Thanks much for your reply. I am actually making a broader comment.
Subjectivity is fundamental to understanding. I don’t think you can redefine “understanding” so that it can exist separate from awareness and subjective experience. Otherwise the word ‘understanding’ isn’t doing anything in your argument. You cannot have meaning witho…
Thanks much for your reply. I am actually making a broader comment.
Subjectivity is fundamental to understanding. I don’t think you can redefine “understanding” so that it can exist separate from awareness and subjective experience. Otherwise the word ‘understanding’ isn’t doing anything in your argument. You cannot have meaning without subjective experience because there is no context for it and meanings are always contextual, not objective. For an information theory approach to the same issue see Christoph Adami’s excellent conversation with Sean Carroll released just this morning.
On the point that "[o]therwise the word 'understanding isn't doing anything in your argument," let me pose a related question to Bob: have you identified any example of AI behavior in which statistical pattern recognition/application alone would not explain the outcome--thus revealing that "something else" is happening in these systems? As a number of us have noted, your schadenfreude example is not actually an example of that. Do you have any others--i.e., examples of AI behavior that reveal something more than mechanical pattern recognition/application? If so: (a) what are they, (b) why do you believe they show something more than pattern recognition/application, and (c) and what is your explanation for those examples, at a nuts-and-bolts level? Unless you can provide such an example to illustrate your position, it's quite unclear what you are referring to vis-a-vis "understanding."
Bob,
Thanks much for your reply. I am actually making a broader comment.
Subjectivity is fundamental to understanding. I don’t think you can redefine “understanding” so that it can exist separate from awareness and subjective experience. Otherwise the word ‘understanding’ isn’t doing anything in your argument. You cannot have meaning without subjective experience because there is no context for it and meanings are always contextual, not objective. For an information theory approach to the same issue see Christoph Adami’s excellent conversation with Sean Carroll released just this morning.
Link: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/19/266-christoph-adami-on-how-information-makes-sense-of-biology/
Adami ’s approach as well as Philip Ball’s explicit statements agree with mine and are worth your having a look when you have a moment.
On the point that "[o]therwise the word 'understanding isn't doing anything in your argument," let me pose a related question to Bob: have you identified any example of AI behavior in which statistical pattern recognition/application alone would not explain the outcome--thus revealing that "something else" is happening in these systems? As a number of us have noted, your schadenfreude example is not actually an example of that. Do you have any others--i.e., examples of AI behavior that reveal something more than mechanical pattern recognition/application? If so: (a) what are they, (b) why do you believe they show something more than pattern recognition/application, and (c) and what is your explanation for those examples, at a nuts-and-bolts level? Unless you can provide such an example to illustrate your position, it's quite unclear what you are referring to vis-a-vis "understanding."