10c. Harnad, S. (2012) Alan Turing and the "hard" and "easy" problem of cognition: doing and feeling
Reading: Harnad, S. (2012) Alan Turing and the "hard" and "easy" problem of cognition: doing and feeling. [in special issue: Turing Year 2012] Turing100: Essays in Honour of Centenary Turing Year 2012, Summer Issue
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***EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE: I REDUCED THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF SKYWRITINGS. BUT THE READINGS ARE **ALL** RELEVANT TO AN OVERALL UNDERSTANDING OF THE COURSE. SO, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT DO A SKYWRITING ON ALL OF THEM, AT LEAST FEED EACH READING YOU DO NOT READ TO CHATGPT AND ASK IT FOR A SUMMARY, SO YOU KNOW WHAT THE READING SAID — OTHERWISE YOU WILL NOT HAVE A COMPLETE GRASP OF THE COURSE TO INTEGRATE AND INTERCONNECT FOR THE FINAL EXAM.***
ReplyDeleteIn this essay, Harnad defends that Turing’s goal with the Turing Test was to explain how we can do what we can do. In other words, he was interested in the causal mechanisms that allow human beings to “cognize” while being aware that generating observable capacities is not equivalent to feeling. Thus, Turing was trying to solve the “Easy Problem” knowing that sensorimotor capacities were essential to it. With Searle, we learn that computation alone cannot explain cognition because it feels like something to understand and this particular feeling was not found when manipulating symbols on the basis of their shape. How and why do we feel that way? How and why do we feel at all? When solving the “Hard Problem” we would be able explain how and why we feel. Inspired by Descartes’ “Cogito”, Harnad says that we can doubt everything, but that the only thing we know with certainty is “what it feels like right now is what it feels like right now”.
ReplyDeleteI believe this paper is a good summary/overview of the material covered during the semester. It is helpful to group and link computation up until categorization and the hard problem in one essay. It allows to test our understanding in "one flow". I think my main takeaway is how interconnected the concepts are. Indeed, the interconnectedness is the essential argumentative flow of the essay: the pursuit of the scientific explanation of human doing (the TT) revealed the insufficiency of computation alone (via Searle's CRA), necessitating sensorimotor grounding (categorization via direct grounding), yet even this successful explanation of doing (the easy problem) does not solve the mystery of feeling (the hard problem). I think my only critic is that it fails to cover the topic of language, but yet again maybe that is because it's just part of the easy problem and no the hard problem.
ReplyDelete“Turing’s Test solves the easy problem — explaining what we can do — but it leaves untouched the hard problem of why doing is accompanied by feeling.”
ReplyDeleteThis passage is interesting to me because it points to something unique about humans: we don’t just do things — we feel complex feelings. Turing argued that if a machine can do everything we can, we should treat it as intelligent, but he never said this would explain feeling or that passing the Turing Test means the machine is conscious. This misunderstanding highlights that there is some kind of consciousness or “thing” in us that gives rise to feeling, which sensorimotor abilities alone can’t produce. I also wonder how God and faith fit into this. If AI can eventually do everything we can do but never shows evidence of truly feeling, that might point to a Creator who gave humans and animals this capacity, rather than us being able to create it ourselves.
Harnad uses Descartes’ famous idea of "Cogito" (that I cannot doubt I am thinking while I am doing it) to support Searle’s argument against the Turing Test. He points out that we know we are conscious not because of how we behave, but because of how we feel inside.
ReplyDeleteThe paper suggests that the only thing we can be 100% sure of is our own internal feeling , yet most science is entirely based on observing external behavior. Even in the case of the TT, we are observing output/external behavior. This leads to a discouraging realization: if the only true proof of consciousness is private (as Descartes supports), then a public science of the mind is impossible. As soon as we try to measure consciousness by what a robot does, we stop studying the feeling itself and only study the programming and the output. We are trying to use an output to measure an "inside" experience.
I think this may have been one of my favorite reads thus far as it provides a nice overview for the key points of this course – from the Turing Test to Searle’s CRA to the Symbol Grounding problem. I think one of the most interesting lines in the paper was the following: “The successful TT passing model may not turn out to be purely computational; it may be both computational and dynamic; but it is still only generating and explaining our doing capacity. It may or may not feel.” Even a perfectly passing T3 robot with symbol grounding in sensorimotor experience, language ability, human-like behaviour, etc may be void inside – no feelings, experiences, consciousness. And this at the very crux of possible future ethical dilemmas society may face with advanced AI models. If we do create such robots that pass all T3 tests (but we remain uncertain if they possess consciousness) is shutting down such a system murder or merely turning off a machine? On what basis can we make the consciousness determination if it is never observable from the outside…?
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