Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Steven Carr on Derived Intentionality and Computers

This is a response to one of my old posts from Steven Carr, that appeared on the Infidels forum. I just found it recently. I'm going to let some other people take a crack at this one.

This is where it is on Infidels: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-126163.html

In http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2005/05/argument-from-computers.html Victor Reppert writes :-
'The intentionality found in the computer is derived intentionality, not original intentionality.'

A long, long time ago people thought there was something special about organic chemicals, until the first organic chemical was synthesised by a human.

Victor's blog strikes me very much like somebody claiming that there was still somthing special about organic chemicals, as the organic chemical was created by a human , and so derived, not original.

Victor's point is true, but irrelevant surely.

The point is that a purely material thing can manipulate very abstract non-material things (software classes, pointers, variables etc).

If God wanted to create us as purely material creatures, but still with intentionality, then He could do so.

Perhaps Victor would be right and our intentionality would be 'derived', rather than 'original', but that does not refute a claim that God had created us as purely material things, just the same as *we* can create purely material things that can manipulate non-material objects.

So the existence of computers refutes a claim that God cannot create purely material human beings.

If Victor wants to prove that God cannot create a purely material human being , then he needs another argument to the ones he is using.

9 comments:

Steven Carr said...

Can Shulamite come up with a non-question begging proof that an omnipotent God cannot create a material thing that has intentionality?


Why should I give precise defintions of matter, when Victor and I both agree that matter exists?

Do I need to teach Victor what matter is? Hardly.

Our disagreement is that supernaturalists say that certain supernatural things also exist in adddition to the things that both naturalists and supernaturalists agree on as existing.

Mike Darus said...

I like the computer analogy. The naturalist would say that the computer is an example of a purely physical thing having the capability to make decisions toward goals (intentionality). The software would be instincts plus learned behavior. Steven's question is whether God could create a purely material being capable of intentionality. It seems that the answer is clearly "yes". The animal kingdom provides a fairly complete array of material creatures that appear to survive through the use of intentionality.

The mystery is not so much in the hardware, but the software. A comptuer does not function as a purely physical machine because it is acting based on software created by non-machines. Victor's point about this derived intentionality is critical. The theist will see in the software an argument for a non-material component. It may not be the characteristic of intentionality, but somewhere in the complexity of human thought, conciousness, creativity, kindness... there seems to be more than biological hardware.

Victor Reppert said...

I should point out that the term "intentionality," as I am using it, means aboutness, rather than purposiveness. Could a computer's states be about anything if there were no humans around to impute the about-ness into the system.

Mike Darus said...

Wow. I had to do a lot of reading to catch up on the concept of intentionality. Fortunately, Dee Jay made my point more correctly. A computer is just a big Chinese Room.

I think Steven is wrong about the comptuer, "The point is that a purely material thing can manipulate very abstract non-material things (software classes, pointers, variables etc)." The computer is just manipulating bits and bytes. It is merely the writing on the page that communicates the message from the author to the reader.

Steven Carr said...

'The point is that a purely material thing can manipulate very abstract non-material things (software classes, pointers, variables etc)."'

I am a computer programmer by profession, and I assure you that this is exactly what computers do.

Pick up a book on computer science.

DeeJay writes '"The computer is just manipulating bits and bytes.'

If DeeJay thinks a byte is a material object, he has another think coming. It is a high-level concept, not a hardware concept.

Steven Carr said...

And if something without intentionality can never be given intentionality, except by God, how do people in a coma ever recover?

Mike Darus said...

I still contend that the computer is not manipulating concepts just as a book is not intelegent. Bits and bytes are no more than on/off switchs. The computer programer codes high level concepts into computer programs. Any susequent concepts of aboutness occur only after the program is run by another intelegent person who then recgonizes the intentionality communicated. The computer never gets it. It can be programmed to mimic understanding, but it does not understand.

Steven Carr said...

WhileMike D. is right, it does put me in mind of people claiming that organic compounds were somehow special, and , after a human had synthesised the first organic compound, perhaps defending the idea by claiming that the synthesised compounds were not living.

My post that Victor highlighted was only to suggest this analogy, to see how valid it was.

The more interesting question is whether an omnipotent God can make a conscious computer. Is there something about silicon, as opposed to carbon, which means that a computer can never be conscious, and how can the physical properties of something prevent a God from endowing it with consciousness?

Mike Darus said...

Steven asks:
"The more interesting question is whether an omnipotent God can make a conscious computer."

This question can be approached from several angles. It is a good question that gets to the heart of the computer analogy. One direction is the question of whether there are limits to omnipotence.

I think the better approach is to jump ahead and agree that one possible solution to the conflict between science and religion is what could be called evolutionary deism. This would be a belief that humas are biological machines that have been given conciousness by a divine being. I call it deism because it supports a view of God where he started the evolutionary process (perhaps guided it) but essentially withdrew from any subsequent involvement. This would support methodlogical naturalism yet answer some of the objections to philosophical naturalism.

I don't know if this is where you want to go with your analogy but this is where I imagine it heading.

I have also been trying to formulate an experiment scenario to test AI. It involves two robots on the moon. How much AI would be required to motivate the robots:
to independently explore and learn about their environment
for one to help the other if it fell into a crater
for the robots to tell ach other about their day
to develop verbal communication
to develop written communication
to question where they came from
to question the purpose of their existence?
What controls would be included in the experiment to verify that these activities were not programming tricks that simulated the behavior but were actual independent decisions?