Thursday 11/14
Examination IV
As per the syllabus, please note that today's examination is worth 275 points. So it is important that you carefully review all of the notes, handouts, texts, and, crucially, the synopses for each of the lecture days. I'll again allow a single, handwritten, 4"x6" notecard for reminders, explanations, or whatever you think might help. That said, I'm not sure what would be relevant to add to a notecard. Our discussions have been penetrating, philosophical, and challenging. This exam more than the others will be your opportunity to see how far you yourself can take them. I do not yet know the precise length or format of the exam, although I would expect more short-answer and essay questions than the last exam.
Exam IV is organized as follows:
- The Mind-Body Problem, Dualism and Physicalism
- The Hard Problem of Subjective Experience: The Case of Mary and the Case of Fred
- The Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence
- The Chinese Room Thought Experiment
- Ava and the Problem of Proving Artificial Intelligence
- The Problem of Personal Identity
Finally, the essay questions for Exam IV will be selected from the following collection. It would be a good idea to study in groups to mull over these questions.
1.
Explain as clearly as you can the Mind-Body problem.
2.
Consider the two important solutions to the Mind-Body Problem we discussed in class:
- Dualism, which holds that because the properties we ascribe to mind and the properties we ascribe to bodies never seem to overlap, mind and body must be distinct substances, causally interacting such that mental events (in the mental substance of the mind) sometimes cause physical events (in the physical substance of the body), and vice-versa (also known as cartesian interactionism); and
- Machine Functionalism, aka Computationalism, which holds that the difference in properties we ascribe to mind and body are the differences in properties between bodies physically described and bodies functionally described, so that the mind is not different than the body, but is simply the result of the body's neurological processes functioning as they normally do--thus, roughly, the mind is what the body does.
There are other solutions, of course, but these are surely among the important solutions, in the sense that there are many reasons for and against each solution, and they have been hotly debated in philosophical circles.
Carefully construct an argument to show which of (1) or (2) is the most defensible solution to the Mind-Body problem.
3.
Assuming you are having to explain it to someone who is not in the class, what is the Case of Mary, and what is it supposed to show?
4.
Assuming you are having to explain it to someone who is not in the class, what is the Case of Fred, and what is it supposed to show?
5.
Explain the Turing Test for machine intelligence, and clearly and carefully explain why the following proposition is false.
X is intelligent if, and only if, X passes the Turing Test
Finally, explain the problem of false negatives and why the Turing Test might be susceptible to it, and explain the problem of false positives and why the Turing Test might also be susceptible to it.
6.
Recall that the Turing Test is predicated on the proposition that
The perfect imitation of intelligence is intelligence.
The trouble, as the otherwise odious Nathan correctly points out in the film “Ex Machina”, is proving artificial intelligence. Caleb describes this as the 'chess challenge': Does the chess-playing computer know that it is playing chess? Analogously, does Ava know it(?) has bested Nathan at his own game? Why or why not? Is the perfect imitation of intelligence truly intelligence? Why or why not?
7.
Explain Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment, making sure to explain what it is supposed to show. What is the Robot Reply we discussed in class, and what is Searle's response to it? Does Searle's response provide any insight on the 'chess challenge' raised in Ex Machina?
8.
In light of Ava's portrayal in Ex Machina, is there something it is like to be Ava? That is, has Ava subjective experience? Why or why not?
9.
Persons are a distinctively important category of thing while, as we have seen, being deeply mysterious.
Suppose I step into a transporter that works as follows. First, the transporter records the state of every particle in my body, call this my 'template'. The template is then sent to another transporter at a distant location which uses it to construct an exact, molecule for molecule, particle for particle, duplicate of me. At the same time, the transporter into which I stepped obliterates my body by reducing it to all the molecules from which I was formerly composed.
Is the person that steps off the distant transporter the same person or different than the person who stepped on the first transporter? Would you get on the transporter? Why or why not?
Let us change the story a bit. Suppose that everything proceeds as above except that the first transporter fails to obliterate the person at the originating platform.
Are there two persons, one standing on the first transporter, the second stepping off the distant transporter? Or is there just one person, me, in two locations? Justify your answer.