Consciousness: Egnor on what a brain does (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 04, 2018, 00:47 (1994 days ago) @ David Turell

More Egnor on brain, mind, and why AI is different and always will be:

https://mindmatters.today/2018/07/neurosurgeon-outlines-why-machines-cant-think/

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning.

***

"The assertion that computation is thought, hence thought is computation, is called computer functionalism. It is the theory that the human mind is to the brain as software is to hardware. The mind is what the brain does; the brain “runs” the mind, as a computer runs a program. However, careful examination of natural intelligence (the human mind) and artificial intelligence (computation) shows that this is a profound misunderstanding.

"What is the hallmark of human thought, and what distinguishes thoughts from material things? Franz Brentano (1838–1917), a German philosopher in the 19th century, answered this question decisively. All thoughts are about something, whereas no material object is inherently “about” anything. This property of aboutness is called intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind. Every thought that I have shares the property of aboutness—I think about my vacation, or about politics, or about my family. But no material object is, in itself, “about” anything. A mountain or a rock or a pen lacks aboutness—they are just objects. Only a mind has intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind.

"Another word for intentionality is meaning. All thoughts inherently mean something. A truly meaningless thought is an oxymoron. The meaning may be trivial or confusing, but every thought entails meaning of some sort. Every thought is about something, and that something is the meaning of the thought.

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning. That is, in fact, what makes thought so remarkable and also what makes computation so useful. You can think about anything, and you can use the same computer to express your entire range of thoughts, because computation is blind to meaning.

"What is the hallmark of computation? Computation is an algorithmic process. It is the matching of an input to an output according to an algorithm. That function is termed a Turing Machine. Computation in this sense is independent of the physical substrate on which it occurs. Computation can take place on silicon, copper, or protoplasm.

Yet computation is independent of the semantic content.

***

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning. That is, in fact, what makes thought so remarkable and also what makes computation so useful. You can think about anything, and you can use the same computer to express your entire range of thoughts because computation is blind to meaning.

"Thought is not merely not computation. Thought is the antithesis of computation. Thought is precisely what computation is not. Thought is intentional. Computation is not intentional.

***

"But to believe that machines can think or that human thought is a kind of computation is a profound error. Belief in this fundamental error about AI will lead us away from, not toward, the truth about AI. Machines, for example, will never become malevolent and harm mankind. Men will act with malevolence, using machines, or men will use machines in ways that (unintentionally) harm others. Men can use cars malevolently and carelessly and can thus harm others. But the malevolence and careless is in the man, not in the car.

"To paraphrase Pogo: we have met AI, and AI is us."

Comment: As a kid I loved the comic strip Pogo. The brain is not a computer in the sense that it can convey meaning with original thought, but it can be analogized to work like a computer, understanding the difference.