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AIList Digest Volume 6 Issue 091
AIList Digest Thursday, 5 May 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 91
Today's Topics:
Philosophy - Free Will & Marxism & Intelligence & Social Science
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Date: 1 May 88 06:47:17 GMT
From: TAURUS.BITNET!shani@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
In article <30502@linus.UUCP>, bwk@mbunix.BITNET writes:
>
> I would like to learn how to imbue silicon with consciousness,
> awareness, free will, and a value system.
First, by requesting that, you are underastimating yourself as a free-willing
creature, and second, your request is self-contradicting ans shows little
understanding of matters, like free will and value systems - such things cannot
be 'given', they simply exist. (Something to beare in mind for other perpuses,
besides to AI...). You can write 'moral' programs, even in BASIC, if you want,
because they will have YOUR value system....
O.S.
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Date: 2 May 88 00:28:40 GMT
From: phoenix!pucc!RLWALD@princeton.edu (Robert Wald)
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
In article <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk
(Gilbert Cockton) writes:
>In article <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> yamauchi@SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU (Brian Yamauchi)
writes:
>For AI workers (not AI developers/exploiters who are just raiding the
>programming abstractions), the main problem they should recognise is
>that a rule-based or other mechanical account of cognition and decision
>making is at odds with the doctrine of free will which underpins most Western
>morality. It is in no way virtuous to ignore such a social force in
>the name of Science. Scientists who seek moral, ethical, epistemological
>or methodological vacuums are only marginalising themselves into
>positions where social forces will rightly constrain their work.
Are you saying that AI research will be stopped because when it ignores
free will, it is immoral and people will take action against it?
When has a 'doctrine' (which, by the way, is nothing of the sort with
respect to free will) any such relationship to what is possible?
-Rob Wald Bitnet: RLWALD@PUCC.BITNET
Uucp: {ihnp4|allegra}!psuvax1!PUCC.BITNET!RLWALD
Arpa: RLWALD@PUCC.Princeton.Edu
"Why are they all trying to kill me?"
"They don't realize that you're already dead." -The Prisoner
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 02 May 88 11:43:55 EDT
From: Thanasis Kehagias <ST401843%BROWNVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Marxism is not outworn!!!
well, this sociology vs. AI debate is getting nasty in many ways, but
here is one that i find particularly interesting. Marxism may be a
dogma, but is not outworn at all, in that
a. it shapes a whole lot of contemporary politics (i hope most AI
researchers know what politics is).
b. even though what Marx said 140 years ago is not necessarily 100%
correct, he was very right in making a big deal out of the fact that
social and particularly economic forces is what determines the history
of the species at this point. if you doubt this is very true even today,
please think where would your research be without the mega$ that DOD
spends. the scientific enquiry does not happen in vacuo, it is
determined by the social process (pretty obvious but good to remember.
it also goes in the opposite direction). whether sociology captures the
social process is another story, and far be it from me to play the
advocatus sociologiae!
Thanasis Kehagias
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Date: Mon, 02 May 88 14:41:40 HAE
From: Spencer Star <STAR%LAVALVM1.BITNET@CORNELLC.CCS.CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Re: AIList V6 #87 - Queries, Causal Modeling, Texts
This discussion about free will doesn't seem to want to go away, so
let me ask a question or two. Let's agree that a deterministic world
is one in which a given state of the world at time 0 is sufficient to
determine the world state at time T, where T is after 0. An indeterministic
world is one in which that proposition is false. These are propositions
about the nature of the world not about what we know about the world. In
many situations we do not have enough knowledge about the world to be able
to predict without error state T from the available information about
state 0.
Free will seems to me to mean that regardless of state 0 the agent
can choose which one of the possible states it will be in at time T. A
necessary precondition for free will is that the world be indeterministic.
This does not, however, seem to be a sufficient condition since radioactive
decay is indeterministic but the particles do not have free will.
Free will should certainly be more than just our inability to
predict an outcome, since that is consistent with limited knowledge in
a deterministic world. And it must be more than indeterminism.
My questions:
Given these definitions, (1) What is free will for a machine?
(2) Please provide a test that will determine
if a machine has free will. The test should
be quantitative, repeatable, and unabiguous.
Perhaps McCarthy could summarize how he would answer those questions
based on his article.
--Spencer Star
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 May 88 18:12:24 PDT
From: larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV
Subject: Intelligence is an Many-factored Thing
-- It seems to me to be silly to (say) things like "when a computer
-- passes the Turing test it will be intelligent." Intelligence is
-- not...binary.... -jeff sherrard
I agree. All too often I see people treat questions as if each had a
single binary answer. This is worse than idiocy -- it's sub-idiocy,
demoting oneself to the intelligence of a flip-flop. Intelligence has many
dimensions, and most seem to be either continuous or have many quantum
steps. IQ tests (crude though they are) typically include a half to a
dozen factors, including spatial and verbal reasoning. Some psychologists
have sought to add creativity, social ability, and other qualities.
(This isn't to say that all dimensions of a field are linear or curvilinear.
Clearly some metrics have transition points, or "catastrophes," where a
small change in one dimension is accompanied by a tremendous change in a
companion dimension. I suspect consciousness is like this; at some point
in the evolution of life it suddenly appeared -- though I suspect it was at
a much earlier point than most people are willing to credit.)
Larry @ JPL-VLSI
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 May 88 18:13:18 PDT
From: larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV
Subject: Unfree Will
--
Gilbert Cockton & others: Please send me a few references to critiques of
System Theory. Also, are you referring to General Systems Theory?
--
I'm surprised that no one has brought up the distinction between will and
free will. The latter (in the philosophy courses I took) implies complete
freedom to make choices, which for humans seems debatable. For instance,
I don't see how anyone can choose an alternative that they do not know
exists.
There might be several reasons for this that cybernetics or computer or
information science can illuminate. (1) The data needed to gain some
knowledge cannot be input by the chooser's perception as, for example, there
have not yet been (conclusive) proof that any human can karoo therms.
(2) The knowledge is lacking in the chooser's memory. Few humans know, for
example, that in addition to moving up-down/forward-backward/left-right, we
can also move oolward-choward & uptime-downtime--though once explained most
find it easy to do. (3) The knowledge may be literally unthinkable because
humans don't have (e.g.) irtsle logic ciruitry. In these cases no amount of
explanation or observation (even with machine-aided perception) will supply
the needed understanding.
The above examples can be multiplied by more ordinary instances by reading
human-pathology or animal-cognition reports.
Larry @ jpl-vlsi
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Date: 2 May 88 17:01:39 GMT
From: yamauchi@SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Re: AIList V6 #86 - Philosophy
In article <368693.880430.MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>, MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
(Marvin Minsky) writes:
> Yamauchi, Cockton, and others on AILIST have been discussing freedom
> of will as though no AI researchers have discussed it seriously. May
> I ask you to read pages 30.2, 30.6 and 30.7 of The Society of Mind. I
> claim to have a good explanation of the free-will phenomenon.
Actually, I have read The Society of Mind, where Minsky writes:
| Everything that happens in our universe is either completely determined
| by what's already happened in the past or else depends, in part, on
| random chance. Everything, including that which happens in our brains,
| depends on these and only on these :
|
| A set of fixed, deterministic laws. A purely random set of accidents.
|
| There is no room on either side for any third alternative.
I would agree with this. In fact, unless one believes in some form of
supernatural forces, this seems like the only rational alternative.
My point is that it is reasonable to define free will, not as some mystical
third alternative, but as the decision making process that results from
the interaction of an individual's values, memories, emotional state, and
sensory input.
As to whether this is "free" or not, it depends on your definition of
freedom. If freedom requires some force independent of genetics,
experience, and chance, then I suppose this is not free. If freedom
consists of allowing an individual to make his own decisions without
coercion from others, then this definition is just as compatible with
freedom as any other.
If I am interpreting Minsky's book correctly, I think we agree that it is
possible (in the long run) for AIs to have for the same level of decision
making ability / self-awareness as humans. The only difference is that he
would say that this means that neither humans nor AIs have free will, while
I would say that (using the above definition) that this means that humans do
have free will and AIs have the potential for having free will.
On the other hand, Cockton writes:
>The main objection to AI is when it claims to approach our humanity.
>
> It cannot.
Cockton seems to be saying that humans do have free will, but is totally
impossible for AIs to ever have free will. I am curious as to what he bases
this belief upon other than "conflict with traditional Western values".
______________________________________________________________________________
Brian Yamauchi INTERNET: yamauchi@speech2.cs.cmu.edu
Carnegie-Mellon University
Computer Science Department
______________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: 3 May 88 12:41:39 EDT
From: John Sowa <SOWA@ibm.com>
Subject: Gibber in AI, social sciences, etc.
I agree with the following comment by Thomas Maddox:
> ...anyone in such an inherently weak field
> should be rather careful in his criticism: he's in the position of a
> man throwing bricks at passers-by through his own front window.
But I wish he would apply that remark to himself. Just scan through
back issues of AI List to see the controversies, polemics, fads, and
fallacies. The arguments between connectionists and representationalists
convey just as much heat and as little light as any argument between
Marxists and Freudians. The dialog between LISPers and Prologers is no
more meaningful than the dialog between Catholics and Protestants in
Northern Ireland.
My position: Every field has good people, dummies, charlatans, and
religious fanatics. AI certainly has its share of all four types (and
sometimes the same person shifts position from one type to another).
The sociologist who was bashing AI was wrong, and so are the AI people
who bash the social scientists. The human mind is the most difficult
subject of all, and we'll all learn more by approaching each other's
disciplines with a little sympathy than with a lot of loud polemics.
John Sowa
------------------------------
Date: 28 Apr 88 20:29:07 GMT
From: olivier@boulder.colorado.edu (Olivier Brousse)
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
In article <17424@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
> Could the philosophical discussion be moved to "talk.philosophy"?
>Ken Laws is retiring as the editor of the Internet AILIST, and with him
>gone and no replacement on the horizon, the Internet AILIST (which shows
>on USENET as "comp.ai.digest") is to be merged with this one, unmoderated.
>If the combined list is to keep its present readership, which includes some
>of the major names in AI (both Minsky and McCarthy read AILIST), the content
>of this one must be improved a bit.
>
> John Nagle
"The content of this one must be improved a little bit."
What is this ? I believe the recent discussions were both interesting and of
interest to the newsgroup.
AI, as far as I know, is concerned with all issues pertaining to intelligence
and how it could be artificially created.
The question raised are indeed important questions
to consider, especially with regards to the recent success of connectionism.
Keep the debate going ...
Olivier Brousse |
Department of Computer Science | olivier@boulder.colorado.EDU
U. of Colorado, Boulder |
------------------------------
Date: 3 May 88 00:13:58 GMT
From: dartvax!eleazar!lantz@decvax.dec.com (Bob Lantz)
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
John Nagle writes (17424@glacier.stanford.edu)
> Could the philosophical discussion be moved to "talk.philosophy"?
>... the major names in AI (both Minsky and McCarthy read AILIST), the content
>of this one must be improved a bit.
One could just as easily abstract the articles on cognitive psychology,
programming, algorithms, or several other topics equally relevant to AI.
Considering AI is an interdisciplinary endeavor combining philosophy,
psychology, and computer science (for example) it seems unwise to
artificially narrow the scope of discussion.
I expect most readers of comp.AI (and Minsky, McCarthy, McDermott...
other AI people whose names start with 'M') have interests in multiple
facets of this fascinating discipline.
-Bob
Bob_Lantz@dartmouth.EDU
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End of AIList Digest
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