A Course In Consciousness. Level 3 Of Consciousness. Meme Central Books Level 3 Resources Richard Brodie Virus of the Mind What’s New? Site Map Level 3 of Consciousness You are reading about something that most people don’t even know exists. If you told them, they wouldn’t just not believe you—they would have no clue what you were talking about. That’s why I wrote this little essay: so that I could show it to someone when they had no idea what I was talking about and, if they were persistent and open-minded, make some progress in their thinking.
And meanwhile I could get on with my other projects. 1. Sometimes like attracts like and sometimes opposite attracts opposite. When like attracts like, it can end there, like an oxygen molecule made up of two oxygen atoms, or it can continue to attract like, like a Carbon atom. 2. Sometimes a self-replicating thing makes a copy of itself with a mistake in it.
The only way for new things to get created is by a complex series of mistakes that turn out to be better after all. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. The Chinese Room Argument. 1. Overview Work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has produced computer programs that can beat the world chess champion and defeat the best human players on the television quiz show Jeopardy. AI has also produced programs with which one can converse in natural language, including Apple's Siri. Our experience shows that playing chess or Jeopardy, and carrying on a conversation, are activities that require understanding and intelligence. Does computer prowess at challenging games and conversation then show that computers can understand and be intelligent? Will further development result in digital computers that fully match or even exceed human intelligence?
Searle argues that a good way to test a theory of mind, say a theory that holds that understanding can be created by doing such and such, is to imagine what it would be like to do what the theory says would create understanding. Thirty years later Searle 2010 describes the conclusion in terms of consciousness and intentionality: 2. 17. The Turing Test. First published Wed Apr 9, 2003; substantive revision Wed Jan 26, 2011 The phrase “The Turing Test” is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise—and somehow related—question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (“The Imitation Game”), then—at least in Turing's eyes—we do have a question that admits of precise discussion.
Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could “do well” in the Imitation Game. The phrase “The Turing Test” is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. 1. 2. Why People Think Computers Can't. WHY PEOPLE THINK COMPUTERS CAN'T Marvin Minsky, MIT First published in AI Magazine, vol. 3 no. 4, Fall 1982. Reprinted in Technology Review, Nov/Dec 1983, and in The Computer Culture, (Donnelly, Ed.) Associated Univ. Presses, Cranbury NJ, 1985 Most people think computers will never be able to think. That is, really think.
Not now or ever.