Could a Machine Think ? RHYS JONES
In this essay I will answer no , we could not consider a machine as thinking . I present a twopronged solution that highlights some of the flaws in this idea . The first is a linguistic and grammatical approach , stemming from Wittgenstein ' s treatment of language — that it is an illogical and nonsensical proposition to consider the symbolic operations of any machine as properly akin to thought . The second , related , prong is a technological one , showing that it is a form of category mistake to assume that the only technology we have available — digital Turing machines running on semiconductor microprocessors — could ever be properly considered as thinking , and any future alternative remains confined to the realms of science fiction .
" We both went to see the thinking machine ( for such it seems ) last Monday . It raised several numbers to the 2nd and 3rd powers , and extracted the root of a quadratic equation " — Taken from the diary of Lady Annabella Byron , mother of Ada Lovelace , 1833 .
What is interesting about the above quotation is its reminder to us that our concept of what counts as thinking has evolved over time . Few today would consider the pocket calculator or the 48K Sinclair Spectrum as machines that think . Yet as ever greater domains of our intelligence are externalised into the logical machinery of digital computation , much of what we properly class as thinking remains elusive and does not appear amenable to being reducible to algorithms , which are the only tools we have for the job .
I often ponder our question as one akin to ' Can a
submarine swim ?' Intuitively , it seems that in its mechanical propulsion through water , a submarine is demonstrably performing the primary function of swimming , but nevertheless , it is somehow missing what is essential behind our act of joyously plunging headlong into a pool . This reveals that there is a problem in how we might use verbs such as swim , dance , or worry , when applying them to automata . Similarly , [ believe that positing machines as thinking is an analogous operation .
It turns out that , as usual , Ludwig Wittgenstein was decades ahead of me , when he asked ' Could a machine have toothache ?' ( Wittgenstein , 1958 , 16 ). Naturally , this is an absurd proposition , albeit one slightly more illuminating than my submarine example — enlightening because Wittgenstein demonstrates that there is something nonsensical about the sentence itself , and that our usage of ' ' could / can ' is ascribing possibility to an impossible transgression of logical grammar , and a machine cannot think any more than it can have toothache . The idea that we could produce a machine with the mental states of pain or desire is simply not a sensible proposition ; hence ' A machine thinks ( perceives , wishes )' is akin to asking ' has the number 3 a colour ?' ( Wittgenstein , 1958 , 47 ).
Objections of rare synesthetes aside , another explication of this idea stems from Wittgenstein ' s nearby contemplation of the locus of thought itself — any machine , being a designed artefact constructed from the unconscious , dead matter of the world , is merely , and only ever , the vehicle
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