Monday, October 5, 2009

Scientific Sonnets

okay, I might be in love with some of the philosophers on artificial intelligence, or at least their writing.
Consider this argument concerning consciousness: "Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain-that is, not only write it but know that it had written it. No mechanism could feel (and not merely artificially signal, an easy contrivance) pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or depressed when it cannot get what it wants." ~Professor Jefferson's Lister Oration from 1949.

Jaja says she hopes I am never wooed by someone who writes scientific sonnets. hmph.

6 comments:

Filly said...

Today I was reading some Castoriadis (French materialist philosopher of the 20th century). He wasn't critiquing artificial intelligence, but, he was doing something similar that you might find interesting Embrella Cat. He was critiquing "functionalism" as an ontological position. His target as I understood it, was essentially, systems of thought about being that reduce being to a functional purpose, so, positivism we could say is an example of this. (One sees this all the time for example in pop science articles, a human behavior like attraction will be reduced to biological explanations). Now the possibly interesting connection here is that machines as such we understand to be for the purpose of function, they are tools. Why aren't humans tools? Why isn't everything we do, our entire being, reducible to a function? Because, we are supremely disfunctional...and this doesn't mean that we just "don't get it right"-this is rather, a positive part of existence that can signal something outside a functionalist understanding of human being. Ok, fine, all psychoanalysts will posit something like this, hurrah. But, Jefferson's quote here points to pleasure first as indication that we may not be like machines. Castoriadis writes: "...for humans, representational pleasure prevails as a rule over organ pleasure (read: biological function fufilment), from which it also results that both representation and pleasure are defunctionalized in humans." Now yes, your local positivist may posit that pleasure is tied to biological functions, but, there is no denying that humans also seek pleasure in all kinds of affairs that we conceive of as "disfunctional"...We are delightfully curious beings, good grief, who wants to reduce us to machines?

Filly said...

Wow that was long-hee hee.

Filly said...

And now I've learned, that apparently desire is (for lack of a more accurate term) "socially-constructed" according to Castoriadis, which may provoke further interesting thoughts for us Embrella...When I learn more we'll talk, if you're into it:)

Filly said...

Ooooohhhhh Embrella Cat, I'm reading more Castoriadis, and remind me to bring up the connections between a functionalist ontology and political doctrine according to him...ooooohhh, sooo much fuuunnnnnn:)!! I love that you and I are nerds together:)

Emberella Cat said...

I keep glancing at these and getting excited... I promise to read them in more depth and respond intelligently when midterms are done.
your fellow in happy nerdism, emberella cat.

Emberella Cat said...

I've been doing some more reading on stuff that applies to a functionalism and all it's criticisms. It also connects to Castoriadis' idea that we distinguish ourselves from things defined by our functions by our pleasure in them. It comes from ideas about Enactive Cognition, and it's the idea that living things are distinguished from everything else because they form their own goals. I guess it's an old idea, but it's interesting in how easily it distinguishes even very smart robots from very simple paramecium. Paramecium do their best to stay alive and find food and so on. Robots will do what we program them to do, but as far as is understood, their goals are only their designers goals, and they have no opinion on whether they are on or off - it makes no difference to them. I like the idea that what differentiates us is our ability to be emotional about things. To experience pleasure and sadness and all the rest of it, even if it does make us occasionally defunctional. I think it's kind of nice. :)