33
votes
Accepted
If the universe is finite does that nullify Godel's incompleteness, halting problem, and Church-Turing thesis?
First of all, this question presupposes that mathematics is limited to describing the physical universe. Even as finite beings in a finite universe we can still try to reason about hypothetical ...
- 3,417
19
votes
Why do some physicalists use the Turing Machine as a model of the brain?
A little background: there's a funny fact about computers that a very crude system with a primitive programming language can solve every computable problem (given enough memory). As we write better ...
- 521
10
votes
Why do some physicalists use the Turing Machine as a model of the brain?
The Church-Turing thesis suggests that any machine we can build is no more powerful than a Turing machine.
It is possible to run an approximate numerical simulation of physics, on a computer. A ...
- 18.9k
9
votes
If the universe is finite does that nullify Godel's incompleteness, halting problem, and Church-Turing thesis?
The halting problem doesn't go away, even in the modified variant that would exist in a finite universe. A modified halting problem that instead of "Does this ever halt?" asks "Does ...
- 2,843
8
votes
Why doesn't the Chinese room learn Chinese?
Even if the man inside the Chinese room memorised every single translation instance (theoretically every possible combination which is impossible given our limited memory, but it's a thought ...
- 144
7
votes
Accepted
Why does Searle's room receive three batches of Chinese characters and two English instruction manuals as input?
I would encourage you to read the very original paper (here is a copy) ... If you read this from the very beginning, you'll find that Searle's use of three different batches of symbols is really in ...
- 2,821
6
votes
Why do some physicalists use the Turing Machine as a model of the brain?
Short Answer
It's not correct to say that AI researchers model the brain with Turing Machines (TMs), rather it's more accurate to say that AI researchers understand that the grammars of human language ...
- 35.6k
5
votes
Can computers do things Turing machines can't?
Short answer is no; modern computers cannot do things that Turing machines can't do. What they can do is run very sophisticated, complex Turing machines that simulate things that Turing machines would ...
- 1,527
5
votes
Accepted
Is Turing test still serving as criterion of machine intelligence?
Before discussing this further, I’d like to highlight this quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as I feel it is particularly relevant to your question:
”First, there is the question ...
- 222
4
votes
Why doesn't the Chinese room learn Chinese?
There seem to be several things not understood in asking this question.
Searle gave an intuitive argument. He did not and still does not understand the details so there was a limit to what he could ...
- 255
4
votes
Where is the knowledge that AI's "knowledge representations" represent?
In the context of artificial intelligent agents and AI, it appears that know is just the primitive connecting those agents to their representations of knowledge.
In the 1995 edition of Artificial ...
- 414
4
votes
Human Mind vs Computer
So my question is: what is it that human mind can do which a computer (Universal TM) can not?
INTRODUCTION
Let us presume that you set aside the obvious retort: human brains are embodied and have ...
- 35.6k
4
votes
Why do some physicalists use the Turing Machine as a model of the brain?
A world-view describing question. If you ask whether the Turing machine is a model of the brain, the answer tells more about the answerer than one might guess at first glance.
Neither classical ...
- 832
3
votes
Why did Turing say computers manipulate symbols?
I think perhaps the issue at hand is the word symbol. A symbol is not a picture. A symbol is a representation of some other concept. We might talk about the queen of England being a symbol. We might ...
- 1,930
3
votes
How could a computer acquire knowledge of its environment?
Let's look at "Chinese Room". The words traverse the optic nerve as a complicated neural pattern with no semantic significance. Once they hit the brain, the brain can assign meaning to the letters, ...
- 1,162
3
votes
In the Turing test how can the computer understand the interrogator?
The Turing Test is perhaps best understood as a thought experiment aimed at answering the question "if something purely mechanical could display all the perceptible signs of consciousness/intelligence,...
- 30.7k
3
votes
Why did Turing promote ESP (extra sensory perception)?
Turing wanted to eliminate any human ESP abilities from affecting the test. This ability could make it more difficult for the computer to fool the human or raise doubts about the validity of the test....
- 19.8k
3
votes
Scientificity of the Church-Turing's thesis
The Church-Turing thesis is a non-provable thesis, rather than a theorem, because it is a claim that our informal, non-theoretical understanding of what counts as effectively computable is entirely ...
- 31.5k
3
votes
Scientificity of the Church-Turing's thesis
You want to be careful when you use the word science in the context of falsifiability. Falsifiability is a property of theories in empirical sciences, i.e. sciences that are based on observation of ...
- 27.9k
3
votes
Why is Turing claiming that a complete and computable axiomatization of arithmetic would imply the decidability of first-order logic?
Probably, what he's trying to get at is that there is a way to encode in arithmetic the notion of 𐌵 being a provable sentence in K so that, if arithmetic was complete, then that sentence could be ...
- 805
3
votes
Is VonNeumann's universal constructor ontologically distinct from the universal Turing machine?
Visiting the Church-Turing Thesis page I see: "computable functions are exactly the functions that can be calculated using a mechanical calculation device given unlimited amounts of time and ...
- 3,560
3
votes
If the universe is finite does that nullify Godel's incompleteness, halting problem, and Church-Turing thesis?
There appears to be a misunderstanding of the philosophical background within which mathematical theorems reside. Attempts to explain this philosophical background have been met with rebuttals that ...
- 166
3
votes
Is anything wrong with this argument about the Turing test?
The Turing test is not a formally specified experiment, bust just a thought experiment. As such, the specifics given in the original example are not important, a Turing test can be performed in many ...
- 7,417
2
votes
Why doesn't the Chinese room learn Chinese?
Consider the following about the Chinese Room Argument.
First, strong AI is a view that programs running on Turing machines (computers) not only produce correct results but also generate ...
- 19.8k
2
votes
Accepted
Is ESP, in particular telepathy, not computable?
Although it seems intuitively obvious that they are not computable
tasks, how would one argue that telepathy, or other ESP tasks, are not
computable?
One would have to argue that there exists no ...
- 6,872
2
votes
Why doesn't the Chinese room learn Chinese?
I've always thought that Searle's repudiation of Turing through his "Chinese room" analogy was flawed.
The claim that the room "doesn't understand Chinese", substantively on the ...
- 171
2
votes
Why doesn't the Chinese room learn Chinese?
I believe that you've hit on what is typically referred to as the "systems reply", which is, in short, that the room system does understand Chinese. This seems plausibly true in terms of a functional ...
- 5,427
2
votes
In the Turing test how can the computer understand the interrogator?
But the computing machine has no sensory apparatus. It can't see the questions printed by the teleprinter in the computer's room. If it can't see the questions then it can't understand them. In fact ...
- 8,248
2
votes
Accepted
Book Recommendation for Computational Theory of Mind
Some suggestions, hope they're useful :
Sebastian A. Wagner, The Extent to which 'Consciousness' poses a problem for the Computational Theory of Mind. ISBN 10: 3640896572 / ISBN 13: 9783640896578
...
- 36.1k
2
votes
How could a computer acquire knowledge of its environment?
Algorithmically calculable answers must be part of Godel-incomplete systems, with true but unprovable statements. But a strange loop system can form a tangled hierarchy, a network of reinforcement and ...
- 23.8k
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