this is a tough question, but a fun one to think about. i also have an essay on it due in school on monday 4/24, so i was hoping to get some outside opinions. can a machine know? what are your thoughts?
“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.” (B.F. Skinner).
That depends, on whether the ability to know is purely mechanistic. You first have to ask what is consciousness, and the nature of self-awareness. Is it a property which is separate and distinct from the brain itself (and merely utilizes the brain) or, is it a by-product of the processes within the brain? Indeed, where the one purports a continuum, by which the brain evolved to exploit a recurring resource (much as the eye evolved to exploit the light of the sun), the other really has no basis, except to say it’s a by-product of the immediate environment and the electro-chemical processes within the brain, of which there is really nothing special about. In fact, to acknowledge the state of consciousness as such, is to acknowledge that we (that part of us which knows) is an illusion unto itself.
Sickeningly simple question.
Yes.
And depth of understanding/relativity&measure are a different matter.
So yes, and then add variables and factors to knowing.
brake it down to simple biology… the human brain is nothing more than large (grated quite complicated) cluster of glands, organs, enzimes, and nerves, that put to geather can gather and interpit information, essentualy the brain is one big … strange … weired … computer…
so the answer is if a human being can truly “know” then it is posable that a machiene can as well.
I don’t think the brain is like a computer.
It’s all too tempting to compare the height of our technical achievement to the human brain. In the 30’s and 40’s everyone reckoned the brain was like a telephone exchange. Before that they thought it was like a mechanical machine.
The brain is an incredibly complex thing, it is not “like” anything else. Furthermore, the brain does not have a processor, or run software.
Sorry,
but brains aren’t like computers.
cheers,
gemty
Brains and computers were designed for totally different reasons, and have followed totally different courses in their evolutions. Brains exist internal to a creature, to help that single creature accomplish tasks. A brain is essentially self-serving. Consciousness is a result of that. Computers have only ever existed as hammers- tools to be wielded by people concerned only with the exterior results. It may or may not be possible to create a machine that works like a brain, and is conscious like a mind, but so far the foundations of computers have had nothing to do with ‘inner life’, so I am skeptical that a simple increase of memory or processing speed will lead anywhere in that direction.
What, no “ghost” in the machine?
Just because computers don’t talk to us, doesn’t mean they are not alive. Horses don’t talk to us when we use them for transporation, but they still respond to stimuli and are considered to have a consciousness.
The only thing that separates us from computers really, is our ability to take in information. Right now computers receive their input through keyboards, touchpads, etc. This is primitive shit compared to our sense of touch, smell, taste, etc.
The only reasons computers are tools are because we input data in that format. It would be as if nature had literally, and epistemologically shaped us to perform a very certain task. Who knows… maybe it has.
Oh, but computers do talk to us, because we made them to. What I’m saying is, that’s just what we made them to do- perform for us. The chain of computing from the beginning until now has been judged and governed strictly by what results it can provide for a third party- us. Unlike brains, computers did not develop to sustain themselves. In other words, consciousness has never been a factor.
Horses, even sea slugs, are self-goverened. A machine who’s primary purposes are all internal. I think that they have consciousness must have something to do with that.
To put it simply- brains are designed to think. Computers are designed to look like they are thinking to the outside observer. See?
Yeah, no I see what you’re saying perfectly.
Yes, historically computers were originally made (like most technology) to serve us. When the bank machine says ‘You have a negative balance’ I know it’s not the machine actually having a conversation with me (even if I do treat it that way).
but let’s just put that out of the argument for a second.
Your stance could be said to be very similar that of Searle’s. Searle posits putting a real person in a room with a set of instructions on how to interpret chinese symbols according to a certain formula, and then the corresponding an ‘input’ and ‘output’ sections to the outside world. To the people on the outside of the room, it may appear that the person inside knows chinese, but really they are just using a ‘cheat sheet’ so to speak. Searle claims that this analogy for a computer is inaccurate for consciousness because the person does not know the semantics of the information he is dealing with.
To this I would tend to agree, for about 10 minutes. I don’t know about you but if I’m locked in a room and have a little something called MEMORY, especially the short term and long term that we and computers both have, I’m eventually GOING to learn chinese. Now my argument is based on the assumption that there is some little ‘human’ inside of our computers, which is fallacious.
What I’m trying to say is that if computers could advance the way that they take in information, they would essentially be conscious in the sense that you are talking about. I kid you not, I’ve seen footage of computers having online conversations that are more legitimate than some of the ones that go on here between two ‘real’ people.
In my opinion that’s the core, ours is obviously much more advanced but anything outside of that is simply aesthetics.
know what?
how too lead it’s civilization down a road ending in cannabalism like it’s human counterparts are doing?.
can it know the truth , and teach the educated their creation principle?
can a machine judge humanity as a superior race thanks too the wisest human?.
could it know it’s life is just as pointless as any other due too our stupid act as “God” the nonexistent source of self-demise?.
could it comprehend that we must all be annihilated for ourinferior choices throughout history?.
my thought’s do not matter unless you actually have a question , sorry Lennon.
Who is to say we aren’t computers created to look like we’re thinking?
We are a creation just like anything else.
Thus far they have been so-designed to mimic us, the way our voice echoes when we shout very loudly inside a canyon? … i.e., the space between our ears. 
that’s right , and we manipulate like anything else as well.
that’s right , and we manipulate like anything else as well.
Yeah, actually Gobbo, my point is based on Searl’s Chinese Room Argument. Like you said, you assume a little human inside computers- a computers memory and a human’s memory can be two different things. Human memory could either be the capacity for storing facts, much like a computer, or that same word could also refer to the conscious recollection of those facts, the thing in question.
To this I would say that the ‘conscious’ recollection, is basically what a computer does when it is asked to. When it receives input through it’s senses (keyboard, mouse, peripheral ports). I would say that while this is severaly elementary, this, at it’s core, stripped of aesthetical vanity - is basically what we are. Our skin is a very sophisticated type of touchpad, only instead of a user’s finger - it’s nature.
If I see a snarling tiger a foot in front of me in Africa, I’m effectively being ‘used’ to ‘display’ a reaction of fear by ‘mother nature’ if you will. Yeah I idle away on ILP and I’m capable of self sufficiency in the power sense (I eat), but what makes me so different from a computer at the core? I don’t know my purpose here, and somehow I’m going to assume that neither do the computers.
Can this be answered without bringing in spirituality?
No one has done it to my satisfaction yet, lol… -definately- not Searle, although I do enjoy his writing in the sense that he is fair when he tries… he’s just wrong 
Turing lay with men, therefore machines cannot think.
He was just touring the circuit.