"Soulful" or "Soulless?"

Cog as a Thought Experiment

Page 165 “Philosophy Unit Writing Assignments” – Write a summary of Wright’s essay. Start your summary with a short, objective introduction to the topic engaged by Wright, and state the author’s main point, or his thesis, in your introduction. In the summary that follows, recount what you take to be the key points of Wright’s essay, rephrasing them in your own words and clearly indicating how these key points relate to Wright’s thesis. Imagine that your reading is a peer, is not a philosophy major, and has not read Wright’s essay; thus, since all that the reader will ever know about these ideas will come from you, you may need to simplify and provide explanations for some of the more difficult concepts and terminology that Wright discusses. When the reader has finished reading your summary, he or she should have a thorough understanding of the ideas Wright deals with.

The best chess player in the United States might win a nationwide tournament with no problem, however, he still has his flaws just like any other human. He might choose the wrong move during a game and not realize the mistake he has made until after, when it’s too late. What if that move was against a computer – a computer with no flaws? Does that automatically make man-made intelligence just as good as us humans? Robert Wright clearly states that the better these seemingly soulless machines get at doing things people do, the more plausible it seems that we could be soulless machines too.

This might seem like an interesting topic to the everyday reader but for some reason it does not appeal to many scholars. Philosophers are not theologians, so they simply speak about “consciousness and the mind” rather than the “soul.” Wright points out that as our information advances with technology, philosophers seem to be taking the existence of mind and consciousness less seriously.

A British computer scientist Alan Turing wrote the original question, “Can machines think?” in one of his famous essays. He then proposed the now called “Turing test.” Suppose an interrogator is communicating by a keyboard with accessories that he cannot see. Some of these accessories are people, and some are computers. The interrogator then must guess which is which. The fact that a computer can fool interrogators is the reason why it is said to be able to think. His test was not supposed to answer his question, but to actually replace it. He did add, “I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.” Turing was obviously wrong, because with the century almost over, no machine has consistently passed the infamous Turing test.

The lesson learned from this is that the hardest thing for computers is the “simple” things. Yeah, computers can play a good game of chess, but making small talk is a whole different story. As Marvin Minsky once speculated, “the biggest challenge is giving machines common sense.” In order to pass the Turing test, a computer must have that crucial piece of mind. Even if a computer could pass the test, the debate would still be constant in whether they could still think or not. Nobody ever doubted the machine’s chess skills, but they did doubt whether or not it was a thinking machine. It uses zillions of difficult calculations rather than a quick thought. However, on the other hand, there are many chess programs that work somewhat like us. Although they aren’t good enough to beat chess champion Gary Kasparov, they are good enough to leave the average individual swimming in their own humiliation.

Many people would say that computers cannot think. When they think about this, they don’t just mean our brain functions and how smart we are, but they mean more of what’s within us – like feelings. Could a computer ever feel upset or angry when it loses in a simple game of chess? Can they recognize faces? Can computers actually have experiences like we do every day? These are just a few of the questions of consciousness or mind. As computers keep evolving, some philosophers are taking the issue of computer consciousness more seriously. Some of them, like David Chalmers who is a professor of philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz, are using this to argue that consciousness is a much harder puzzle than many other philosophers have previously thought.

Chalmers has a fourth book coming out, which is said to be an “illusion” by the well-known philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University. He claims that consciousness is no longer a mystery. The root of this heated debate between the two goes back to Gilbert Ryle from Oxford University. In 1949 Ryle published a book called The Concept of Mind. It dismissed the idea of a human soul. It also had no enthusiasm for the less supernatural versions of the soul: mind, consciousness, and subjective experience. Some insisted that these did not exist, but others said that they do exist, but it consists simply of just the brain.

Colin McGinn, an author and philosopher, and Chalmers have been called the New Mysterians because they obviously both think that consciousness is mysterious. McGinn goes as far to say that it will always remain that way. There have been a few mysterians insisting that the glory of human experience defies scientific reasoning. The current debate is different, however. The New Mysterians do not doubt the premises of artificial intelligence (AI). They agree that an electronic machine can do everything a human brain can do. But wait – humans have a feeling of heat and pain. According to Chalmers, studying Cog, an AI lab, deepens the question of why we have such feelings. Cog’s story seems to say that you do not need pain in order to function like a human being. So then why do we have such feelings? Of course, it’s possible that Cog could have some sort of consciousness. Consciousness is the central source of life’s meaning. So, it’s always possible that consciousness isn’t extra, but it actually does something in the physical world, like what influences our behaviors.

Chalmers claims that once we know what kinds of data become a part of consciousness, and how it gets it, we still have the question “How does data become a part of consciousness?” remaining. McGinn also questions, “How does the brain ‘turn the water into wine’?” He does not mean that the experiences we have are miracles, but he believes that there is some physical explanation for them. These two questions about consciousness that do not depend on artificial intelligence. Dennett has some answers. He says that if you believe that “the mind is the brain” then consciousness must have a function to you. But to people who do not share Dennett’s beliefs, then these arguments may seem odd. That doesn’t mean Dennett is wrong though. Chalmers believes that a solution to the consciousness puzzle is possible, but it will require recognizing that it is something “over and above the physical.”

Although Turing generally shied away from such questions, he noted that some people might complain that to create machines that can actually think would be creating souls and that job is only done by God. He strongly disagreed and wrote, “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of his will providing mansions for the souls that he creates.”