Intelligence as a measure of information conversation ratio. How do we test intelligence of machines vs humans?
Intelligence can only be contextually based on information available. There are no intrinsically difficult questions, only with respect to inputs
Can intelligence be artificial? (Dretske)
There are two ways of thinking about it
- Like money → everyone has it, some have more than others
- philosophers view
- Like wealth → something possessed by only those who have more than the average amount of money
- computer scientists view
Thought alone is not enough, the thoughts need to do something, and sometimes explain the doing. Actions that are not governed by/explained by thought are not intelligent
Biological naturalism (Searle)
Ontologically equivalent to materialism
Two main theses:
- all mental phenomena from pains, tickles, and itches to the most abstruse thoughts are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain
- mental phenomena themselves are higher-level features of the brain
That is, he believes that consciousness is both a cause of events in the body and a response to events in the body.
Entails that the brain has the right causal powers to produce intentionality
- Weak AI → principle value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool
- Strong AI → the appropriately programmed computer really IS a mind. Computers, given the right programs, can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states
It is attempting to refute the claims in the Chinese room argument that
- the machine can literally be said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions
- what the machine and its programs do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it
Information Processing
Argument that rests on the ambiguity of what ”information” is. For example, one can say that the programmed computer does not do information processesing, it only manipulates formal symbols.
It is important to note that information processing doesn’t imply intentionality.
- information transformation → taking info at one end, transforming it, and producing different information as output
It is up to outside observers to interpret the input and output as information the ordinary sense (derived intentionality)
Strong AI only makes sense given the dualistic assumptions that, where the mind is concerned, the brain doesn’t matter