well, remember, I am talking models or metaphors, not meanings. So the question is, what model [scientific metaphor] does the word feeling invoke? Is that image clear, or confused? Does it invoke different images in different people? I think "feel" invokes only one model, which is then more or less abused in our language: to explore with the fingertips; the others are attempts to extend that image and some work well, some work ok, and some work horribly. "I feel nauseous" is one of the latter.
Furthermore "feel" as referring to a subjective state is no more a metaphor than any other language.
Absolutely!! that's why i say "it's metaphors all the way down". Even the visual system uses metaphors to see with. So, you ask, if everything is metaphors, what value is there in saying so. Well, to steal from my friend John Kennison (who disagrees with me on most points but cannot defend himself because his internet is down), metaphors have domains of utility. If one strays outside a metaphor's domains of utility, you may either be saying something fresh and brilliant or something really silly. I would argue that "I feel nauseous" is in the latter category.
If, when you get stuck for a reply you retreat to calling language a metaphor, you will never deal with the issue.
I dont think it is a retreat and I do think it is helpful to think that way. But I am trying to convince YOU, so the burden of showing that it is helpful lies with me.
All referential language is metaphor: "an expression used to refer to something that it does not literally denote."
Hmmm! I wonder if we are using the same definition of metaphor. Let me define by example. My favorite example of a [scientific] metaphor is darwin's Natural Selection, which is a metaphor from the domain of pigeon breeding to the domain of natural history. So making a metaphor (model) is the application of the form, language, arguments, etc., of a familiar and well understood domain to an ostensibily different one that is less well understood. Not clear to me how that definition maps onto the one that you cited in quotes, below. Perhaps if I used the term "model", that would help?
where "denote" means "to be a sign or indication of." All referential language is intentional. It is never the thing to which it refers. Some language, such as exclamations, e.g., of joy, pain, etc. are often an aspect of the thing itself. But this is a tangent. I want you to deal with the issue of experience.
In your message you completely ignored my other questions.
I really dont think I did, mostly, but I am sure it feels that way, so let me take this task literally,
Please go back to my previous message and reply to the questions in it as they are intended. Or here's a list that will do.
- Do robots feel irritation and frustration? It depends on the design of the robot. If a robot is designed to do the sorts of things that irritated and frustrated organisms do, then my answer would be yes. The distinction between original and derived intentionality is of absolutely no interest to me.
- Do robots feel nauseous in the commonly understood sense of the terms "feel" and "nauseous"? Most people have no trouble understanding what "feeling nauseous" means. I have never heard anyone say that using the term "feeling nauseous" is grammatically strange. Let's just use the common sense meaning of the term. Or are you denying that the common sense meaning of the term has any content, e.g., like Santa Clause if taken literally.
-
- It isn't fair for you to be pissed at me for not understanding, unless you suspect that i am being dishonest in some way. Since I think of myself as a pretty honest person, I take it hard to be called dishonest. So please weald that club only when you absolutely think you need to.
-
- You are asking me to to do more than just play the language game that goes with the expression "feeling nauseous". If you say that you are "feeling nauseous" i will understand that your world seems like it is churning around but that your visual cues do not confirm (i.e., you are dizzy) and that your stomach feels the way it does when on previous occasions you have thrown up. I could certainly make a robot that would clear it's energy source when its onboard computers malfunctioned, so I guess the answer is yes. But you are almost certainly asking me a "qualia"-type question, and i just dont understand how those questions work.
- Do you grant robots human rights?
I only grant rights to people who show up at my meetings and take on responsibilities.
- Is waterboarding a robot torture?
I think I could so design a robot.
- Whether waterboarding a robot is torture or not would it be effective? If so, why and how. If not. how does that distinguish between robots and humans--for which waterboarding generally is effective.
There is some difference of opinion on that point, of course. But you can predict my answers to any of these questions, by using the "quacks-like-a-duck" test.
- And your own question: do robots dream? Or are you denying that you dream? I didn't understand your comment in that regard. Or were you acknowledging that the line of thought you are taking leads nowhere?
The easiest thing to say would be no, I dont dream. In fact, I dream only very rarely. That would leave you with the work of proving that I do. To do that work, you would have to reveal that you dont trust my verbal reports... you simply dont privilege the first person view in the way that your position implies. Nobody does. You would have to bring EVIDENCE to bear, and that evidence would inevitably be of the third person type. And then you would be out sliding around on my miserable slippery slope with me. And misery loves company.
But such an argument would not be quite honest. So, I have to say something like the following. Some things that I have experienced appear, on sober reflection, and gathering of all relevant evidence, not to have happened at all. Often these happen while I am in bed.
Or perhaps, I could say that dreaming is a tough case and I dont know what to do with it.
Now I have a question for you. What does subjective add to the phrase subjective experience?
By the way, I think that the extensionless dot is actually probably a wrong view, one that will fail in the long run. I "just" think it is a better place to start than the Cartesian theatre.
Because I think it will fail, I am interested in what self knowledge means to a computer engineer. Computers are full of systems that generate self knowledge of various sorts ... if only the system manifest, and all of that. Right? And gathering self knowledge, requires exploiting cues. So it is never quite SELF knowledge ... it is not knowledge about the self-knowledge gathering system itself. It must be knowledge gathered ABOUT the larger system that surrounds it through the use of cues.
The list's response to this inquiry has been quite startling to me. Seems to be of the form, "computers dont gather information about themselves!" They are too dumb!
Frankly, I dont know what to make of that response. am I misreading it?
Nick
-- Russ
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:11 AM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Russ and Steve,
Seeing Drs in Boston today, so out of this wonderful loop for a day.
About "feeling nauseous". If a robot can DO nauseous, it can feel nauseous, would be my first response. But notice what a strain on grammar is put by the notion of "feeling nauseous". "feeling" is a metaphor, akin to touching with the fingertips. How do I palpate "nauseous"? Something VERY STRANGE GOING ON HERE.
Look, I stipulate that privileging a third person view (as opposed to the more traditional practice of privileging a first person view) is not going to rescue me (or us) from talking silly. But it will change the kind of silly talk we do.
The tough one is dreaming. Do robots dream? Does Nick dream? One can either launch into reams of inter psychic babble or one can "just say no"! It's a different kind of silliness.
Anyway, this has been written in great haste and is probably of lower quality than usual.
Do good, today.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
To: [hidden email]
Sent: 6/16/2009 1:08:25 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
P.P.S. Do you think you could get a robot to provide information it "didn't want" to provide (whatever you think that means) by waterboarding it?
-- Russ
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:36 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]> wrote:
P.S. Nick, Do you believe that robots are capable of feeling frustrated and irritated?
-- Russ
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]> wrote:
See below.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at
http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
See comments in Navy Blue below.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 6/15/2009 8:49:41 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (Subjective) experience
When "experience" is used as a verb, we don't add the word "subjective." We add it when "experience" is used as a noun to refer to first person experience. The broader word "experience" isn't that precise.
How could an experience not be the experience from the point of view of an agent? I dont see what is being specified by the addition of "subjective".
Didn't I already respond to that? No point in doing it again.
But more to the point I'm still confused what you mean bv "I don't deny that I, or the cat, or even the robot, experience (when all three obey the rules of "experiencing"). What rules are you talking about?
The implicit rules anybody applies before they use a sentence like, "the cat was aware of the mouse." What would we have to see before we would. Sadly, there hasnt been much incentive to formalize those rules since we talk of experiene as an event somwhere rather than as a relationship between an agent and an event.
I don't believe I operate according to rules. So again, I don't know what rules you are talking about. But more importantly, I'm more interested in a sentence like "I was aware of the mouse." You keep changing the subject to an observation of something else. The issue is what does it mean to say that I am having an experience, e.g., "I feel nauseous." Does it mean anything to you? I still don't know. Also, I still don't know whether you would understand a robot that said "I feel nauseous" to mean the same sort of thing that you mean by that sentence.
Furthermore, I don't agree that robots have the same sort of first person experience that we and cats do. Is that really your position, that robots "experience" the world the same way you do? If so, doesn't it follow that we should be kind to robots in the same way we should be kind to people and cats, that robots deserve humane treatment, etc.?
I was interested to see where you would draw the line. Some would draw it between the cat and the human. What I can't understand is what committment -- other than a metaphysical one -- would lead one to draw it anywhere in the absense of some empirical standard for what constitutes the act of experiencing.
You are not answering the question. If a robot feeling nauseous means to you the same thing as a human feeling nauseous, do you grant it the same sorts of "rights" that we grant each other. I'd like to know your answer. For example, would it be torture to waterboard a robot?
-- Russ Abbott
Thanks for hanging in, here, Russ. This is interesting.
I'm beginning to feel irritated. It seems to me you aren't engaging in an honest dialog since you aren't responding to the questions I asked. I took some time to construct questions that would help me understand your position. But if you won't answer them I'm wasting my time, which I find frustrating, not interesting.
Nick
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at
http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 7:09 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Russ,
I don't think I am bickering or splitting hairs; but then, people who are, never do.
To put yourself in my frame of mind on these issues, start by saying what you can say about what others "see". I see that my cat sees the mouse in the corner of the room.
Anything I can say of the cat, I can say of myself.; anything I cannot say of the cat, I cannot say of myself.... well, except for the fur part.
If all experience is subjective, then we probably don't need the extra word, do we? I don't deny that I, or the cat, or even the robot, experience (when all three obey the rules of "experiencing"). I just don't see what is gained by adding the word "subjective" except a very confusing and inconsistent metaphysics.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 6/15/2009 7:38:20 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The ghost in the machine (was 'quick question')
Nick,
In one of the previous messages, you said, "I don't know about you, but I experience a world." Experiencing a world is a mark of subjective experience. Robots don't experience; they have sensors that measure things and report those measures, from which the robot may draw conclusions. There is a difference. I don't understand how you can deny that difference.
After all, what do you mean by "experience the world" other than subjective experience? Is this just a matter of terminological bickering? If you are willing to say that you experience the world, then by my understanding of "experience" you have subjective experience.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org