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Do you like our owl? Edit: TLDR/direct answer: > If we created something that mimicked all observable properties of a bird, why would that not be a bird? "Ob

by jpttsn 4y ago

Do you like our owl? Edit: TLDR/direct answer: > If we created something that mimicked all observable properties of a bird, why would that not be a bird? "Observable" is doing the heavy lifting. A sufficiently near-sighted bird-watcher does not a bird make. --- Thanks for thoughtful steel-man. Here's a few stabs at why I disagree with this prima facie logical view. Much powerful classification/identifying is certainly categorizing-based-on-observable-properties. But (I argue) that's importantly not all there is to classification/identifying. Something that quacks like a duck can be considered "a duck for all intents and purposes", but the presumed limited subset of "intents and purposes" does the heavy lifting. The Duck-approach: "to be one is to mimic all observable properties of one". This is a shortcut/heuristic that saves time and makes many cool answers possible. It is nonetheless only a heuristic, and many questions are outside the domain where this heuristic is useful. - "Oh my god is this a real diamond?" - "Oh my god is that a real fur?" - "Is the Mona Lisa on public display in the Louvre the actual original?" - "Is it still the ship of Theseus?" - "Was this iron from a meteor?" - "Did a man walk on the moon in 1969?" - "Was this crack in your phone screen covered by the accidental damage insurance?" i.e. there are problem domains where our notion of identity/classification must be more than the Duck-approach. Getting philosophical. The problem with "to be one is to mimic all observable properties of one" is a hidden middle assumption: it's a shortcut constrained to cases where the set of "all observable properties" are (a priori known to be) close to "all properties that matter to the question". But we can ask and reason about many questions where relevant properties are not easily observed, and distinguish As a special case, "Is the machine thinking" can (to my mind obviously) not (yet) be usefully answered by categorizing-based-on-observable-properties. The word "thinking" refers to something that happens inside the mind, whether or not it's conscious. Until we know much more about the insides of minds, the "all observable properties" is a fuzzy indirect set of second-order human behaviors.

mannykannot 4y ago
Anyone who accepts (even as just a working hypothesis) that anyone other themselves has a mind, thinks, and is intelligent, is tacitly accepting "a fuzzy indirect set of second-order human behaviors" as useful.
- jpttsn 4y ago
  Many may be, but as other comments state, arguments against solipsism don't all rely on behavior/performance: Some non-Turing test arguments against solipsism. - Humans are believed to be similar to me in origin - Humans are made of the same physical stuff that I am made of I personally think none of these conclusively solve the hard problem but they can motivate belief if you so choose. Even so, Requiring a Turing test to believe other humans as thinking/conscious seems uncommon to me. I don't think many people live in solipsistic doubt about other humans, and I don't think they actually test behaviors to convince themselves humans are conscious. So I don't know if they're tacitly accepting the behavior as useful for categorization; I think they're mostly just assuming "humans == conscious" and if pressed will come up with behaviors-based explanation because that's easy to formulate.
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    I see that I will have to expand on my brief observation, but to get us on the same page, I will need to know what you mean by the premise "humans == conscious". If this is to be taken as a statement of identity, I would regard it as a category error, but I will not expand on that here, as I doubt it is what you intended. If it is to be taken as the claim that only humans could be conscious, I would regard it as both lacking any justification and begging the question. I think you mean that people generally assume everyone else is conscious in much the same way as they themselves seem to be, which is essentially saying they hold a theory of mind. If so, then I agree with you, but where do we get it from? I know of no argument that we are born holding this theory, and it seems implausible that we are, as we are born without sufficient language to know what it means. False-belief tasks suggest that we begin to develop it at about 15 months (they also suggest that some other animals have it to some extent.) At that age it is, of course, tacit (rather than propositional) knowledge. It would be absurd to suggest that toddlers come to deduce this from some self-evident axioms. What does that leave? I don't think there are any suggestions other than the obvious one: we arrive at it intuitively from our observations of the world around us, and particularly other people. Ergo, those of us who make use of a theory of mind came by it from observation of what you call "a fuzzy indirect set of second-order human behaviors", and no one, as far as I know, has come up with a better justification for believing it.

by jpttsn 4y ago

mannykannot 4y ago

Anyone who accepts (even as just a working hypothesis) that anyone other themselves has a mind, thinks, and is intelligent, is tacitly accepting "a fuzzy indirect set of second-order human behaviors" as useful.

jpttsn 4y ago
Many may be, but as other comments state, arguments against solipsism don't all rely on behavior/performance: Some non-Turing test arguments against solipsism. - Humans are believed to be similar to me in origin - Humans are made of the same physical stuff that I am made of I personally think none of these conclusively solve the hard problem but they can motivate belief if you so choose. Even so, Requiring a Turing test to believe other humans as thinking/conscious seems uncommon to me. I don't think many people live in solipsistic doubt about other humans, and I don't think they actually test behaviors to convince themselves humans are conscious. So I don't know if they're tacitly accepting the behavior as useful for categorization; I think they're mostly just assuming "humans == conscious" and if pressed will come up with behaviors-based explanation because that's easy to formulate.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  I see that I will have to expand on my brief observation, but to get us on the same page, I will need to know what you mean by the premise "humans == conscious". If this is to be taken as a statement of identity, I would regard it as a category error, but I will not expand on that here, as I doubt it is what you intended. If it is to be taken as the claim that only humans could be conscious, I would regard it as both lacking any justification and begging the question. I think you mean that people generally assume everyone else is conscious in much the same way as they themselves seem to be, which is essentially saying they hold a theory of mind. If so, then I agree with you, but where do we get it from? I know of no argument that we are born holding this theory, and it seems implausible that we are, as we are born without sufficient language to know what it means. False-belief tasks suggest that we begin to develop it at about 15 months (they also suggest that some other animals have it to some extent.) At that age it is, of course, tacit (rather than propositional) knowledge. It would be absurd to suggest that toddlers come to deduce this from some self-evident axioms. What does that leave? I don't think there are any suggestions other than the obvious one: we arrive at it intuitively from our observations of the world around us, and particularly other people. Ergo, those of us who make use of a theory of mind came by it from observation of what you call "a fuzzy indirect set of second-order human behaviors", and no one, as far as I know, has come up with a better justification for believing it.