentially explainable, predictable fashion, and if it is, then its a mechanism, and if it is not, it is operating randomly.
5] What if God just did everything with a lot of energy?
As the always linked App 1 discusses, dumping raw energy into a system tends to increase its disorder, per Clausius’s basic example on defining entropy. Observe what happens to the subsystem that receives raw energy and why.
For energy flows to lead to increased specified complexity, on experience and the principles of stat thermo-d, we need to have intelligent direction.
I will rephrase a question I have posed in this thread and elsewhere: Start with the assumption that man is the endpoint of creation, as God was manifested as a man. Now consider the fact that we and the world we live in are an unimaginagly miniscule spec in a universe billions of billions of light years in extent. Why does all that energy exist out there if it had nothing to do with us and our creation? Does the entire universe exist merely so humans will have interesting tableau to gaze upon at night? Was any actual physical work done in the creation of humans? Every design process actually undertaken by humans (or any other animal) involves actual work, the actual expenditure of physical energy. If physical energy was expended in the creation of humans, than our creation was a natural process.
In various parts of scripture God will say, (and I paraphrase) “by my hand I have done all these things…” Does the eternal God have a physical, five-fingered hand? I do think he has a physical hand – the physical universe itself. Does God have a physical brain? We know that a human couldn’t think without a physical brain. But what is a brain – something that enables a human to store a physical model of the external world. To me the physical universe could serve as both the hands and mind of God. But anyway, if all the energy necessary to work, to plan, and to design on this planet ultimately comes from the sun, then why couldn’t the stellar energy of the universe have been integral in our own creation (by creating the probabilistic resources under which man eventually emerged?) If all those trillions upon trillions of suns have nothing to do with the creation of Man – the endpoint of creation – then why do they exist?
6] Re JT, 62: “I cannot think of a more unsupernatural process than programming. I just don’t think mystical unexplained flashes of insight from some spiritual dimension are in any way involved in programming, if that is in fact what “agency” is. But since agency isn’t a mechanism, I don’t know what it is exactly. To me programming is just a mechanical, time-consuming laborious, detail oriented, mind-numbing process.”
The highlighted gives the game away. Here JT knows that programming is a meticulous and exacting creative task, one fit for mind only but for which many minds have but little interest.
Boredom is of course a feature of intelligence!
So what is a mind-numbing process – A primary need of humans is diversion, distraction, stimulation. I personally have no problem seeing this in an entirely mechanistic process. We have a desire to sit back and relax and have our senses bombarded with all sorts of pleasurable stimuli (thank you T.V.) To have to focus one’s attention for long periods of time on one particular task is work, potentially exhausting work, potentially unpleasant. I don’t know why we have to appeal to some transcendent, indescribable supposed attributes of humans to explain all this. Its all still mechanism.
Also, this commenter knows it from the first person experience of being an agent, i.e he knows what agency is and so he DIRECTLY IN THE FIRST PERSON knows that intuition, creativity and intelligence are features of agency that routinely act effectively into the world
It truly does amaze me how ID’ists continually appeal to subjective experience for validation. The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…” To me the continual message of the Bible is to deny your innate feelings and believe something that does not seem intuitive. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof is death.” Even science itself has a goal of marginalizing subjective feelings – the innate default assumptions we have about ourselves and the world. (Even the above was slightly confrontational – because I’m putting you in a box,saying you represent ID, and here is what you and ID think. But this is inevitable to some extent.)
Just to reiterate my position, obviously we are the output of mechanisms. e.g. DNA. If one mechanism was necessary, why not another behind that? But if f(x) outputs y then in a very real sense f(x) and y are the same thing. But we know God used mechanisms. If at some starting point, you still have some f”””(x”””’) and for whatever reason you can’t come up with an explanation for it, you can still say it equates to man and leave it at that.
But all science can do is try to explain by identifying mechanisms, and there’s bound to be others that predate DNA. Certainly there’s a great random element in all this, because God didn’t consciously plan and deliberate and decide that what the world needs is leeches, ticks cockroaches, death adders, and stonefish, etc. This things were emerging at random, but tapping an eternal repository extant in God, somehow, but not something he was consciously involved in, I don’t think.
Even as far as pure evolution – natural laws acting on random mutation – that’s still a comprehensible mechanism that must have been active in some way. The whole question is what were those natural laws. I think some have hypothesized a point event, coinciding with the Genesis account in which a huge profusion of random organic material was disgorged from the center of the earth, to get the whole process started in an efficent way. (David says, “my frame was not hidden from You when I was wrought in the lower parts of the earth…”) In Genesis God says, “Let the earth bring forth creeping things…” (again, paraphrasing slightly). “Dust of the earth” almost certainly refers to microorganisms. There’s a lot more to all this, actually, I think discussed by other commentators.
(Eccl 4:4 NKJV) I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind.
What if we take the above verse literally – “all innovation arises from competition”. Remind you of anything?
There is a spiritual concept of “waste” in the Bible, in that the phyisical universe is a process in which things that can be destroyed are being destroyed. There is an evolutionary process that will culminate in only the “Son’s of God” remaining. Poison and fangs and predation and so on will be gone.
(Heb 12:27 NKJV) Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
(Romans 8:19-21) For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
There’s even waste in our own solar system with 8 barren waste planets and one shimmering jewel. Was God giving it his full attention and just couldn’t get it right? Or, is our physical universe unfolding in its own way, tapping into the eternal Diety in some sort of chaotic fashion, that will still ultimately culminate in something God intended. But all these things are outside the realm of science. All science can do is try to identify and explicate mechanisms that operate in some predicable fashion and increase our insight at least to some degree, regarding how things unfolded in the past. Science is of course the opposite of faith, in that it can only be concerned with what can be objectively verified, no matter how marginal what can be verified might be in any given instance. (Not to imply you’re somehow not aware of all this.)
I think a pretty direct implication holds for Western democratic cultures today as we face elections and need to pick our leaders not for the desired smooth sailing days – which in the end are not under human control, however much we may wish to imagine — but for the possible and even highly probable storms ahead.
Our kingdom is not of this world and the leaders of this world are in the process of aligning themselves with the beast, and deceiving the public. I think the “War on Terror” is a scam to condition the public to ultimately accept a world-wide totalitarian society based on mind-boggling new technology, (IMHO). I think the fallen angels are probably already here, as well.
“Let the dead bury their own dead”.
Well, its possible most of those in power are dupes as well, and don’t know about it all yet, except in very clandestine circles.
8] There’s nothing a neural network could do that a Turing Machine for example, could not.
The crucial difference between the two – that suitably programmed neural networks can learn without having to be given algors in detail for the specific task to be carried out — is captured in this already given Wiki excerpt [cf 46]:
You could run a neural network on your PC. There may be specialized hardware for a neural network, but nothing mandatory. Even a neural network program would just be “move(ax,n),move(bx,ax), if (cx =14) goto instruction n,increment(ax),mov(ax,dx)….” Actually just three instructions are needed to compute anything: conditional jump, increment register, and move zero into register, (and actually one other called the minimization operator).
KF wrote: [“prof” Wiki, 1:] Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior. Instincts are unlearned, inherited fixed action patterns of responses or reactions to certain kinds of stimuli. Innate emotions, which can be expressed in more flexible ways and learned patterns of responses, not instincts, form a basis for majority of responses to external stimuli in evolutionary higher species, while in case of highest evolved species both of them are overridden by actions based on cognitive processes with more or less intelligence and creativity or even trans-intellectual intuition.Examples of instinctual fixed action patterns can be observed in the behavior of animals, which perform various activities (sometimes complex) that are not based upon prior experience and do not depend on emotion or learning, such as reproduction, and feeding among insects. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests.
Instinctual actions – in contrast to actions based on learning which is served by memory and which provides individually stored successful reactions built upon experience – have no learning curve, they are hard-wired and ready to use without learning, but do depend on maturational processes to appear.
Me: As far as “fixed and instinctive”, If an organism doesn’t have much in the way of saved internal state, then we can track its behavior but just looking at what’s external to it. I think that’s what most people mean by “fixed and instinctual”. If an entity has a memory, then it is operating according to something that is not apparent to us externally. So if there is an external stimulus, an entity is also keying that to some past experience which guides its behavior as well – still all mechanical though. The more memory it has, the more it can store about a stimulus and the more unpredicatable it will be.
On rereading, perhaps my remark above was little more than a restatement of what you already said, only with less detail.
KF: This commenter has here made a basic confusion between explanation and mechanism.
Not all explanations, including not all empirically anchored inferences to best explanation, are mechanistic. To see this, consider again the simple example of a die being tossed as I have discussed in my always linked section a and mentioned many times in recent weeks in this blog’s coments:
heavy objects tend to fall under the natural regularity we call gravity. If the object is a die, the face that ends up on the top from the set {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} is for practical purposes a matter of chance. But, if the die is cast as part of a game, the results are as much a product of agency as of natural regularity and chance. Indeed, the agents in question are taking advantage of natural regularities and chance to achieve their purposes!
As I went on to observe, [t]his concrete, familiar illustration should suffice to show that the three causal factors approach is not at all arbitrary or dubious — as some are tempted to imagine or assert. Indeed, explanations in the various sciences routinely infer to one or more of the causal factors above: initial conditions may be brute givens or random. Dynamical forces and inertia may be at work. An agent may be involved.
Me: But the quote you included previously (to which I assume you subscribe) says that intelligent agents can be mechanisms. (So is the EF just chance,mechanisms, and other mechanisms.) By calling one aspect of your explanation an “agent”, and leaving it at that, you’re just black-boxing it. Of course that’s done all the time in explanations. But we assume that the blackbox is operating in a potentially explainable, predictable fashion, and if it is, then its a mechanism,
In my response above, I was focussing on the agent being a mechanism. However if your larger point was that randomness is usually involved as well, in addition to mechanism, that I would have never denied. In my way of looking at it, the random part of a phenomena is the input to the process. So with natural selection, the natural laws would be the mechanism, and the input to the process would be the mutations, which are random.
You brought up Ac 27 repeatedly, and I did find the systematic treatment of it worthwhile, (pertaining to your concept of agency), but have no comments.
But on the contention of some that the eternal God is the same sort of intelligent agent that man is, without benefit of the same organic attributes of a man –
Note that first of all it was necessary for God to become a man. Also the persistent anthropomorphizing God expresses in describing himself in the Old Testament, you almost get the impression that he is experiencing the world through actual humans themselves. So IOW, was it necessary for humans to exist for God to experience the world as a human. It is orthodox to say that the various books of the Bible are all God’s word. But no other writer in the Bible sounds like Solomon, and no other writer sounds like David the Psalmist, and so on. It is quite evident it is their own personality that is being expressed through these writers, but are these quite distinct personalities and perspectives merely different attributes of the Godhead? IOW, is redeemed mankind the only intelligent agency of a human variety that is associated with the Godhead. Perhaps this borders on heresy. (2 Peter 1:21 comes to mind.)
All:
I just now spent a significant amount of time on an email response to Prof Olofsson [six months after our blog exchange here . . .], harking back to the Padian thread, then took time with Q on the Big Blue thread; and I have a major mind-numbing exercise in Excel worksheet adaptation ahead [why don’t people simply build and use STANDARD templates?].
So pardon my being a bit summary, especially as I see us looping back over old ground.
1] Q, 68: The real world doesn’t operate as cleanly as thought experiments would suggest – the predicted path of the trolley did not match the observed path of the trolley. Thus, the prediction made by thought experiments must be modified by the results of the experiment.
This predictably gets the point backways around. As the cases show, it is from the experimental that one goes to the idealisation that is the heart of the theories – of classical kinematis and dynamics in this case. As I noted.
2] 69: in the material side of a dualistic philisophy, observation suggests an increase of disorder. But, on the non-material side of the duality, the actions of the God need not abide by the same rules.
The context is, that information is to be distinguished from dumping raw energy into a system – as one does that, the randomness rises as per the refutable but reliable assertion of thermodynamics known as 2 LOT. God’s intelligent action on the world produces order as the apostle Paul noted [1 Cor 14], if you want to bring God in. Order – or in this case the particular version known as organised complexity, has the characteristic: functionally specified, complex information.
3] Re JT, 70: mechanisms can be intelligent designers. So in the explanatory filter, the choices are: 1)chance 2)mechanisms that do not have the property of being intelligent designers 3)Mechanisms or non-mechanisms that do have the property of being intelligent designers . . . . the quote you included previously (to which I assume you subscribe) says that intelligent agents can be mechanisms
This commenter should note that mechanism is a term best left to “natural regularities tracing to mechanical or dynamical necessity” — i.e to the sort of systems of initial conditions, force laws and inertial resistances that characterises the Newtonian account of motion of bodies – actually, point particles [Q: a mathematical, physically impossible idealisation] under forces, the paradigm of this sort of explanation.
In the precious, no such inference was made that agents are mechanisms, but rather that they are causes. Cf the classic fourfold breakdown of cause.
4] “fixed and instinctive”
Said commenter needs to attend to what “prof Wiki” noted on instincts as cited at 65, supra.
5] As far as terms like “creativity” “intuition” “insight” “wisdom” and so on, to me, these are very vague terms that serve to obscure, not clarify, cognition . . . maybe those terms (”wisdom”, etc.) are convenient, but they are not indivisible primary conceptual entities themselves.
Said commenter should note from the same Wiki excerpts above, that we access the meaning of such terms by example and that the terms are sufficiently precise for us to discern when they are present and when they are not. Creativity etc are characteristic of intelligent agents and , echoing Einstein, our ideas and explanatory models should be as simple as possible but not simpler than that.
6] considering DNA and cell-division – Are you saying that this process is an intelligent designer itself merely by the nature of its output?
The always linked sections B and C discuss the case. DNA etc cluster to perform a complex algorithmic process, and are themselves highly complex entities exhibiting FSCI. This is known to be a reliable marker of agency, on much experience and observation.
Thus on inference to best explanation, DNA etc as to their ultimate — as opposed to the proximate origin in one or more previous organisms — origin, trace to agency. That is OOL is reasonably traced to agency, and OO BPLBD similarly; on empirical grounds. Inferences as to the identity of the agent should build on that.
7] Why does all that energy exist out there if it had nothing to do with us and our creation? . . . Was any actual physical work done in the creation of humans?
Onlookers are invited to examine APP 1, the always linked, esp the case study at point 6.
Energy can be just as easily chaotic as constructive. When we see the constructive in the context of FSCI, we know empirically – thus reliably though provisionally — that such traces to agency.
8] Every design process actually undertaken by humans (or any other animal) involves actual work, the actual expenditure of physical energy. If physical energy was expended in the creation of humans, than our creation was a natural process.
First issue: work, physical sense, is done when forces impart orderly – as opposed to random – motion to their points of application. [This is also the link to work in the economic sense.]
When that orderly motion results in configurations of mater and energy that exhibit FSCI, we see on much observation that this is reliably because of the action of agents. On the principles of statistical thermodynamics, this is because the functional configs are so rare in the config space of all possible configs, so a random walk-based search from an arbitrary initial condition, regardless of testing for functionality step by step, is maximally unlikely to issue in such a config that manifests FSCI.
So, empirically, starting from observation of FSCI and inferring to agency is well warranted.
Second issue: the dichotomy natural-supernatural is not the correct one.
The analysis in terms of known causal factors – which can all be at work in a given case in different ways [cf dice throw example], is a more fruitful one. Agents may possibly be within and/or beyond the cosmos, depending on context; but that agency is, is not subject to debate – we are cases in point.
9] It truly does amaze me how ID’ists continually appeal to subjective experience for validation.
Here we see failure to understand that the first datum of anyone in this thread is her/his own consciousness and, specifically, that of an intelligent agent. [The link is for illustrative purposes only.]
One has to be aware and active to read, think comment etc. Thus, subjectivity – “I-ness” in this case – is an undeniably objective datum, though of course a subjective experience.
It is though I-ness that we observe entities such as books and web-posts, and are able to read and interpret their contents.
10] obviously we are the output of mechanisms. e.g. DNA. If one mechanism was necessary, why not another behind that? But if f(x) outputs y then in a very real sense f(x) and y are the same thing.
We are in bodily part partly conditioned by DNA – epigenetic structures also play a significant role, on other relevant scientific data. That is DNA is necessary but not sufficient. There is a chain of such causal factors indeed, but that simply points to the contingency of he observed cosmos, which demands a necessary being as its sufficient explanation and cause.
Also, where f(x) denotes process, and y result, they are not identical. They may be co-incident but they are not the same thing. This is like a triangle – a figure based on three non collinear points — having angles and sides and vertices, which are distinct as to identity and meaning, but logically mutually necessary and sufficient to constitute the whole.
11] I think the “War on Terror” is a scam to condition the public to ultimately accept a world-wide totalitarian society
This remark is off topic for the blog, but revealing.
Perhaps, the commenter would find it interesting to see the following remark from the son of Ayatollah Khomeni dating to 1991, the time of he collapse of the East Europe Communist bloc:
GEM of TKI
—–JT “But on the contention of some that the eternal God is the same sort of intelligent agent that man is, without benefit of the same organic attributes of a man – ”
—–“But on the contention of some that the eternal God is the same sort of intelligent agent that man is, without benefit of the same organic attributes of a man -”
—–“Note that first of all it was necessary for God to become a man.”
[1] Intelligent agency leaves clues that are independent of the intellectual nobility of the agent. The resultant design does not necessarily represent the most sophisticated design possible, it merely indicates a design that is detectable.
[2] God did not become incarnate in order to understand something about man, but in order that man could understand something about God.
God did not become incarnate in order to understand something about man, but in order that man could understand something about God.
Well said!!!!
—–JT “Every design process actually undertaken by humans (or any other animal) involves actual work, the actual expenditure of physical energy. If physical energy was expended in the creation of humans, than our creation was a natural process.”
To be “in” nature is not the same as being a natural process. Anyone who posts a commnet on this blog is “in” nature. That doesn’t mean that the “designed” posts occurred as the result of a natural process. In fact, we know that such was not the case.
KF, in 72, This predictably gets the point backways around. As the cases show, it is from the experimental that one goes to the idealisation that is the heart of the theories – of classical kinematis and dynamics in this case. As I noted.
It is also from the experimental that the idealisation of the theories are shown to be an inadequate explanation of the material portion of the world.
It is the philosophers that have the point backwards when they insist that their thought experiments are adequate. No – their thought experiments are merely predictions about the material side of the duality – andn they have nothing to confirm the non-material side of the duality except internal consistency of their arguments.
KF, The context is, that information is to be distinguished from dumping raw energy into a system – as one does that, the randomness rises as per the refutable but reliable assertion of thermodynamics known as 2 LOT.
But the reality is that information flow ALWAYS increases randomness as per the laws of thermodynamics. It doesn’t matter if intelligence is involved or not – unless that intelligence is not bound by the limitations of the observable universe. In other words, information can’t be wholly distinguished from dumping raw energy, because that is what information is – dumped raw energy. You need something else to distinguish this dumped energy as informtion from that dumped energy that is not.
STephenB said: —–JT “Every design process actually undertaken by humans (or any other animal) involves actual work, the actual expenditure of physical energy. If physical energy was expended in the creation of humans, than our creation was a natural process.”
To be “in” nature is not the same as being a natural process. Anyone who posts a commnet on this blog is “in” nature. That doesn’t mean that the “designed” posts occurred as the result of a natural process. In fact, we know that such was not the case.
If instead of your above response you had merely said, “No it wasn’t”, would that be a designed response as well, and thus not of nature?
Presumably you did not originate the “in nature vs. of nature” argument, and so your invoking it was a simple pattern matching process (perhaps a not too complicated text matching process actually). A few words from what I wrote triggered the retrieval of that argument (such as it is) from your mind where it has been permenantly after you encountered it yourself several times.
I’m not mocking you for the brevity of your response. However it aptly illustrates how cause and effect are at work (not intelligent design.)
Q said:“But the reality is that information flow ALWAYS increases randomness as per the laws of thermodynamics. It doesn’t matter if intelligence is involved or not – unless that intelligence is not bound by the limitations of the observable universe”
I’ll have to remember that one.
—–JT “Presumably you did not originate the “in nature vs. of nature” argument, and so your invoking it was a simple pattern matching process (perhaps a not too complicated text matching process actually).”
No, actually I did originate that formulation. As far as I know, no one else has ever put things exactly that way. For better or worse, it is part of my communicative style to come to the bottom line rather quickly and to use as few words as possible. That way I tend to get bottom line responses of much the same texture. It can be very helpful, especially when the subject matter is carefully chosen, as mine was.
Your bottom line response, for example, indicates that you seriously doubt that my written paragraph is a product of design. Indeed, you are asserting that it cannot be the case. I find naked admissions of that type much more revealing that a long series of technical objections about the explanatory filter. Whether you realize it or not, your message is as clear as if you were shouting through a megaphone—“My prior commitment to materialism is absolute and unyielding, and I will never consider the alternative point of view.”
Greetings!
Chomp on this for a while…
Evidence = piece of Truth…
Truth leads to Trust…
Possibility has two catagories probable and improbable…
Possibility leads to Hope…
Trust and Hope is Faith invested…
Truth and Possibility requires Faith to become Trust and Hope…
Guess What?
Intelligence or Intelligent Agents make the improbable probable…
The higher the Intelligence or Intelligent Agent the greater ability to make the improbable probable…
In the case of the Intelligent Agent or Intelligence to which the universe owes it’s existence, that one can make the impossible possible.
In mathematics, one factor can determine an outcome many times in frequency against the odds… That is Intelligent intervention…
Such as cheating at cards. Take the bio-ooze hypothesis… The “fact” that it is impossible does not alter the materialists rigid mind. All the evidence precisely points to an intelligent source… DNA and RNA do not come into existence the chemical reactions and…
… The expression goes “an amino acid, a protein, does not make.” Not to mention you need energy to make it go round and round…
So here is the run down… All atheist have more faith than any theist for the “fact” that they believe the impossible is possible and contrary to all evidence. They trust not evidence, but doctrine and they hope not in what is possible, but what is impossible.
For all things considered one conclusion remains God is Real and therefore, all theists have less faith, for they believe the possible and the true. For what may be impossible for a child (humans) is possible for an adult (God).
Q:
It is time to pull a few threads together and draw some conclusions on the nature and action of mind, however provisionally.
But first, I will note on a few corrective points, just for the record. It is plain, on multiple passes on the loops of discussion, that there will be no agreement. For, the following excerpts deserve to be highlighted and commented on for the sake of onlookers – to move the thread and blog on from unproductive circles of debate to progressive spirals of learning, thence perhaps to actual applications of design thought to robotics:
1] Q, 76: It is also from the experimental that the idealisation of the theories are shown to be an inadequate explanation of the material portion of the world
Now, if one traces back above one will see that the context is the origins of the key insights of modern physics in thought-experiment idealisations from real world observations.
For instance:
In short: while it is trivially true that experimental tests may falsify theories and invalidate models, it is more relevantly true that key theories are often built up from and are made plausible in light of thought experiments. So, we should not merely dismiss thought experiments in the progress of science as wanting in degree of “proof.”
2] Is the observation and experience of mind a “mere” thought experiment?
Plainly, not.
As noted above, our experience of conscious, intelligent I-ness is the very first empirical datum we encounter, and all observations of the external world are filtered through it.
[Indeed, this through-ness is what unfortunately led the Kant and the Kantians astray, through that little error at the beginning that has come up repeatedly in this thread. Namely, of dichotomising the phenomenal (as-perceived and interpreted by us) and the noumenal (that of things in themselves) worlds.]
3] the reality is that information flow ALWAYS increases randomness as per the laws of thermodynamics . . . information can’t be wholly distinguished from dumping raw energy, because that is what information is – dumped raw energy.
Q, information flow, is associated with energy flows, which in praxis will always have waste, i.e some conversion to random thermal agitation of one form or another. So indeed, information flows will increase randomness SOMEWHERE.
The issue is: where is that “somewhere.”
In the case of the simple heat flow from body A to B within an isolated system discussed in my always linked, App 1, and summarising no end of basic thermodynamics texts:
When that is done, the energy flow through the energy conversion device can in effect increase the order or complexity or even organised complexity in one lace, whilst exporting the waste heat to the environment. That is the physical foundation of manufacturing and a lot of our world of work.
And, it is what I spoke to above. Namely, that information [transfer] is to be distinguished from dumping raw energy into a system – as one does that, the randomness rises as per the refutable but reliable assertion of thermodynamics known as 2 LOT [cf no 72, point 2]. Dumping raw energy into a system is here being distinguished from the coupling of energy required for energy conversion systems, and points onward tot he action of such coupling of energy where the focal point is transfer of information from one entity to another.
I add: when the energy conversion/info transfer devices exhibit FSCI and we know where they came from by direct observation, reliably, they are the product of agency.
[ . . . ]
4] BACK on TRACK – the nature of the mind in light of the DS model, implications of FSCI as originating in agency, and the telling testimony of consciousness:
It is easy to become distracted by side-points and objections, especially if insisted on in the teeth of ever-mounting cycles of discussion.
The focus of this thread is actually quite simple and substantial.
First, from BarryA’s OP:
The answer I have offered is that we can look at an interesting model of how complex servosystems can (in principle – this is a thought expt so far, based on observing the human and higher animals as in effect naturally occurring biotech robots) be made up, by Derek Smith, a conscious Welshman. (Look at the Welsh flag on his web page!)
In so doing we see:
a –> the effectors and their targets are driven by a in input-output processor based Controller, which in turn takes feedback from sensors in various arrays.
b –> The i-o Controller [I-O C] just described is of course simply a processor, following instructions and the algorithms they express. But that raises the question, where does its track to try to follow come from?
c –> Ans, an Intelligent Director [as I have termed it, let’s abbreviate: InDi] which gives to the I-O C, a reference track which includes in the most sophisticated case a prediction of the sensor array feedback so that the controller only needs to respond to track deviations.
d –> InDi generates the projected track and expected feedback internally, creatively, imaginatively and autonomously. In DS’s terms, “a higher order controller . . . replaces the external manual source of command information. This means that there is no longer any high-side system boundary, making the new layout self-controlling. That is to say, it is now capable of willed behaviour, or “praxis”.”
e –> A suitable architecture for such a processor as InDi is a self-learning neural network, as “prof Wiki” testifies, as excerpted 46 supra:
f –> Of course, the relevant neural network exhibits FSCI, and is pre-programmed and structured to learn by estimating environment, deciding across alternative policies, and targets a high order aim of achieving a goal at acceptably low cumulative cost. [In short, the odds of InDi coming about by chance-based processes searching a config space are next to zero.]
g –> InDi allows us to understand what an intelligent agent does, esp in light of the discussion of events in Ac 27 [cf 46 – 47 above]as we see how actual human intelligent agents in a situation operated and learned – though obviously cost was not minimised there!
h –> Now, we can probably set about designing and developing such a robot ancestor to the famous fictional intelligent robot of R Daneel of Asimov’s I, Robot series. In so doing we would (if successful) instantiate the point that an intelligent agent based on FSCI is capable of being produced by an intelligent agent. On excellent probabilistic resource exhaustion grounds, the odds of such a system originating by random forces and natural regularities is next to zero on the gamut of the observed cosmos.
i –> But also, we now can see a bit more deeply into the mind-brain issue.
j –> Namely, we have identified the sorts of things mind does, through our [so far thought-expt; but my soldering iron arm is a-itching just now] discussion of InDi, and we have distinguished such creative functionality from the i-o control processes that are essentially based on executing algorithms and processing physical signals relative to instructed and expected patterns; as opposed to exploring, learning and responding intelligently and creatively to an environment.
k –> Magic step: we have no good grounds to confine InDi to material technologies, absent question-begging on the nature of reality. So, whether [i] mind is “simply” materials + 4 physical forces + energy + information [i.e. software of some level of spohistication] in the world as imagined by Evo Mat advocates, or [ii] mind is of a different – non-material order, the InDi model will work.
l –> In short, we have now separated mind and brain as to function, systems architecture and interface. We can think of mind as possibly being material, or possibly being non-material, but in either case, it is not simply the i-o control processor running off software from wherever, however.
m –> We also have a model for how mind and matter can interact through energy. [For the moment we can live with the idea that perhaps, the relevant information can be slipped into appropriate storage registers accessible to the I-O Controller within the windows of the uncertainty principles of Quantum mechanics. Indeed, educational psychologists tell us that there is an observed/inferred sensory input storage register that can hold 4 – 9 “items” at once in the focus of attention, and a further working store of about 50,000 items for a context of working. So a similar mind-side i/o register is possible, even plausible for now at least.]
n –> World-view level step: we are not just dealing with earth but an observed cosmos. One that in the organised complexity of its life-facilitating physics, exhibits massive FSCI. [cf always linked Section D.]
o –> Thus, it is at least arguable that the cosmos as we see it has been produced by an extra-cosmic intelligent agent who is a necessary being, the sufficient basis for the observed cosmos. Thus, we may infer that immaterial mind is possible and credible, maybe even actual. AND, such an agent would be able to communicate into and interact with the space-time, matter-energy world in which we act as embodied agents.
p –> Which brings us back to he evidence for such interaction, as say even Acts 27 [and 17 etc] discusses. But that is a bit afield of our purposes here.
q –> Our purpose here is now more or less achieved. For, we have a basis for seeing that immaterial intelligent agency is possible.
r –> Now, bring that to bear on the key points BarryA has made in this thread and in the BiG Blue thread: the observed phenomenon of I-ness, which is self-conscous and self-directing, gives rise to Qualia and allows one agent to consciously persuade another – not merely reprogram the other.
s –> InDi insofar as it is conceived of as a pre-programmed material computer entity has no known and empirically specifiable causal basis for such self-awareness.
t –> One may infer that somehow such self awareness etc “emerges” from the process of making ever more sophisticated software, but that is a promissory or baldly assertive statement of blind, ad hoc faith. Such an inference, assertion or conviction is certainly not scientific; it is a worldview level ad hoc response to experiences that the story of the late Behaviourist school of psychology and the rise of cognitivism is eloquent testimony to, sits poorly with materialism. Materialism-leaning prof Wiki again, on cognitivism in psychology:
u –> Telling isn’t it that it took a major debate among supposedly thinking and experiencing psychologists etc, to see and accept that “mental states exist”!
v –> Thus in the end, plainly, the evidence of consciousness is very persuasive and points straight to immaterial agency.
BOTTOMLINE: BarryA has squarely hit the nail on the head.
GEM of TKI
KF: It is plain, on multiple passes on the loops of discussion, that there will be no agreement.
Apparently so. But, it is because of your abuse of the tools of the various philosophies, resulting in bad premises, I reiterate.
To wit: KF: Frictional forces in real-world observations are misleading us. Let us, in imagination, subtract them. Thus, Force is proportional to acceleration. VOILA!
No voila allowed yet. Imagine force is proportional to acceleration. Hmm… Now test it. Yup, we get asymptotically closer to the prediction of the thought experiment. Voila – now, for the observational world. The non-material domain… you can’t claim the same.
KF: Is the observation and experience of mind a “mere” thought experiment? Plainly, not.
No, definitionally not. Thought experiements aren’t observations.
KF: Dumping raw energy into a system is here being distinguished from the coupling of energy required for energy conversion systems
What? Where in physics is “raw energy” defined? That is your own tool for your own explanations. Are you asserting that RawE = RawMc2, but IntelligentE=something else? Or how about RawE = hRawF? In the observable domain, Energy is energy. You need some other property than your coined “rawness” to identify intelligence. “Rawness” shouldn’t even be applied to your statement.
KF: In short, we have now separated mind and brain as to function, systems architecture and interface.
Well, not exactly, because you also said it was “magic”. Meaning, that the separation isn’t a natural piece of the model, it is your own suggestion that there are two competing forms of the model – the one confined to observations, and the one expanded into the non-material domain.
KF: Thus, it is at least arguable that the cosmos as we see it has been produced by an extra-cosmic intelligent agent who is a necessary being, the sufficient basis for the observed cosmos. Thus, we may infer…
That is the lamest form of argument you could make. First, you merely show that a philosophical argument can be made – meaning no sufficient rebuttal exists (making an arguments isn’t showing a conclusion!). Then, you jump to concluding that an inference can be drawn! Having no rebuttal is merely admission of insufficient information – i.e. ignorance. But, building inferences from ignorances does not yield valid inferences!
Etc.
But, as you said, it is plain that there will be no agreement.
Onlookers:
What is interesting about the gap between computers blindly following instructions and agents being consciously aware and able to persuade one another is not so much the raw fact that there is “no agreement” but what the nature of the objections made to such an obvious fact of life reveals.
Nowhere is this more telling than in a point I highlighted yesterday [in no. 82], on how cognitivism has succeeded behaviourism in psychology. Materialism-leaning “prof” Wiki again:
Now, presumably, behaviourist psychologists think, reason, reflect, decide, argue and even persuade [and by obvious contrast, as BarryA trellingly points out in the OP, computers do not] – indeed, even in the very articles and books in which they attempted to dismiss or deny the reality of mental states. In short, the whole decades-long exercise was premised on absurdity – dismissal or denial of what one has to use to make the very arguments that try to dismiss or deny.
Much follows from this, and it is reflected in 81 – 82, and Q’s objections in 83. And, it is very noteworthy that Q’s objections simply do not address this patent, commonly seen, very characteristic, self-referential and self-refuting absurdity of evolutionary materialist thought.
Sometimes, silence is all too revealing about an underlying rhetorical agenda.
So, now, let us look at some objections by Q, to see what they reveal:
1] Q, 83: imagine force is proportional to acceleration. Hmm… Now test it. Yup, we get asymptotically closer to the prediction of the thought experiment. Voila – now, for the observational world.
See the revealing effect of a slight shift in emphasis?
In short, Q’s “we get asymptotically closer” is actually a hastily dashed-by confession that there is a persistent gap between the thought-world of explanatory hypothesies, theories and models and the real world of observations.
Duly, distracted from by emphasising the work “predictions” in the original.
The point, plainly, still stands: thought experiments and associated idealisations from the real observed world were vital to making scientific progress and are a crucial, inseparable part of scientific persuasion, to this day. We cannot simply dismiss thought exercises [and their derivatives, e.g models], and we cannot baldly claim that they must seek empirical support as thought such support is perfect or proximately perfect.
Empirical data is always more rough and ready than the neat deliverances of a suitably mathematical theory – as the very existence of a whole field of study on errors of observation and their treatment (the title of a book we physics majors all had to buy in my u/grad days at UWI; a little volume which still sits on my shelves) – reveals.
2] On the observation and experience of mind:
Isn’t it interesting to see that Q fails to follow up the implications of that, as highlighted at the head of this comment. For why, let us again cite BarryA from the OP:
This brings us back to StephenB’s questions. If the brain is nothing more than an organic computing machine, why do materialists bother to try to persuade us of anything?
In short, the pattern is to strain at a gnat, while swallowing a camel. This continues . . .
3] Where in physics is “raw energy” defined? That is your own tool for your own explanations . . .
Of course, I have shown the meaning of this informal, descriptive term all along in my always linked, appendix 1; and in 83, I excerpted a discussion on exactly what “raw” energy refers to, by contrast with energy coupled into an energy converting device such that it may then cause an increase of order through performing work.
To cite someone else (was it Janice?), we run fuel into a tank in our car, then feed it into the engine in a very controlled fashion. We don’t simply pour it over the engine compartment at random, then toss in a lighted match.
Thus, this objection is a trivial objection made solely for the sake of distraction from a cogent point.
4] the separation [mind vs brain as to function] isn’t a natural piece of the model, it is your own suggestion that there are two competing forms of the model – the one confined to observations, and the one expanded into the non-material domain.
Really, now!
It will be easy enough for onlookers to compare 82, points i – m, to see that this is simply false. I have used the DS model to separate intelligent direction out form system control through execution of programs, then have pointed out that the InDi model element is neutral across known competing, live option accounts of the mind – materialistic-monistic and dualistic.
That is, as 82 (points n – v) EXPLICITLY makes, i – m bring us to the threshold of worldview level issues and associated comparative difficulties analysis. The link will discuss how such analysis explicitly includes: factual [i.e. including empirical] adequacy, coherence, and explanatory elegance.
For, as Lakatos aptly pointed out, philosophical issues and worldview commitments are deeply embedded in the core of scientific research programmes. Citing “prof” Wiki:
My point: opening up to the possibility of mind [however constituted — a matter to be investigated, not ruled out of order ahead of time by begging worldview questions through improperly imposing materialism (however disguised) as a part of the “definition” of science . . .] as a real entity is not only common-sense, but is a part of a progressive research programme in cybernetics and allied fields!
5] you merely show that a philosophical argument can be made – meaning no sufficient rebuttal exists (making an arguments isn’t showing a conclusion!). Then, you jump to concluding that an inference can be drawn!
This, in response to a tellingly quote-mined, dismissive [“lamest . . .”] excerpt from my points:
In short, there was a lot more there, including for instance and entire section in the always linked.
FYI, Q, at worldviews level, one considers live options across the three main comparative difficulties points.
FYFI, at the core that ties together the various theories, models, hypotheses, techniques etc, scientific research programmes deeply embed a worldviews core.
FYYFI, I am speaking to that level, and I am speaking in terms of the proper analytical techniques for that: possible alternatives are living options, to be compared on factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power. I then adduce evidence that materialist accounts fail these bars by contrast with accounts that accept that mind belongs to a different order form matter, including the very experience of mind that we share – including radical behaviourist psychologists and other evolutionary materialists.
_____________
BOTTOMLINE: The DS model allows us to seriously engage the matter BarryA raised, and leads to some interesting sci-tech and phil results. The utterly predictable, imaginary nit-picking triviality of objections to those results is revealing on the true balance of the case on the merits.
So, let us get back on track . . .
GEM of TKI
PS: Wiki of course softens the force of the point that the core of a research programme embeds worldview level elements, and that its protective belt often includes not just auxiliary hyps but theories as well. That this is so should be obvious from the older name for what we now call science: natural philosophy. Cf for instance, Newton’s General Scholium at the end of his Principia for an explicit example.
Here is Lakatos in a talk in 1973:
Notice in particular the role of marxism as a case of worldviews being deeply embedded in the core. Also, that THE VEXED QUESTION OF DEMARCATION CRITERIA ON SCIENCE VS NON-SCIENCE IS BOT ONLY HISTORICALLY (AND CURRENTLY) IMPORTANT BUT IT IS INHERENTLY A PHIL [OF SCI] ISSUE.
It would also help us to note that last part on the power games of today by the West’s liberal establishment on what they object to.
GEM of TKI
KF thought experiments and associated idealisations from the real observed world were vital to making scientific progress and are a crucial, inseparable part of scientific persuasion, to this day.
Yes, then we do agree. But, that comment says nothing about the process, and limitations, of though experiments. Such as that persistent gap we both recognize, which shows that predicionts abaout the observable world are not conclusions about the observable world – experiments are needed to close the gap.
Essentially, KF, the DS model you describe, with your introduced Intelligent Director, is merely a model. On its own, it says nothing about the observable world. It only suggests what we should expect – but not what we really will see. That is a limitation I’m insisting that you not ignore in your treatises.
KF Really, now!
Yes. Pay close attention to theassumptions you made about the model to arrive at the suggestion that mind is not material. You will see that one set of assumptions (i.e that material is all there is) doesn’t preclude the operation of the model. But, another set of assumptions (that material is NOT all there is) leads to the conclusion at which you arrived. It is all a case of selectively picking your starting assumptions – i.e. your self-imposed restrictions on the allowed premises.
Oh, and I used “lamest” with the intent to dismiss your argument, because your argument wasn’t even internally consistent. It was just a slapdash of rehtory to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion.
KF BOTTOMLINE: The DS model allows us to seriously engage the matter BarryA raised, and leads to some interesting sci-tech and phil results. The utterly predictable, imaginary nit-picking triviality of objections to those results is revealing on the true balance of the case on the merits.
Yes, that model does allow us to seriously engage, etc. But, serious engaging requires the nit-picking, so that trivial errors aren’t allowed to propogate – as you seem to be insisting that you be allowed to do. Good science and good philosophy says all arguments must stand up to close scrutiny – even the trivial arguments – and even the arguments that show fault in one’s pet arguments.
Fin.
KF:
Just noticed your new posts, but was in the process of trying to answer a question for myself.
I’m trying to recall the exact specfied complexity argument, i.e. the detachable pattern that exists in a bacterial flagellum and why there aren’t enough particles in the universe to generate it. Is there any resource (on your own website or elsewhere) you (or someone else) could point me to that lays this out in a complete but concise manner. IOW no putting it on a layman’s level (with handwaving, etc.) just something specific and complete (but concise.) The actual proof can be summarized to some extent, if there’s a certain level of specificity in the overall argument. (I don’t want to see obscure greek operators or anything more esoteric than and, or, not, for all, there exists, summation, and hopefully the point can be made without those as well.)
KF wrote: If the brain is nothing more than an organic computing machine, why do materialists bother to try to persuade us of anything?
Since a computer is deterministic why do I even bother to enter the password.
Does the point really have to be elaborated further?
Say you have a computer and before it lets you on the system it has to be persuaded you’re in the club. So it will ask you a number of questions, say anywhere between 5 and 20, then use fairly sophsticated AI techniques to mach your responses against a database,and finally assign you an overall average numerical score that has to be above a certain level to gain entry. Are you saying your efforts to answer correctly to get into the system are pointless because the computer is deterministic?
Of course the computer could ask you logic questions as well, not just sopisticated text matching. Arithmetic is logic, so it could ask you to sum up (or multiply or divide) some random numbers, and then use its own logic to come up with the answers itself, to verify your logic.
Greetings!
Layman here, my brain is sizzzzl’n…
Okay, from what I gather, the one arguement is that the brain is nothing more than a sophisticated computer, fancy if you will.
So everything is contained in an ORGANIZED mainframe (Hardware.) But the software is information (non-material.) But the whole thing needs energy.
Here is an observation, neither matter nor energy on there own generate information. Although matter and energy already contain information.
It is not a matter of adding energy and “abracadabra” complex information. The net result of matter + energy could result in organized matter (snowflakes, crystals.) But this is of course insufficient to generate complex organized matter (DNA, RNA, ATP, PROTEINS in complex cycles and relationships)
And we are not even getting into neural networks.
Do as many experiments as you desire the result is the same. Unless information is added to the matter and energy very little will occur. Information is Non-material. The fact that matter had a beginning, should beg the question where did matter get it’s information to become matter from energy. (Assuming Energy always existed)
For complex information (non-material), the matter “MUST” be organized, and the energy flow “MUST” be directed and controlled.
Three things I understand are required for the software of a computer: (Hardware) Organized matter, and (software) Energy, and Information.
Matter and Energy just do not generate new complex information. Information is added to the matter and energy to organize them into useful patterns. Where does this information originate? The only known source that generates information is “intelligence.” And since “INFORMATION” is non-material it follows that the origin of the “INFORMATION” is non-material.
The funny thing is computers cannot generate new and useful information on there own. There is a preset bounary for generating new and useful information. Information can only be extracted from a pre-existing database in the computer’s hard drive.
JT “Since a computer is deterministic why do I even bother to enter the password.”
Everything in your last post has nothing to do with persuasion. The computer does not devise a new tactic or generate a new program to test if you can gain access to its system or not. It is a limited program, with limited variables. A person has selection to a limitless set of variables including imaginary variables and self-generating variables. Persuasion is an attempt to override or satisfy those variables with evidence and an arguement (It does not have to be a logical arguement just convincing.) Like overcoming a phobia, the fear may be rational or irrational. Or trying to “persuade” an insane person to take medication. The rules are not defined by the one persuading, but the one being persuaded, and the criteria for judging the arguement and evidence is not fixed, not static. Meaning the rules can change.
A computer is fixed as to what it can do. User satisfies variables access granted. (fixed rules)
Human mind can make up the rules as it goes through experiences. It can lie or generate fiction or redefine the rule, and/or variables. One trying to persuade another must be as adaptable as the one generating and redefining the rules, and/or variables.
Do you know of any computer program capable of doing any of this?
The art of persuasion is all about trust, adaptability, and change. Being able to react favorably under pressure and in unexpected circumstances. There is a difference between unknown variables and rules, and changing variables and rules.
A person may become convinced then later change their mind for any reason to become unconvinced.
Can a security program after granting access to its system suddenly change its assessment of the user based on an inner conflict of its programming? Does it recalibrate for changes in behavior?
The “fact” is that persuasion is an on going process and a balancing act of several unknown changing variables and rules. Trust gained can be trust lost and visa versa.
Persuasion is not a simple act of access granted you passed the test. It’s okay you made it this far we’ll see. Ongoing tests and checks. Also, Persuasion requires a relationship not just a connection to pass information. A relationship is a two-way dialog in terms of persuasion. Meaning one or the other may be persuaded. (like should we have Chinese or Italian, what do you feel like?) Means there is the possibility of other options not just the ones presented. (Solution Mexican neither Chinese nor Italian) Agreement over a third option not present in the original offer.
Here are a few more facors to consider for persuasion; Flexibility of choices and options, negotiation and agreement.
Persuasion is a negotiation. (give and take, push and pull) Think hostage situations, and conflicting goals and agendas of the different parties.
No computer simulates these dynamics.
Okay . . .
First, pardon a slip-up on a blockquote. While I endorse the sense, it was BarryA who actually said that “If the brain is nothing more than an organic computing machine, why do materialists bother to try to persuade us of anything?”
Also, I note that Unlettered has put in a very solid comment, one that the more “learned” and “lettered” among us would do well to pay attention to. Excerpting:
[There, got my blockquoting right this time!]
Now on points of note:
1] Q, 86: that comment says nothing about the process, and limitations, of though experiments. Such as that persistent gap we both recognize, which shows that predictions about the observable world are not conclusions about the observable world – experiments are needed to close the gap.
Q has manged to now convince me that his thought experiment side-issue is little more than a distracting strawman reached by a red herring based on ignoring relevant cited and easily accessible evidence.
For, long since, I have repeatedly linked and even excerpted [e.g. cf 64 above] on the general capacities and limitations of scientific experiment, explanation and argument in this thread; and, in the parallel Deep Blue and Epistemology threads. Indeed, my last two just above comments have taken time to go into Lakatos’ thoughts on research programmes and scientific progress.
Frankly, FYI, Q, such persistent adverse misrepresentation of another person in the teeth of easily accessible facts to the contrary is irresponsible, disrespectful — and dishonest. Onlookers, next time you see a Q comment, kindly bear this track record in mind.
FYFI, experiments cannot prove anything finally, though they may cumulatively persuade us that certain explanations are reliable. As, “Theory => Observations, Observations, so theory” strictly speaking commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. [In fact, this insight was, correctly, part of Urban VIII’s objections to Galileo’s over-reaching on what his experiments – including of course thought exercises — “proved.” In short, this is not exactly breaking news.]
2] the DS model you describe, with your introduced Intelligent Director, is merely a model. On its own, it says nothing about the observable world. It only suggests what we should expect – but not what we really will see. That is a limitation I’m insisting that you not ignore in your treatises.
And so, why then did I take time to point out how the architecture corresponds to all sorts of empirical situations from robotics [DS was explicitly speaking about IMPLEMENTED robotic archis and related analytical developments on efferent etc systems — did you read what he wrote] to athletic peak performance through visualisation, to education psychology to the process of governing and guiding the ship in Ac 27?
Were these just so much irrelevant padding, or were they not concrete cases in point that speak to the empirical credibility of the DS model, Q?
And, are adaptive controllers — of which this model is a technologically advanced subset based on proven technologies and well-known capacity of software and neural networks [in that extension] — mere speculation? [Onlookers: look up Model Identifying Adaptive Controllers and Model Reference Adaptive Controllers.]
In short, in the teeth of such easily accessible facts, to use the word “ignore” as you just did reflects one or more of several strong words that describe less than diligent or virtuous or honest conduct. [Grace have mercy on us sinners. Thanks, Kairos – again, for reminding us of Matt 5 – 7.]
3] Pay close attention to the assumptions you made about the model to arrive at the suggestion that mind is not material
I made no tendentious assumptions; I put up a model which is empirically credible, then presented live option technical and worldview level alternatives, then discussed them on comparative difficulties across relevant evidence.
I then drew an inference to what is in my considered opinion [e.g. Compare the absurdity of the behaviourists using their minds to argue that mental states do not exist!] the better explanation, on principles of abduction, which is well within my intellectual rights.
4] your argument wasn’t even internally consistent. It was just a slapdash of [rhetoric] to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion.
Dismissive personal attack, embedding unsupported accusations of a claimed closed mind and circular reasoning on my part. Now, sadly, part of a clear pattern. But, onlookers, to explicitly lay out worldview alternatives and associated core first plausibles then discuss on comparative difficulties is precisely to not argue in a circle, cf here for intro level details; as I have repeatedly linked.
As to the claim of self-contradiction, onlookers, if Q had an actual good case in point he would have long since paraded it in triumph. So, let him put up a case in point and let’s see just who is more or less coherent.
Onlookers, compare what I did in say above, with how Q has argued in the thread above. Then ask yourselves which of these two commenters is better described by the excerpt I just scooped out above?
5] serious engaging requires the nit-picking, so that trivial errors aren’t allowed to propogate – as you seem to be insisting that you be allowed to do
Kindly identify such errors and substantiate. So far, onlookers, as shown above, I see baseless dismissive assertions and worse, not serious correctives.
6] Re JT, 87: I’m trying to recall the exact specified complexity argument, i.e. the detachable pattern that exists in a bacterial flagellum and why there aren’t enough particles in the universe to generate it.
On the general point of what specified complexity – and more to the point, functionally specified complex information means, cf my always linked. Section A deals with what is being claimed and what it means, and Sections B and C address the molecular nanotech and body-plan issues. Appendix 1 discusses the search space issue, by scaling down Hoyle’s tornado to semi-molecular scale subject to brownian motion and diffusion. Cf as well Thaxton et al’s classic discussion in TMLO, linked from that appendix. The table of hot contents at the top of the always linked will guide. Onlookers, do me the favour of saving off the page to your own desktop before rummaging around in it – saves on bandwidth.
The basic point is the one that underlies statistical thermodynamics. Namely, once we get into systems of sufficient contingency [over 10^150 to 10^ 300 cells in the config space], a random-walk based search starting from an arbitrary location is maximally unlikely – as opposed to logical-physical impossibility – to access the shores of islands of functionality on the gamut of the observed cosmos. I use 10^300 cells as the practical limit as this takes in islands of functionality. To climb Dawkins’ Mt Improbability, you have to first reach to the shores of functionality without exhausting probabilistic resources.
As to the wider flagellum debate, there is much on the web. Try a search of UD for starters.
7] Since a computer is deterministic why do I even bother to enter the password. Does the point really have to be elaborated further?
No, but not as JT imagines.
For, a password is a deterministic if-then feature of a program: admit the user if and only if s/he keys in the correct password.
By sharpest contrast, as the Am H dict observes on persuasion, repeating from 12 [Magnan] and 39 above (NB as well 36, under III):
In short, we need to use language correctly, reasonably and accurately, or we will simply deceive ourselves through relativistic spin-games that reduce all to the notorious power-games of follytricks. [One Caribbean street term for a word we all know should in the interests of full disclosure be spelled that way. The other, more common Caribbean rendering is “Polytricks” — which emphasises the multiplicity of outright deceits and subtler devices to trap the unwary.]
Unlettered’s remarks just above are also well worth the read.
GEM of TKI
KF, since you are arguing about the issues of “persuasion” by using a definition of persuasion that is specifically structured around “people”, and by definition, computers aren’t people, then only by definition are you wholly correct when you state that computers can’t be persuaded.
Great. A tautological claim. But, it says nothing, except that since it is not a person it can’t do the things that only people can do.
That definitional approach says nothing about the greater question involved in BarryA’s original post, or your DS model, about whether computers can communicate with each other in a way that results in persuasion. For that analysis, it would be necessary to remove your “person” constraint on the definition. Otherwise, you would be forcing BarryA’s query to be illogical from the get-go.
Try turning this into a double-blind study, for instance. It wouldn’t be needed to even know that computers or people were involved to determine if persuasion is happening.
(Since KF is so fond to appeal to consensus, I’ll do the same this time.) The observers can obviously witness that in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion – Computers can’t be persuaded – KF imposes his own limitations on the problem, thus yet again introducing irrelevant premises – semantic ones in this case. In essence, he is arguing unrelated to BarryA’s model of two computers communicating.
So, of course KF’s argument is right about persuasion – because he is arguing off in a corner unrelated to the topic at hand – i.e. presenting a strawman argument about interfaced computers not being people.
Try again, KF, but by replacing “person” with something like “agent”, and not even “intelligent agent” – because the original topic didn’t assert that “intelligence” was a premise. It did assert, however, that the computers have the ability to detect “truth or falsity of a particular proposition” and to “Communicate a list of facts and arguments” provided by external agents – in this case the programmers and the other computer.
Go back to reply 1, and you will see the corrective argument that once that the semantic “person” constraint is removed, it is logical to conclude that computers could persuade each other. That is they could once they have their initial state, and after they are each able to provide feedback to the other computer, with the assumption that they each have different starting states or access to data. With the removal of the artifically imposed constraint of “person” (again, necessary for the original premise to be more than a semantic query), you will see that BarryA’s query is essentially a query into feedback processes, with the understanding that feedback processes have dampening effects. It is these dampening effects that yield a “yes”, “no”, or “maybe” to BarryA’s question.
“Yes” if the iterative feedback process converges toward a persuasive process.
“No”, if the process doesn’t converge – like it oscillates or diverges.
“Maybe” if the process varies on different states or different computers.
Additionally, I also tend to agree that the password query isn’t persuasion, based upon the feedback process involved about the password. The agent providing a test password is giving input to the second agent. That second agent analyes the truth about the password and sends its conclusion back to the first agent. But, that is the end of this feedback process about this password – it is always a negative feedback except for the case when the password is true. There is no method for the first computer to provide additional feedback about the claim of the password which would cause the second computer to re-evaluate its conclusion. That is, in the password example, the first computer can’t reply along the lines of “but I really know this is the password, and here’s why, so you really should accept it.” (Unless the logic of a password were to be changed, such as if the first computer had input to a back door process like “But check yesterday’s password list – I think today’s is corrupted.”)
U&O, in 89 “So everything is contained in an ORGANIZED mainframe (Hardware.) But the software is information (non-material.) But the whole thing needs energy”
Umm, with computers, the software is a state of the hardware. Ever seen software that can execute without the computer? No. It doesn’t exist. Software is just transistor state, Hollerith card punched-hole state, magnetic state, etc. In this instantiation of a model (computer), the software (information) is wholly inseparable from hardware and energy flow.
Greetings!
The thing is that the “Information” is “imposed” onto the matter and energy. It is not generated by the matter and energy.
Matter and energy are subjected to the information. The matter is subjected to a highly specific configuration (Mainframe hardware) and the energy is also subjected to highly specific configurations (Mainframe software.)
The information just does not exist until it is put there. The matter and energy exists, but without specific information the matter and energy do nothing. The information is non-material, for where does it come from?
For the computer example, Humans: people: persons: person: computer designer and programmer, builds the computer from otherwise useless matter and energy by putting the information into the matter and energy. So in a very limited way, yes, “software is a state of the hardware.” But only because that “state” was imposed by information confuguration.
Information is not a state of matter or energy, but information can and is put into energy and matter. Information exists separtate and is inposed onto matter and energy to put it into a state. Information can be transfered from one place to another it is not fixed. As in quantum teleportation “information” can be imposed onto one photon then transfered to another photon. Meaning the “states of matter and energy” are subject to information transfer. Again where does this “information” originate? Matter and energy are not the originators of information, but are the subjects of information.
Software is not really a state of the hardware. Both the hardware and the software are subjects of information. Your inference is flawed. They are connected but they are both subjects of information. It is not a case of just add energy to hardware and poof “Windows.” The software is built within the boundaries of the hardware in VR. Software on its own must be subjected to information. Both matter and energy are states of information. Information is not a state of matter and/or energy.
Greetings again!
Information causes and/or changes the states of matter and/or energy.
U&O Information is not a state of matter or energy, but information can and is put into energy and matter.
That’s oxymoronic. Being put into the energy and matter, it is a state of the energy and matter. Quite simple.
That the information may have come from an outside source is certain. But, that claim is historical trivia. At a given time, the information within the computer system – information that is both data and program – is a state of the hardware’s mechanics and electronics.
Discussing where the information came from is a different question than discussing what are the properties of the information at a given time. Which do you want to address? For this particular situation – interfaced computers – it should be irrelevent what their history is, as the question from BarryA is about what can they do now, with the various assumptions about their capabilities.
This is not meant to make a statement about the brain/mind duality. It is merely a statement about the computers being used for the analogy – perhaps they aren’t the proper tool to analogize mind, or mind isn’t a relevant issue when discussing computers.
U&O Information exists separtate and is inposed onto matter and energy to put it into a state.
OK, staying strictly within computers and a consistent definition, prove it.
Where is computer information in existance without hardware? In transmission – no, that’s electrons in a wire. In WiFi broadcast – no that’s information out of an antennae, is not accessible for computation while solely in an electromagnetic wave – it must enter an antennae again to be information. In software – no, software exists in hardware – CD’s, wire, transistors, hardcopy, etc. Any ideas that I may be missing – while staying with the model of a computer?
U&O Software is not really a state of the hardware. Both the hardware and the software are subjects of information. Your inference is flawed. They are connected but they are both subjects of information.
No, you are playing word games that are meaningless. Software is but one form of information. It isn’t “connected” to the hardware by information. Software is an instantiation of information in computer hardware
Software Information. Interchangable concepts.
Just think about the mechanics of the computer at any given time, and don’t focus on the metaphorical abstractions.
U&O Information is not a state of matter and/or energy.
It is in the computer. Otherwise, can you show an exception?
Oops. Above, the statement “In software – no, software exists in hardware – CD’s, wire, transistors, hardcopy, etc.” should be “In software – no, information exists in hardware – CD’s, wire, transistors, hardcopy, etc.”
Greetings!
Matter and energy are states of information not the other way around.
Your just playing games.
With in the computer and outside of it are the same. Take any rock, it is static with no complex information, compare it to a sculpture. The information was not intrinsic to the rock, but the information was imposed onto the rock to become a sculpture. Okay morse code in a sound wave or light beam or even an electric current. The code is imposed onto the sound wave, light beam or current. The “fact” the information crosses between mediums from sound to electric signal for example, means the information is not a subject of the medium, but the medium is subject to the information. Back the the computers, all of the information found within a computer from its hardware to it software are subjects to information. Not the other way around.
Of course matter and energy contain information. Sound is for example contains a certain frequency of particle movement, but unless that frequency is itself subject to specific and controlled fluctuations that sound wave is just pointless or not useful. So when a person picks up a guitar and plays the strings in a specific combination with a specific pace it becomes meaningful. The information passes for the person to the guitar strings into the sound waves to my ear for me to judge in terms of pleasure. The information passes through matter and energy changing them temporarily. But at no time is the information a subject of the matter or energy. But the exact opposite the matter and energy are subjects to the information.
The computer is the exact same thing. The information passes to the Hardware and is contained as software, 010101010101111100010, a pattern. Energy is directed and controlled by information constraints. But at no time is the the information a subject of matter or energy. Again the opposite.
Software is the manifestation of information, in the hardware construct.
Information can and is put into matter and energy, and can and is retrieved from matter and energy.
The whole computer is the manifestation of information, both hard ware and software. And ,yes, absolutely, they are connected by information. The energy contains the information that I put into it and it travels through all the hardware through all the wires and networks to the blogs server, then through all the wires then making its way to your computer. Through software to hardware back to software back to hardware back to software on your end. The information move through all these things because it is not subject to them.
Information is contained in a state of matter or energy and yes can be interpreted as a state of matter or energy. But the information was still put into the matter and energy causing it to change states. For example the hard drive, a signal is sent to it the change a 1 to a 0 or from a 0 to a 1. But the information stored in the state of matter in the form of a binary code.
Information causes and/or changes the states of matter and/or energy. If it is static or in transition does not matter, the fact remains.
It applies to the computer the same no exceptions.
If I write a letter with a pen or pencil on paper, “I” confugure the molecules in a specific arrangement. The Information written on that paper is passed from the paper to the eye/brain of the reader via photon. The information is imposed, and transfered. The information is place in a static form on the paper but is in a transitional state in the photons moving to the eye/brain.
Everything applies to a computer no exceptions.
As for the discourse the mechanics of the computer and it’s capabilities are set in comparison tto the mind/brain of humans. To it is precisely about the mind/brain duality.
Materialists impose the idea that the mind does not exist but is the mere mechanical processes of the brain. Thought is the the output Chemical collisions. Everytime someone makes an analogy of something it is to convey and idea about that thing.
Brain = computer
mind = software
The fact is the brain is not a computer and thoughts are not the result of chemical collisions. The mind is not software. They are not comparable. The mind interacts with the brain and changes it. And the brain interacts with the mind and changes it. It is information, and intelligence. The mind is not the result of physics and chemistry. Just a computer is not the result of physics.
Yes, physic and chemistry are involved and are not excluded from the equation of the mind but they are not the only factors they are merely the physical factors. Intellegence and information are not physical.
Yes, physics is involved in the computer processes but just the physical factor. Information is not physical, but does interact and change matter. The computer lacks “INTELLIGENCE” even if it cantains information placed there by an intelligence.
The mind/brain of a person controlles itself, accepts and rejects information, it evolves, and grow more complex or even simplifies.
The software/hardware of a computer is static.
Persuasion does not exist in the computer world because no intelligence exists. That is the point. Persuasion takes place between intelligent agents, not between information mediums. Transfer takes place between information mediums ie. computers.
U&O Brain = computer
mind = software
Metaphorically, sure.
But, quite literally, the computers we have now are silicon based. Brains are carbon based. They aren’t the same. You can’t push the metaphor too far, or it breaks, like you’ve done. Just because mind and brain operate a certain way, doesn’t mean you can extrapolate back and say that computers have the same properties. In fact, you can’t even extrapolate your usage of “intelligence” as with intelligent agents into the operation of a computer – largely because the operation of a computer is specifically engineered in some laboratory, and is wholly understood to be electro-mechanical. (This is not an entre to discuss the recursive nature of intelligent agents creating other agents. The topic of this thread is about the properties of the computers, and not of their creators.)
Any information introduced into that machine is stored and operated on as a state of the machine by design of the machine, and not simply because of your alleged properties of “information.”
U&O The computer lacks “INTELLIGENCE” even if it cantains information placed there by an intelligence.
That is a an unnecessarily limiting interpration of the scenario. Computers can gather information from non-intelligent sources as well, like rain guages, reflections of light, pressure in an intake manifold, etc. Some information in a computer can be “placed there” by non-intelligent sources. That information is a state of the machine.
U&O Persuasion does not exist in the computer world because no intelligence exists.
Again, a definitional argument, just like KF was doing. Remove the requirement that intelligence or other people-based properties be included in “persuasion”, as was done with BarryA’s original scenario, and you will have a different conclusion. The only logical conclusion is that computers should be able to “persuade” other computers once fluff-and-nonsense definitional additions are removed.
U&O Intellegence and information are not physical.
OK, let’s agree that computers don’t have intelligence. But, they do have information. Those two concepts can be decoupled. Computers are wholly physical – no engineer has yet given them the property of “mind”, so no duality is necessary when discussing computers. Thus, information in computers can be wholly physical.
U&O Information is contained in a state of matter or energy and yes can be interpreted as a state of matter or energy.
Then why any other fancy dancing to imbue some other properties to computer-based information?
H’mm:
In addition to the neologisms teleocentrism and mechanocentrism [see, I lurk, too . . .], we need: objectionism!
Mere skepticism is based on doubts and questions.
Objectionism is rooted in deep-set prior commitments and agendas, so there will be an endless series of objections to what is not wanted, never mind the plain facts and obvious logic. So, it will always find a way to resort to selective hyperskepticism to deny what cannot be otherwise rejected. And if all else fails, it will reverse an implication.
What do I mean?
1] Q’s objectionism in action:
We can see this last in action easily enough:
These musings come to mind as I look at Q’s — predictably — objecting remarks in 91:
All this, as if I had not already in point 7 of 90 noted:
Onlookers, pardon my taking time to show Q’s underlying failure to do basic homework before objecting.
That is a big part of what I am exposing in highlighting the objectionism at work in this thread. [Professional-grade objectionists — AKA spin doctors — assume (sadly, on excellent empirical grounds) that people are too lazy or too incensed at “that IDiot” or too confused to fact-check check a plausible- sounding strawman attack. Too often, they are right.]
Now, “person” is the key above; a term not to be confused with “human” — an error often made by evolutionary materialists and their fellow-travellers — as Magnan explicitly noted in the referenced 12 above [and Unlettered in 31 is worthy of mention, too!]:
Similarly, this is what I said in 36 [citing Unlettered . . .] and in 39:
Okay. Plain enough?
Maybe not . . .
2] (Since KF is so fond to appeal to consensus, I’ll do the same this time.) The observers can obviously witness that in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion – Computers can’t be persuaded – KF imposes his own limitations on the problem, thus yet again introducing irrelevant premises – semantic ones in this case.
Onlookers, just compare the above with what has already been discussed!
As to the notion that I am appealing to “consensus” when I call on current and future onlookers to look calmly and objectively at the balance of the case on the merits then make up their own minds, that is its own refutation – as well as a further example of . . . objectionism.
And, BTW — as long since noted — intelligent agents communicating with one another can plainly include artificially intelligent agents communicating.
AND, I explicitly spoke to interacting computers based on my the- hard- way acquired knowledge of what is actually going on as two machines pass bit-strings using handshake protocols and the like.
I need to take out a franchise on renting out strawmen to be pummelled by the objecitonists at UD!!!! [If you soak the strawman in slander oil and burn it to cloud and poison the atmosphere, you forfeit your deposit — h’mm, a nice
fatslim Rolex or the like will do . . .]A few footnotes on information, energy and matter . . .
3] 92: Software is just transistor state, Hollerith card punched-hole state, magnetic state, etc. In this instantiation of a model (computer), the software (information) is wholly inseparable from hardware and energy flow
Software is not “just” — question-begging term! — transistor states etc.
Instead, in a computer, transistor states etc are determined by the information content of the software.
That software comes, not from the natural regularities of the cosmos rooted in laws of mechanical necessity blindly acting on matter-energy in space-time, nor yet of random walks starting in arbitrary initial points in configuration spaces.
No – reliably and as a matter of routine observation, functionally specified, complex software is the product of intelligent agents in action. [This of course Unlettered aptly points out in 93.]
In short, we again see the underlying begging of questions in the teeth of plain, reliable facts. Predictably, insisted upon by Q:
4] 95: That the information may have come from an outside source is certain. But, that claim is historical trivia. At a given time, the information within the computer system – information that is both data and program – is a state of the hardware’s mechanics and electronics.
Ironically, Psalm 95 has in it a very relevant verse at no 8, and of course vv 9 – 11 are worth the read also.
Onlookers, notice the question-begging dismissal — “But, that claim is historical trivia . . .” — in the teeth of the underlying issue that, on both direct observation and the statistics of vast config spaces [the root of statistical thermodynamics – BTW, all of Q’s objections to thought experiments are plainly because he does not want to acknowledge where this one just linked plainly (and for good reason) points!], neither mechanical necessity nor chance suffice to get to FSCI!
In short, we see that this is a case of Q’s insisting on rejecting the obvious in the teeth of evident facts and logic, as it leads to where he does not wish to go.
So, let us kindly recognise and dissect the agenda-driven objectionism at work when it – predictably, of course — crops up in future remarks on Q’s part.
[Let’s guess: I am being closed-minded, I am begging the question, I have smuggled in objectionable assumptions, thought experiments don’t prove anything, information is nothing but hardware in action, just because random walks are maximally improbable on accessing FSCI does not mean that they can’t get there by lucky noise, and maybe the universe as a whole is quasi-infinite, etc etc etc . . .]
GEM of TKI
PS: I should note on a point of humour that no less than a Minister of Government here observed to me today in a meeting that I was talking to my laptop as if it were a person . . . ouch! (I thought I got rid of that habit years ago . . . debugging machine code can drive you up the wall.)
PPS: This will DV be no 100. Psalm 100 is well worth the read too.
KF, in 99 Instead, in a computer, transistor states etc are determined by the information content of the software.
That is a historical note describing how the states were determined. Once determined, the information in a computer is a state of the computer’s hardware.
That is not necessarily the same argument regarding information in the brain and its interaction with the mind, as we’ve been discussing. Or, would you assert some other property about the computer, such as it has somehow acquired a mind, or of the information, such as it is somehow linked to the mind of the originator of the information?
If, as you argue, the only possible use of “persuasion” involves people (your argument, not the American Heritage’s), then it is obvious that your argument is defined to be correct: computers which are not persons can not do that which only persons can do.
KF Synonyms: persuade, induce, prevail, convince These verbs mean to succeed in causing a person to do or consent to something.
Wouldn’t it be just as useful – and less designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion – to claim that these verbs mean to succeed in causing an entity to do or to consent to something? If the entity can induce, prevail, convince, etc. – as BarryA’s model already suggested – why must that entity be limited to a person? Even FCSI doesn’t require that the entity be a person – it simply suggests that an intelligent agent was involved at some point, even a historical point in the past.
For example, when you reminded us of your claim If . . . we can create an Intelligent Director capable of self-awareness and feeling and judgement, then those conscious AI computers will be capable of being persuaded you neglected to address the condition that a computer was constructed that is capable of performing equivalent to being persuaded, but was not suficiently designed to be considered as self-aware or conscious. I don’t believe you’ve shown a specific progress of computer science must occur in order to detect the results of persuasion only after computer-based self-awareness occurs.
So, would you like to address BarryA’s question in the abstract, and expand this discussion to being more than a mere semantic argument? Can his computers yield the same results of persuasion, such as would be tested with a double-blind study?
BTW: Your comments about marriage were merely wandering alone in the woods – they had no relevence to computer communication or computer persuasion.
Q: I have a question: Can a computer lie or be lied to?
Onlookers:
For proof that, sadly but plainly, Q is not to be taken seriously – I have just enough time for one comment for now – observe the contrast between:
All, duly emphasised on my part.
This is a plain case of setting up a strawman, putting words in his mouth, and pretending that the strawman is the undersigned.
For shame!
GEM of TKI
PS: more later, gotta go get ready for church, may family waits . . .
Greetings!
Good point, StephenB…
Persuasion must also be possible against evidence. Fabricated and put forth as fact.
Can a pen and paper persuade another pen and paper?
Can a typewriter persuade another typewriter?
How about a dictionary, can it persuade another dictionary?
Maybe an encyclopedia set, can it persuade another encyclopedia set?
Okay, a whole library, surely it can persuade another library?
At best a computer is just a data base. If all the other data bases cannot be persuaded, what makes you believe that a digital data base is different?
A data base is information storage.
Library = database
So one library can circulate books with another, is this persuasion?
Library book circulation = data base information transfer
Books moving from one library to another is not persuasion. Computer A transfering data to Computer B is not persuasion.
A library filters it’s books for correct location and ownership. If book X does not belong to library B it does not accept it. If data X does not pass Computer B’s filters it does not belong in Computer B’s data base.
Where is the persuasion? It is just data transfer and a screening process.
Greetings again!
One more thing, Book X can end up belonging to libary B, if the intelligent agent, ie. the libarian, is convinced Book X does belong to library B even if Book X does not belong to library B.
Libraries are not persuaded, but librarians are.
Funny thing isn’t it, who woulda thouht…
U&O Can a pen and paper persuade another pen and paper?
…
Not as BarryA was asking, because that line of thinking doesn’t match BarryA’s setup. Specifically, the first pen and paper can’t transfer information back to the other pen and paper.
He explicitely stated that his computers are capable of “coming to a conclusion about the truth or falsity of a particular proposition” and that they could “Communicate a list of facts and arguments”. None of those things in your list can do that.
U&O At best a computer is just a data base.
Not according to BarryA’s setup for this discussion. The compuers are also capable of analysis.
U&O Where is the persuasion? It is just data transfer and a screening process.
If we remove the anthromoporphic issues of persuasion – as were not included in BarryA’s original setup – please explain the difference. I would hope that your answer would pass a double-blind experiment, in which the observer determining if “persuasion” occured is unaware if people, computers, or deities are involved.
StephenB Can a computer lie or be lied to?
That requires some agreement of terms. In some usages, “lie” only means to deliver non-factual information, whether by accident or intent. By other usages, “lie” includes intent, to separate mistake from deception. If BarryA’s computers can arrive at a yes or no answer after performing an analysis of the data available, they at least could accidentally lie. Other then that, since BarryA didn’t require free-will in the scenario, questions of intent are irrelevent to the question.
To be “lied to” refers to the process of delivering the message. If the a person is delivering a message, the question follows along the lines of “if a person is intentionally telling a lie, and is aiming the message at a target that can receive and interpret the message (as in people and BarryA’s computers), is the target being lied to”? Without adding new conditions to simply arrive at a “no” answer, it seems like a logical construction that the answer could easily be “yes”. The intentional lie was delivered, received, and incorporated into an analysis. Nothing more should be needed to reach an affirmative, unless “lie” is defined to involve only one class of beings, like those that are sentient.
Keep in mind that a large element of BarryA’s scenario is simply semantics – what is “persuasion”. Some argue it is a function of the players – people but not the computers. I’m arguing it is a function of the result, as dictionary definitions suggest anc as computer science would suggest. If that can’t be reconciled, there is no need to continue.
KF: You are arguing as though Asimov’s model is the only model possible. That is a false assumption, and quite honestly, a bad thought experiment. We’re not talking about computer sentience. We’re talking about the a process that may, or may not, yield a result of persuasion. To reiterate, when you say If . . . we can create an Intelligent Director capable of self-awareness and feeling and judgement, then those conscious AI computers will be capable of being persuaded., you are ignoring the possibility that “if we can create a computer capable of being persuaded, we may not have yet reached the ability to create an Intelligent Director capable of self-awareness and feeling and judgement.”
But, as you said a while ago, we may be unable to reach an agreement. Is there any additional need to persue this?
Not to piggyback on this debate, but I found this statement very interesting:
True enough. I couldn’t help rephrase it a bit:
Does that seem reasonable? (I don’t, by the way, think that “consciousness” is demonstrably non-material.)
Greetings!
Whatever parameters are impose by BarryA’s setup, reality is still our point of reference. And as such reality must be maintained throughout any discussion. Changing the meaning of a word to suit your own agenda is pointless, and betrays your disposition.
You are trying to persuade others to accept a different meaning to a word. It is not the word that is interesting but the meaning. The meaning must be the same even if words change. So in effect you are trying to alter a meaning to a word that was intended.
That is just a game. The meaning is clear and the word is clear. The actions of persuasion are clear.
Can a computer perform the process of persuasion? The answer is obvious, NO.
You are arguing against reality.
Greetings!
larrynormanfan, I am just curious.
How do you describe gravity? Is it energy or matter? Is it material or non-material? What about the weak nuclear force? Or strong nuclear force?
Are they energy or matter? Material or non-material?
UaO,
There’s clearly ambiguity about what is “material” in the ID literature. I didn’t invent that ambiguity, but I’ll just say that Dr. Dembski puts appeals to natural law within the realm of materialist explanations. Pointing to the law of gravity and to an intelligent designer are, I think, categorically different things.
U&O, You are trying to persuade others to accept a different meaning to a word.
No, U&O, I’m trying to persuade others to attend to the process included in the word “persuade”, rather than insert the defintion that it implies specific players.
For instance, here is Merriam-Webester’s use:
1 : to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2 : to plead with : urge
The computer’s in BarryA’s scenario could provide arguments to each other, which the other can integrate into its analysis and result in a new course of action – definition 1.
The computer’s in BarryA’s scenario could provide input to the other computer’s analysis, urging it to a new conclusion – definition 2.
The properties of the players in the process of persuasion aren’t an aspect of persuasion, I’m insisting – unless one wants to craft a tautologically trivial argument.
U&O The actions of persuasion are clear.
Then we agree. The results of one player’s analysis are input into the analysis of another, and it becomes possible that this input causes the other to arrive at yet a new conclusion.
U&O Can a computer perform the process of persuasion?
Now or ever, as described in BarryA’s scenario? The obvious answer is that this is just an engineering plus semantic problem.
U&O How do you describe gravity? Is it energy or matter?
Well, not answering for larrynormanfan, but that is not so trivial of a query. Mathematically, it can be shown that gravity is the side-effect of that matter distorting space, or just as equally, that matter is the net side-effect of gravitational space distortions. Gravity and matter become interchangable concepts once one gets beyond the veneer of old-style physics, just like how matter and energy are interchangeable concepts now.
Greetings!
larrynormanfan, I was just curious.
I personally cannot say, but I would say its ambiguous in scientific literature.
From a layman perspective, the material universe is defined by what you can see, hear, taste, smell, feel, but also by extention effects of unknown causes.
Greetings!
Q interesting gravity is matter, matter is gravity.
Greetings!
larrynormanfan,
I found that there are a number of unknown causes, in the universe and in life.
Also I was responding to you rephrase. Materialist framework is insufficent to explain the universe and the life in it.
Science cannot investigate the causes of the fundamental forces of the universe, because they are beyond materialists explainations.
I wonder if science cannot explain the universe, how does it purpose to explore more complicated things such life, the brain and consciousness.
Life itself is a mystery, and defies materialist explainations.
How does a materialists explainations purpose to explain consciousness and the workings of the mind when they are inadequate to explain everything else?
Greetings!
Q, you are no long amusing, the definitions you provided clearly do and cannot not apply to computers. Your whole arguement is impotent.
As for the computer’s in BarryA’s scenario they are just computer’s and have no mind, no will, no imagination, just the preset parameters of the programmer. They are not able to be persuaded.
Correction – the definitions you provided clearly do not and cannot apply to computers.
OK, U&O, if the argument is strictly along extended definitional grounds, and not the process of persuasion, then BarryA’s entire scenario was meaningless and you, and KF, score a tautological victory.
We can be done now.
UandO,
“Science cannot investigate the causes of the fundamental forces of the universe, because they are beyond materialists explainations.”
True enough. That’s why, if it attempts to move beyond materialism, it ceases being science.
Okay:
We have now arrived at the bottom-line of Q’s objectionism, at 117. LNF at 118, reveals the underlying worldview level question being begged:
a –> Now, surely, what persuasion — as a process – is, is not in doubt:
b –> In short, persuasion is (from observation and experience, not a priori abstract definition) an interpersonal, inter-subjective process that requires reasoning [whether good or bad is another question!], perceiving, evaluating, and deciding – all of which are premised on real freedom to choose what to accept as true or right or advantageous – whether wisely or unwisely.
c –> Such a process, necessarily, is not applicable to the mere exchange of data and pre-programmed processing under pre-determined algorithms as coded. PERIOD.
d –> Nor is that a mere “tautology ” — Q here, predictably, objectionistically confuses the self-evident with the mere empty repetition of an identity that is true by definition, X = X.
e –> For, there is empirically discovered content that has to be examined, before drawing the conclusion above. First, we examine and reflect on [a] what persons are like – by instantiation through persons we are familiar with, and [b] what computer systems are like (equally) currently.
f –> But also, since we are contingent beings and are agents — as previously noted but conveniently ignored – then it is possible to create agents.
g –> The first serious question at stake, then, is whether such agents can be wholly based on hardware and programmed-in software based on storage elements and states; perhaps using the sort of neural network architecture for a DS style intelligent director as envisioned by say Asimov for R Daneel and kin (only, using electronic technology!). THAT IS AN OPEN QUESTION, THAT CAN ONLY BE ADDRESSED EMPIRICALLY.
h –> A second serious question, is whether such is the only> possible ways to implement an intelligent agent. Absent the sort of question-begging LNF tries to indulge, that is an in principle open question. If shown, then it means that however improbable the numbers, we got here by chance in an eternal material cosmos. But this, too, is an empirical question, and one that has certainly not been shown. So, it should not be implicitly dogmatically assumed or asserted. That is worldview level question-begging.
i –> And, in fact, as I pointed out in 81 – 82, esp. points k – v [which Q seems determined to bury under a snowstorm of irrelevant and/or trivial objections], there are serious reasons and there is good evidence — starting with our own minds — to see that intelligent agents not based on a material substrate are also possible. Indeed, it is arguable that one such agent is responsible for the cosmos in which we live.
j –> That brings us to LNF’s begged question
k –> FYI LNF, we empirically observe and reliably know from such observation that events are traceable to one or more of three causal factors, i.e [1] chance, [2] natural regularities tracing to mechanical necessity, [3] agency. An almost trivial instance, from my always linked, is sufficient illustration of the fact, and of the irreducibility of any one of these factors to the others:
l –> Further, as is discussed in details in Section A the always linked, functionally specified, complex information [FSCI] is an empirically recognisable, reliable sign of agency as opposed to chance, on grounds tied to the core principles of statistical thermodynamics [cf Appendix A, esp point 6].
m –> So, we — on excellent, empirically grounded scientific grounds — may infer to agency in many cases; e.g. this comment is FSCI, and is agent action not chance or necessity.
n –> Similarly complex cases in DNA and the nanotech of life, including body-plan level biodiversity point to the inference– absent question begging and selective hyperskepticism — that life is the result of agent action. Further, the fine-tuned organised complexity of the cosmos’ underlying physics, similarly points to agency. [Cf sections B – D, the always linked.]
o –> You may of course — you are a free agent — deny these scientific chains of inference, by imposing evolutionary materialism and associated ad hoc philosophical extensions such as quasi-infinite unobserved multiverses, but only at a stiff intellectual price — incoherence and absurdity, starting from the mis-definition of science and its proper scope of inquiry.
BOTTOM-LINE: BarryA’s question is a good one, and it points to serious implications. And, the design inference — per Lakatos [cf 84 – 85 supra] — is a key, common-core element of a fruitful, potentially highly progressive research programme across many domains of applied and pure science.
GEM of TKI
KF, we’ve discussed the issues about whether computers can be persuaded well enough, so I’ll not persue that specific topic more.
But, to continue with your comments in general, it seems you are asserting that for a computer to be able to produce the behavior of people, it must be some sort of intelligent agent. That seems to be your message in several posts, including the immediately above 119 g, h, i, l, and m.
Am I reading your comment to suggest that until computers are imbued with the property of being an intelligent agent, they would never be able to exhibit behavior for specific tasks that are so similar to a person’s behavior for that task that they would pass a double-blind test for that specific behavior?
Unlettered and Ordinary (#115): “As for the computer’s in BarryA’s scenario they are just computer’s and have no mind, no will, no imagination, just the preset parameters of the programmer. They are not able to be persuaded.”
Thanks for clearly restating what should be obvious.
kairosfocus (#39): “When we see intelligent, creative action coming from computers, ….., then we will accept that they have become artificial persons with artificial intelligence. Until that happens, we will reserve the language of persuasion for persons, which is where it belongs.”
I don’t think we would have to accept “personhood” of such an example of advanced AI. We could empirically interact with such a “being” as if it were a person, while knowing that it may be purely a mechanism with no self-awareness in a human conscious sense. Like Searle’s Chinese Room. Of course our assumption that other humans are conscious self-aware beings also is only a working theory. That is, when restricted to ordinary physical interactions. However, there is actual empirical evidence bearing on the issue as it applies to humans. Namely, the mountain of evidence for psi functioning, for instance, which strongly implies some form of dualism of human consciousness.
kairosfocus (#119): “The first serious question at stake, then, is whether such agents can be wholly based on hardware and programmed-in software based on storage elements and states; …..THAT IS AN OPEN QUESTION, THAT CAN ONLY BE ADDRESSED EMPIRICALLY.”
I agree, and unless empirical evidence for some form of dualism with advanced AI “beings” can be shown (equivalent to that for humans), the intuitive observation that AI “beings” are purely mechanism simulating personhood will be the most plausible assumption.
Unlettered and Ordinary (#115): “As for the computer’s in BarryA’s scenario they are just computer’s and have no mind, no will, no imagination, just the preset parameters of the programmer. They are not able to be persuaded.”
Thanks for clearly restating what should be obvious.
Kairosfocus (#39): “When we see intelligent, creative action coming from computers, ….., then we will accept that they have become artificial persons with artificial intelligence. Until that happens, we will reserve the language of persuasion for persons, which is where it belongs.”
I don’t think we would have to accept “personhood” of such an example of advanced AI. We could empirically interact with such a “being” as if it were a person, while knowing that it may be purely a mechanism with no self-awareness in a human conscious sense. Like Searle’s Chinese Room. Of course our assumption that other humans are conscious self-aware beings also is only a working theory. That is, when restricted to ordinary physical interactions. However, there is actual empirical evidence bearing on the issue as it applies to humans. Namely, the mountain of evidence for psi functioning, for instance, which strongly implies some form of dualism of human consciousness.
kairosfocus (#119): “The first serious question at stake, then, is whether such agents can be wholly based on hardware and programmed-in software based on storage elements and states; perhaps using the sort of neural network architecture for a DS style intelligent director as envisioned by say Asimov for R Daneel and kin (only, using electronic technology!). THAT IS AN OPEN QUESTION, THAT CAN ONLY BE ADDRESSED EMPIRICALLY.”
I agree, and unless empirical evidence for some form of dualism with advanced AI “beings” can be shown (equivalent to that for humans), the intuitive observation that AI “beings” are purely mechanism simulating personhood will be the most plausible assumption.
There is another logical possibility that I consider greatly unlikely, however. This is that although dualism applies to human consciousness, an advanced AI “being” could be truly self-aware, conscious and intelligent in the human sense, and still totally the function of electronic circuits and running computer software.
Sorry for the double posting. The first didn’t seem to get through.
Okay:
Some follow-up points, even as the thread has commendably returned to a focus on the merits:
1] Q, 120: it seems you are asserting that for a computer to be able to produce the behavior of people, it must be some sort of intelligent agent
The “behaviour of people,” as the Cognitive psychologists have finally won the day on, has a second- or third-person observable aspect, AND a first-person, conscious aspect.
On particular tasks, it may be possible to mimic the externally observable behaviour without having captured the inner, I-ness aspect. But IMHBCO, until and unless one captures BOTH, one has not truly captured “the behaviour of people.”
Now, how can one tell that there is “somebody” at home in a given body?
Ans: by looking for self-aware, un-programmed, self-directing, creative behaviour in novel unstructured situations, spontaneous and appropriately situationally responsive communication and interactions – and I have in mind emotions, values and ethics too.
[Searle’s Chinese Room and Turing’s tests so far as I can see, do not pass this test.]
2] Am I reading your comment to suggest that until computers are imbued with the property of being an intelligent agent, they would never be able to exhibit behavior for specific tasks that are so similar to a person’s behavior for that task that they would pass a double-blind test for that specific behavior?
First, I note that the use of “person” is not to be confused with “human being.” [I suspect that this is a part of the gap in communication evident above. Actual known and potential persons – aside from legal fictions such as corporations – include: humans, God, demons and gods, robots of the ilk of an R Daneel Olivaw (or even early precursors), ETs, and much more. Also observe my point on the behaviour of known persons, above.]
Having noted that, as the previous remarks indicate, if there is sufficient family resemblance between a robot’s behaviour, say and that of a known person, on family resemblance principles of classification, I would immediately accept the robot into the family of persons. And a very welcome addition they would be – if governed by appropriate ethical laws [which of course require creativity and situation awareness to apply] – and see the significance of the point Asimov made?
When it comes to specific tasks, the very act of specification issues in restriction and algorithmisation.
That, in part, is why I spoke of creative, spontaneous and appropriately responsive behaviour in unstructured, novel situations, above.
Algorithmic problem solving does take intelligence, as we can immediately infer from the FSCI embedded in it. But that is the intelligence of the programmer, not that of the machine that simply deterministically executes the actions “required” by the symbols it is processing at the moment [and whatever relevant stored “flag” memory state drives decisions].
In the case of the Chinese room, the algorithm-implementing agents are intelligent too, but they are simply using that intelligence to follow instructions blindly.
3] Magnan, 121: . We could empirically interact with such a[n AI] “being” as if it were a person, while knowing that it may be purely a mechanism with no self-awareness in a human conscious sense. Like Searle’s Chinese Room.
I have as recently as Saturday last been caught interacting with this PC as if it were a person, even knowing that it cannot even hear me.
Having noted that, cf. Above on where I think a reasonable threshold obtains.
4] our assumption that other humans are conscious self-aware beings also is only a working theory. That is, when restricted to ordinary physical interactions. However, there is actual empirical evidence bearing on the issue as it applies to humans . . .
Not at all, save insofar as that our reasoning is constrained by “unproved” first plausibles in all relevant situations and is fallible.
Thus, we must not fall into selective hyperskepticism — worldview level question begging — on evidence that points to consciousness and creativity, such as appropriate responsiveness in novel, unstructured, demanding situations. This was the essential point that say Chomsky made on language acquisition and use – what we say and how is not “just” pre-programmed or a matter of stimulus-response operant conditioning; it is novel, meaningful and responsive in unstructured situations – creative, in one word.
Further to this, we may find materialism-leaning “prof” Wiki’s remarks on the rise of Cognitivism telling again [cf 82] – especially given the patent absurdity of behaviourist psychologists using their minds to assert or assume that mental states do not exist in any sense that is more than an epiphenomenon riding on the underlying material phenomena:
Can you see the absurdity? If on reflection or even on trying to write behaviourist papers, behaviourists see that they exhibit mental states, then mental states exist.
Since they DECIDE what to put into those papers, on direct experience, they are above to decide and act reasonably.
That is, their own personal life experiences testify against their positions: they are self-referentially incoherent. And, if such mental states and actions exist in a context of I-ness, it is reasonable to infer that one has a mind, and that the mind is acting intelligently into the world, i.e mind is at least possible.
On level- playing- field comparative difficulties, mind can account for FSCI in ways that random walk searches based on arbitrary initial points and functionality tests cannot – the vastness of the config spaces utterly swamps the probabilistic resources available in say a language using situation that responds in REAL-TIME at conversational rates!
[That is, Chomski’s argument was a decisive INFERENCE TO DESIGN AND THENCE AGENCY. One that has been accepted as – scientific.]
Then, when we see similar behaviour in other entities, whether members of the same human family — we get into race and sex discrimination issues rapidly here – or in other entities that are sufficiently capable that we recognise agency, we have an inference to best and empirically anchored explanation. One that in fact has the further point that at its core is a self-evident truth: the personally experienced reality of intelligence and mind we all have.
[. . . ]
5] unless empirical evidence for some form of dualism with advanced AI “beings” can be shown (equivalent to that for humans), the intuitive observation that AI “beings” are purely mechanism simulating personhood will be the most plausible assumption
Until we get into novel unstructured situations that demand creative responses. Naturally occurring language using inter-active situations in a changing world are a good case in point. If a robot or computer etc can persistently pass the test in such situations, it is much more than a mere simulation driven by clever software.
6] There is another logical possibility that I consider greatly unlikely, however. This is that although dualism applies to human consciousness, an advanced AI “being” could be truly self-aware, conscious and intelligent in the human sense, and still totally the function of electronic circuits and running computer software
You may be right.
But, the existence of ourselves as contingent, intelligent beings who are embodied makes this a possibility. One that cannot be ruled out apart from sufficient experimental evidence that we see that there are plainly insurmountable difficulties here.
And so, the design paradigm, again, shows itself to be a potentially very fruitful and progressive research programme in the Lakatosian sense:
What a commentary on the tactics of the NCSE etc!
I need say little more than that, though I link here on abduction and broader inference to best current explanation in science in light of worldviews issues.
GEM of TKI
KF, if by “agency” you mean “intelligent agency,” we don’t really see that as an independent cause of anything. We rather see, as you elegantly put it, people like ourselves — “contingent, intelligent beings who are embodied.” No need to posit “God, demons and gods, robots of the ilk of an R Daneel Olivaw (or even early precursors), ETs, and much more.” Agents such as ourselves seem fairly recent, or seem to have left no tangible traces. So I’m not going to invent them for convenience sake.
Including such a laundry list (as above) of possible causes for everything we don’t understand takes all the regularity out of scientific inquiry. Agency-of-the-gaps.
My position is question-begging in the most abstract sense, I’ll grant. But to leave open every question for the sake of philosophical consistency is pretense. Almost as pretentious as to close off the standard options because one knows better while claiming to have a truly open mind.
LNF:
In re: if by “agency” you mean “intelligent agency,” we don’t really see that as an independent cause of anything . . .
Really!
Our most direct, commonly observed personal experience is that of agency in action. Indeed, it is the very premise on which we can discuss and seek to persuade.
So, au contraire, we DO experience — notice how I do not use “see” — agents in action as self-determinig entities. That is the premise of any rational discussion, but evo mat advocates often reject it, apparently not aware they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting.
So, “agent” is not a “gaps” argument — it is the very first fact of all that each of us experiences and brings to the table to do science or anything else of consequence. To deny such self-evident reality ends in absurdity, which we may distract attention from all we will [note the persuasive STRATEGY involved, onlookers], but it is there.
Next, I simply pointed to observed and/or possible agents.
Until and unless you know beyond revision that God is not possible, or other agents that are not human, you have no good basis to confine claimed or possible observation of agents — and note, on the possibility or actuality of encountering God, BILLIONS disagree with you on observation if you are an atheist — to ourselves.
Recognising that agency is possible does not subvert science, it simply recognises that we do not foreclose things by distorting the definition of science or what we may study scientifically or conclude scientifically. [Have you read the relevant links?]
In short, if we need not beg a question, then we should not do so! (Especially when comparative difficulties across live option alternatives gives us a way to avoid that. And that sets a context for scientific progress,a s Lakatos noted in the again excerpted cite just above in 125.)
It is not a “pretense” to recognise that, it is to be honest in front of THREE — count ’em — known major causal factors: chance, agency, intelligent action. Watch them in action again, in a simple commonly encountered case:
GEM of TKI
We don’t see “intelligent agency” in the absence of “intelligent agents.” And since such agents — us — are only known to exist comparatively recently in world history, we shouldn’t bring other unknown agents in just because a particular problem is difficult to solve scientifically.
FWIW, I’m not an atheist. But God is not a scientific proposition.
Also: those “BILLIONS” also disagree with each other, often (historically and in the present) violently. Which of these accounts am I to take as scientific? The Muslim, the Mormon, the madhouse resident? The UFO abductee? The native in the sweatlodge seeking the animal spirit? They all encounter intelligent agency.
LNF:
I tis clear that this is not a serious exchange.
1] We don’t see “intelligent agency” in the absence of “intelligent agents.” And since such agents — us — are only known to exist comparatively recently in world history, we shouldn’t bring other unknown agents in just because a particular problem is difficult to solve scientifically.
Question-begging.
Science is not to be confused with “the best evolutionary materialist ‘explanation’ of the cosmos from hydrogen to humans.” Especially, given the self-referential incoherence that lurks in that. not to mention, the begging of the question through a loaded definition.
Onlookers, observe as well the “rush on to the next objection” without addressing issues squarely on the merits” problem.
2] those “BILLIONS” also disagree with each other, often (historically and in the present) violently. Which of these accounts am I to take as scientific? The Muslim, the Mormon, the madhouse resident? The UFO abductee? The native in the sweatlodge seeking the animal spirit? They all encounter intelligent agency.
Onlookers, first observe the strawman tactic, especially in light of the principles that experience and interpretation are different issues and that a counterfeit $1 implies a genuine $1.
If you want to talk about claimed personal encounters with God, try: Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, Saul of Tarsus, Augustine, Pascal, John Wesley, George Whitefield, C S Lewis or the like — some of the greatest lives and minds ever lived, lives that show the positive impacts of transforming real experience, not the disintegrative and chaotic impacts of delusions.
But even that is on a red herring leading to a strawman likely to be burned to cloud and confuse the atmosphere.
The point is that it is those who would insiste that there are only certain known agents and thatt hese agents arte the only possible ones who have a — so far unmet — burden of proof.
If a possibility exists, it should not be dismissed through question-begging, especially the misuse of the term “science.”
GEM of TKI
K&F, 130, The point is that it is those who would insiste that there are only certain known agents and thatt hese agents arte the only possible ones who have a — so far unmet — burden of proof.
I agree. I at least have not been suggesting that there are only certain known agents. But, you have been arguing that certain behaviors require certain agents. A theoretical claim not supported with observation. Your burdern of proof is essential – that requires demonstration to close that gap between logical argument and representation of fact.
Specfically, you are avoiding the double-blind question in 120, regarding behaviors that are indistinguisable from human behavior. It is not question-begging, because BarryA in the title of this thread suggested a semblance of “persuasion”, as even he put the word in quotes.
Can you show that only objects with the property of an intelligent agent could pass a double-blind test of whether a specfic behavior is human or not?
KF, I’m sorry you don’t think I’m being serious. I am in fact, despite your assertions to the contrary. I don’t appreciate the tone, either.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact, I have a hard time following a lot of what you say. In answer to a previous question, I’ve read enough of your work to know that you have developed a philosophical scheme which seems internally coherent to you but which to my eyes, strain at gnats to swallow camels.
I don’t “insist that there are only certain known agents” or what have you. All that stuff is meaningless to me. I’m talking about what science should assume as it proceeds. I’m not talking about knowledge claims in general; I’m talking about the limited domain of science.
(M): …our assumption that other humans are conscious self-aware beings also is only a working theory (when restricted to physical interactions)
kairosfocus (#124): “Not at all,…. we must not fall into selective hyperskepticism — worldview level question begging — on evidence that points to consciousness and creativity, such as appropriate responsiveness in novel, unstructured, demanding situations.
I didn’t mean to give the impression of selective hyperskepticism that humans are actually conscious self aware beings. Just that we can’t know for absolute certainty using reason, logic and observations of our senses that any persons other than ourselves are truly so. This is like the problem of proving the falsity of solipsism.
In principle an advanced AI system could mimic a conscious “human” agent in these ways well enough to fool us, at least in certain situations. Those situations the system had been designed and programmed for. This design could involve a huge data base derived from actual human conversations, and a large enough set of conversational “algorithms” derived from actual human interactions. Nothing in principle would prevent such a system from deceiving a real person that he/she was communicating with a real human. Whether actual computer systems will ever have enough memory and processing power to do it is another issue. Of course this is the Turing test, and the possibility of being fooled by it is why the test is invalid or inapplicable to really deciding the issue.
This is why empirical evidence for dualism of human consciousness such as psi is so important.
kairosfocus (#125): “….If a robot or computer etc can persistently pass the test (involving “novel unstructured situations that demand creative responses”, including “naturally occurring language using inter-active situations in a changing world”) it is much more than a mere simulation driven by clever software.”
I disagree, for the reasons given above.
Greetings!
larrynormanfan 110, I agree with you totally.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
Greeting!
I don’t actually totally agree.
That is too closed for me. I unequivocally reject materialism. But I also only believe in strict scientific terms; we can only study what we observe and we can only know what we study. But this only applies to investigating physical nature. That does not mean the conclusions of our inverstigation cannot lead us to the non-material.
So materialist framework is bunk especially for science.
So actually I totally disagree.
What I was agreeing to was science cannot investigate the non-material, by way of observation and study. And even that I have doubts, but only because we can observe the effects of things not readily available, or observable, or not even present.
Greetings!
My objection to using persuasion on the computer’s in BerryA question is that the tasks carried out by the computers did not qualify.
The computers can transmit, confirm, accept or reject the information then store it in the database according to the programmers preset parameters.
My objection is this is not enough.
The Computer must as a result of analysing the data, begin to alter its operating system, programs, functions and sub-functions, re-calibrate, and analyse its database and correct it according to the new parameters.
It must be able to re-program itself, generate a new operating system, etc. and decide or choose between the old and new operating system, etc.
It must be able to generate new programs, function, etc. base on its database, continually.
It must be able to integrate it’s database and new data into it’s operating system, programs, etc.
It must be able to disagree with the conclution of computer A’s transmission after confirming it and accepting it and agreeing with the data and feedback.
It must be able to change it’s parameters, but not as the result of direct programming of outside sources, ie, Computer A, or Computer B’s programmer.
In must be capable of all these things and other’s I have not mentione. But if a computer can do these things, then I might apply the term “persuasion” to its interaction with computer A.
Also my objection to materialism is that it excludes the obvious conclusions of the non-material universe of honest inquiry.
1) The non-material cause and origin of the universe.
2) The non-material cause and origin, nature of material life.
3) The non-material cause, origin and nature of consciousness.
4) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of the conscience.
5) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of free will.
6) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of imagination and creativity.
7) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of emotions.
8) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of thoughts.
9) The non-material cause, origin, and nature of spirituality.
I of course recognize the material universe, but its only part of the story. I hold that the material intelligent agents must indeed have material parts but also non-material counter-parts. Like the heart needs the lungs and the lungs need the heart. To remove one disables the other. The brain without the mind is worthless, and the mind without the brain does not exist, for material intelligent beings.
Matter does not exist without energy. Matter and energy do not exist without information. Matter, energy, and information do not exist without intelligence. Each relies on another to exist. And as intelligent material beings, we complete a circle, as we are intelligent matter. Material beings with non-material origins, parts, and nature.
U&O provides a list of requirements, such as It must be able to generate new programs, function, etc. base on its database, continually.
I hope you understand that for the functionality of current computers, a program is simply a structured database of instructions. There is almost nothing that distinguishes data, program, database, etc, except for how it is accessed. Some BYTEs are read as program. Some are read as data. Some BYTEs are written as data and read as program. If a computer can determine data to put into the database, then, unless there is a physical limitation, generating a new program is basically the same process.
It is your claim of “must be capable of all these things and other’s I have not mention”, and not the list you provide, that is what shows the strength of your argument.
Okay:
Following up a few points on AI, persuasion and persons etc:
1] Q, 131: you are avoiding the double-blind question in 120, regarding behaviors that are indistinguishable from human behavior . . . . Can you show that only objects with the property of an intelligent agent could pass a double-blind test of whether a specfic behavior is human or not
Q, kindly explain to me: what part of the following is evasive or unclear — as opposed to pointing out the key, longstanding gap in the traditional AI tests?
You will also note that I went on to identify an important, paradigm-shifting case in point: Chomsky on language, which massively helped break down the stranglehold of behaviourism on psychology.
And, again note: IT WAS THE FIRST MAJOR PARADIGM-SHIFT LEVEL BREAKTHROUGH OF THE DESIGN INFERENCE.
So, in sum, I am pointing out that the Turing test and Chinese room, etc, are all wrong-headed.
The characteristic behaviour of agents is not in specific, structured situations that can be reduced to algorithms quite nicely, thank you. It is in non-routine, ill-defined, unstructured situations that call for judgement and creativity that agency shines and leaves pedestrian algoritms in the dust. Indeed, this is long since a known, defining characteristic of professional and/or strategic level disciplines in the world of work.
[Well do I remember my thesis adviser, PDS, pointing this out to me as we both stood in line at the old UWI Mona campus bookshop during the AI craze of the 1980’s, as we discussed Turing’s argument that so soon as a matter is defined, an algorithm for it can be constructed. I gratefully acknowledge the intellectual debt. Thanks sir — again!]
So, I guess the last word on this can be left to the C5 – 4 BC Greek physician, Hippocrates of Cos. Pardon my butchery of wonderful, terse language by explanatory parentheses]:
2] you have been arguing that certain behaviors require certain agents.
Again, you here misunderstand and/or misrepresent what I have argued.
I have argued that agency has in it intention, self-direction, ability to adapt to novel, unstructured, non-routine situations with judgement and creativity, etc etc. In that context, I have highlighted the creative use of language (a point highlighted by Chomsky) – which of course generates insightful constructs in appropriate codes that are functionally specified and complex, i.e this is why FSCI is a reliable marker of intelligent agency. And more.
What I have emphatically NOT done is to lock down agency to any one form or manifestation. I have considered agents who are contingent or necessary beings as both possible. I have considered wholly embodied agents and agents who blend matter and immaterial mind. I have looked at humans, God, demons, gods, ETs, robots and advanced, possible future AI systems. [The closest I have got to your strawman, is when I have compared the possibility of an Agent as the necessary being responsible for our observed contingent cosmos, by contrast with the proposed quasi-infinite, unobserved multiverse now pushed as an ad hoc way by Dawkins and his ilk to try desperately get around the force of the evidence on anthropic fine-tuning.]
I have insisted that agents are able – per a defining, OBSERVED, recognisable, family-resemblance characteristic — to act appropriately into novel and unstructured situations with creativity, judgement, intentions decisions and even wisdom.
That is by no means confined to any one type of agent, human or otherwise.
And, I insist, on the most excellent grounds of evidence and the basic meaning of words: only such agents are capable of being “persuaded.”
3] LNF, 132: I’m talking about what science should assume as it proceeds. I’m not talking about knowledge claims in general; I’m talking about the limited domain of science.
And, sorry to be insistent [and if this offends you further, pardon]: plainly, you have evidently not read with understanding the linked discussions on just what the issues are on demarcation of what science is or is not, and what its proper assumptions are. Nor have you showed any signs of simply reading; by actually interacting with the linked and sumarising then asking on clarification then challenging on points of difference, with reasons. Instead, you have simply reiterated/implied a tendentious redefinition of science that serves only to truncate its search for empirically anchored truth in the interests of evolutionary materialist agendas.
Sorry if it comes across as offensive, but — given the already linked that you don’t appear to have interacted with — that simply does not come across as intellectually serious. [Put it this way: if one of my students insistently dismissively addressed a point as you have, he would have – for cause — got ZERO from me.]
Kindly, start here [with onward context-supplying links esp. here], then also go here for a broader basic introduction on the issue of what “science,” properly, is.
On definitions, you may wish to consult a couple of high-quality dictionaries for starters:
4] I didn’t mean to give the impression of selective hyperskepticism that humans are actually conscious self aware beings. Just that we can’t know for absolute certainty using reason, logic and observations of our senses that any persons other than ourselves are truly so. This is like the problem of proving the falsity of solipsism.
The highlighted portions should suffice to show why I spoke of selective hyperskepticism.
For, humans are finite, fallible, arguably fallen and too often ill-willed and en-darkened in heart and mind. So, we fall under Locke’s too often overlooked warning at the beginning of his essay on human understanding:
Even worse, is to selectively dispebieve wha tris not convenient to our worldviews or issues, using grounds that if consistently applied would put us into the absurdities of hyperskepticism that Lock so eloquently described.
5] an advanced AI system could mimic a conscious “human” agent in these ways well enough to fool us, at least in certain situations. Those situations the system had been designed and programmed for.
But, the POINT is that real agents are not confined to “certain” well-defined situations. They act effectively, intuitively and creatively into the unstructured, ill-defined, often poorly understood messy complexities of the real world, a world in which “art is long, life short, experience treacherous and judgement difficult . . .”
GEM of TKI
KF: what part of the following is evasive or unclear — as opposed to pointing out the key, longstanding gap in the traditional AI tests?
Where you included in your answer I-ness aspect. But IMHBCO, until and unless one captures BOTH, one has not truly captured “the behaviour of people.”
The double-blind test I asked about was with regard to observed behaviors. That is the nature of longstanding traditional AI tests. It is not about some metaphysical, non-observable portion of a dualist philosophy regarding “I-ness”. The “I-ness” question is valid, but in a different domain than observable behaviors.
And you did again, when you followed up with Now, how can one tell that there is “somebody” at home in a given body?
The question is not at all whether there is somebody in some given body. The question is whether this given body can perform tasks analogous to those performed by a diferent body.
Look up the “No true Scotsman” logical fallacy, a type of question begging . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
The double-blind test being suggested is not meant to “truly capture the behavior of people”. Instead, it would illustrate whether computer behavior can be indistinguable from the people’s behavior. What truly is people’s behavior is a different question, pehaps.
This is how we avoid tautological semantic arguments, like an argument which says “persuasion” is defined to relate to only inter-personal communication, so persuasion refers to only persons, computers aren’t persons, so computers can’t perusade because tautologically, “computer’s can’t do what persons do”. We set up a test to see behaviors, like a double-blind study, and then see if the behaviors results correlate to what the properties of the concept being investigated.
KF I have argued that agency has in it intention, self-direction, ability to adapt to novel, unstructured, non-routine situations with judgement and creativity, etc etc.
But, it is also clear that you are arguing the inverse holds true merely because your claim of agency is true. This pairing of arguments is wrongly being used to exclude any behaviors that are analogous to intention, self-direction, adaptation, or judgement from bodies unless those bodies also have the property of intelligent agents.
Specifically, it may not be true that an body which exhibits intention, self-direction, adaptation, or judgement is necessarily the same as an intelligent agent. It may still be an automoton – like a mars rover. I.e., claiming that object A has the properties of B, C, and D does not mean that an object with the properties of B, C, and D is an A, unless B, C, and D are the only properties the object has, and are the only properties to be an A. In other words, a specific computer which may agreeably be an automaton, may still be able to exhibit intention, self-direction, adaptation, or judgement (or other behviors) as tested in a double-blind experiment and not have all the properties of an intelligent agent. That is, unless one falls into the No True Scotsman trap, and says but that isn’t truly intention, or self-direction, or adaptation, or judgement because of claims unrelated to the use of those concepts.
wow, I had a junky edit above. We set up a test to see behaviors, like a double-blind study, and then see if the behaviors results correlate to what the properties of the concept being investigated.
should be
We set up a test to see behaviors, like a double-blind study, and then see if the test results correlate to the properties of the concept being investigated.
Greetings!
Q – please…
My list that I provided was sufficient enough that no computer process could ever accomplish it, I did not have to provide the rest.
But since you want it, fine.
It must be able to change its analysis process, and based on its database. It must be able to generate “new” data based on old data. It must be able to reject data in favor of a particular opinion because it liked it. It must be able to become attached, or attracted to things. It must be able to abandon logic during the persuasion process. It must be able to reject fact, in favor of a colorful arguement.
Both persuasion and dissuasion are part of everyday life for people. So dissuasion must also be possible for the computer. It must be able to persuade/dissuade itself.
Persuasion has results; effects of change. Change in motivations, intentions and actions. These to must be included in the processes of persuasion.
Persuasion does not violate free will, but is an influence, that can be rejected or accepted. The same must be for the computer. But of course there’s that free will thing.
Persuasion may also take place without awareness of its source. But it can still be rejected or accepted.
BTW, do computers spontaneously reprogram their operating systems. Worldview = Operating system
Just as a worldview is the platform for the actions of humans. So an operating system is for a computer. Persuasion must be able to build a “new” operating system, or adapt the “old” operating system. (All by itself)
As I understand things in reality, is that trained programmer build operating systems, programs, and set the parameters of computers. Can computers do these things by themselves?
If they can, Can they do it based on a rogue transmission of data that may or may not be true?
If they can do all of the things listed, but are not self-aware, I might apply the term persuasion to computers as a process.
BTW, I do not say gravity persuades me to stay on earth. Or that the water in my body is persuaded to circulate. Or that high pressure is persuaded to go to low pressure. Or that wind persuades sailboats to move. Or that heat persuades water to evaporate. All of these are processes, that involve action/reaction or cause and effect.
Computer A sends transmission to Computer B. Computer B analysis Computer A’s transmission. Computer B confirm data from Computer A to be true ot false based on its preset parameters. (action/reaction, cause/effect)
Persuasion is more than just cause/effect, action/reaction. In the case of the computers all fixed actions and fixed reactions, fixed cause and fixed effects.
Persuasion does not have fixed actions/reactions, cause/effect. The proceses of persuasion might cause dissuasion, where the effects are the opposite of the purposed agenda. (dang agenda implies intent also part of the processes of persuasion)
Before you claim computer can do it, analyse real persuasion between real people, reduce their actions to system processes.
You started with the computer system process and worked from there. kairosfocus and I started with people and their actions and worked from there.
Who do you think is going to have a clearer understanding of persuasion systems? A person who applies computer process to known human action. Or a person who applies known human actions to a computer process.
It seems to me if you start with the computer processes it is as logical as trying to build a roof on a house without having built a foundation, floors, walls, ect.
Okay, Q:
That’s quite enough:
Them’s fighting words, pardnuh: the Afro-Scots true-blue blood of heroes runs in my veins – that of National Heroes and martyrs of Jamaica. (The Irish blood, the English blood and the Indian blood join in too! Off in the cheering galleries, some French ghosts, circa 1916 join in: “They shall not pass!”)
I am standing at the neck of the pass, tartan clad, and I am brandishing the grand old, ever sharp claidheamh mòr! [And cf here Heb 4:12!]
“A Gordon! A Gordon!” [The war cry of an ancestral clan.]
Let’s see what stuff a true Afro-Scotsman is made of!
(In short, do you see the fallacy in tossing out turnabout accusations of question-begging, when in fact demonstrably [cf above] it is YOU who are trying to arbitrarily shift and corrupt the meaning of language, e.g. the meaning of words like persuade? As Unlettered has just aptly corrected you on?)
FYI, the No True Scotsman fallacy only obtains when non-essential characteristics are being used to try to rule out of a set those who properly belong. Computers, as currently constituted are simply not persons, period, and can no more be persuaded nor persuade than they can think and decide for themselves.
And as for pusillanimous cowards who claim to be Scotsmen by virtue of merely having been misbegotten and born to a family of the stock; well, they aren’t going to be around very long to continue making such claims – not if REAL Scotsmen and their descendants have anything to say and do about it!
(Trust an Englishman to make the point of being a true blue Scotsman into a fallacy!)
Okay, on points of brief note:
1] The double-blind test I asked about was with regard to observed behaviors. That is the nature of longstanding traditional AI tests.
And I pointed out that the test – which I directly stated can perhaps be passed in certain narrowly defined and contrived settings — is mis-conceived, and showed why.
One can program and mimic intelligent behaviour in narrow domains indeed, but this is worlds apart from the task in hand: persuasion and dissuasion, as Unlettered aptly pointed out.
That is not “evasion” – a highly loaded term with connotations of dishonesty and dishonourable conduct — on any reasonable meaning of the term. You are wrong-headed and if you insist on such abusive terms, wrong-hearted.
2] The question is not at all whether there is somebody in some given body. The question is whether this given body can perform tasks analogous to those performed by a diferent body.
Not at all, it is whether one computer may PERSUADE another — cf title and OP.
That is not a traditional so-called AI test. In short, it is you who have tried a bait and switch, and we are not biting on it.
3] The double-blind test being suggested is not meant to “truly capture the behavior of people”. Instead, it would illustrate whether computer behavior can be indistinguable from the people’s behavior . . . . This is how we avoid tautological semantic arguments, like an argument which says “persuasion” is defined to relate to only inter-personal communication, so persuasion refers to only persons, computers aren’t persons, so computers can’t perusade because tautologically, “computer’s can’t do what persons do”
First, you have again insistently misrepresented what i have said: i have stated that so far as I can see, in principle, whether computers or robots etc can be made to have the ability to persuade or the like is an OPEN question for empirical research, and that the ID programme opens the door to such investigation.
Kindly cease and desist from distorting what I have explicitly and repeatedly said.
Next, you are again doing the bait and switch. Persuasion, as Unlettered points out, is not a narrowly defined toy process that can be algorithmised. It is a broad characteristic of known persons, and it is known to be directly and inextricably connected to powerful core characteristics of persons.
When – and if — computers or robots get to the R Daneel level, they would then be able to persuade or be persuaded, but not until then.
Nor am I speaking empty tautologies – despite your fallacy of confident manner insistent assertions.
Being a person is an empirically investigate-able matter, not a matter of uninformative statements of identity. Once you see real persons in action, then consider the characteristics, then you will see that to reject my point is to end in absurdity.
As you have.
4] it may not be true that an body which exhibits intention, self-direction, adaptation, or judgement is necessarily the same as an intelligent agent. It may still be an automoton – like a mars rover.
FYI Mars Rover is not a self-directing, intentional entity.
It is carrying out instructions from NASA, as loaded into its firmware etc. It may make pre-programed if-then responses and may even have a supervisory level director that allows some adaptation, but it is simply not at the level of person.
And, it is you who have here grossly confused categories that are evident to anyone with a modicum of common sense, even as you accuse me of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Thus, revealing the self-evident nature of the case.
5] Unlettered, 141: Q – please…
Thanks for a spirited, dead on target response.
You’ll do to hold the pass with, back-to-back, swords drawn; bro!
“A Gordon! A Gordon!”
GEM of TKI
PS:
Citing that wiki article Q linked above:
I would believe that the Am h dict def’n cited above and linked at 143 counts as an example of the “accepted” def’n of persuasion. Nor are we changing the definition after the fact to exclude inconvenient facts!
(Of course, I have taken out the insult to my ancestors from the excerpt.)
KF, yeah, I’ve got Scotsman blood in me too.
But, I think we can be done here.
bielizna sklep…
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