OK, so I'm not writing the lengthy tour guide to the internet that I promised.

One immediate reaction to the idea that machines can think is to reject it because the language that seems perfectly adequate for capturing the operations of a computer (hardware, program, menu etc.) fails almost completely to capture the nuance and variety of human experience. The same can be said for teh vocabulary of neuroscience replacing the various ways we have of expressing ourselves about our selves.

This is true, as far as it goes. It begs the question of wether a machine could ever find itself in a situation where the language of engineering is no longer sufficient to explain its normal operation. I suspect that would never be allowed to happen simply because we'll always need thing to compute the spreadsheets and process the words.

This reaction also seems to require that we keep the three vocabularies distinct. Doing is both alien to our ordinary experience, but it also ignores the possibility that either the machine vocabulary or the neuro-vocabulary could enhance the ways that we talk about ordinary experience. The "adrenaline rush", the dangers of multi-tasking, ...

More on this later in the semester ...

NEXT: how to blog



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