Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 163.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2024-09-26 15:32:15+00:00
From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.157: a paradox (?) commented
Many thanks to Tim, Willard, and Jerry for their recent responses to my
post. Willard's and Tim's responses to me illustrate that the conversation
moves forward as we get increasingly more precise with our language --
that precision allows us all to hone in more on the real object of our
query. And Jerry, as a Romanticist who taught me (indirectly, through his
books) about Romanticism in grad school, I hoped would agree. The idea of
the organic body being essential to human consciousness permeates Romantic
poetry, including Wordsworth's "Expostulation and Reply":
"The eye--it cannot <https://www.definitions.net/definition/cannot> choose
but see;
We cannot <https://www.definitions.net/definition/cannot> bid the ear be
still;
Our bodies <https://www.definitions.net/definition/bodies> feel, where'er
they be,
Against or with our will."
Those lines articulate a fundamental way in which human cognitive processes
are forever and inextricably bound up with our external environments via
unending and inescapable sensory input. There is no machine in a box that
experiences the world in that way.
I could respond to Tim by justifying my claim, "calculators do math," in a
very generic sense. They take inputs and produce outputs. That could also
be very superficially extended to the human mind. But he's right -- the
human mind and calculators do not do math the same way, as he explains very
clearly. The point to me is that we should move away from generalities and
start getting into the details of human cognitive functioning and machine
"intelligence." All of the nonsense in the world about AI proceeds from
black box models of both: human consciousness is an electrical black box,
computers are electrical black boxes, they're parallel! But that's
nonsense. We know more about both than that. So I appreciate Tim's critique
of my language. That's a way I need to get more precise.
I do have a question for Tim: how can you possibly justify this claim?
"If you want a good example of some real AI take a look at
the Wolfram Mathematica system. This does do math. Lots of
different kinds of math, and lots of hard to do math: it knows
and understand lots of math and does lots of mathematical
reasoning."
How can anyone know that the machine *knows and understands* lots of math
in any way comparable to a human being? I will confess my complete
ignorance of that particular machine, but I think the people working with
it know more about the machine than about human consciousness, and they may
be making broader claims than they justifiably can. To me, "knowing and
understanding" requires a certain degree of self-consciousness about the
activity while the activity is being carried out, which is certainly (at
least potentially) human, but I think would be impossible to detect in any
machine environment. A million or billion subroutines followed after
extensive machine training isn't quite the same thing, I suspect.
Thank you all for a great discussion, and I hope I receive further replies.
Jim R
--
Dr. James Rovira <http://www.jamesrovira.com/>
- *David Bowie and Romanticism
<https://jamesrovira.com/2022/09/02/david-bowie-and-romanticism/>*,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
- *Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism
<https://www.routledge.com/Women-in-Rock-Women-in-Romanticism-The-
Emancipation-of-Female-Will/Rovira/p/book/9781032069845>*,
Routledge, 2023
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
