Imagination

Whilst looking over my notes from last year on the question 'could a machine think?', the vry last question I've raised is 'what makes us different?'. The idea being that if we were gradually replaced be robotic parts, would we notice that we were different? (This has been the subject of many scifi films - the main character discovers that he's actually a robot.) If our brains worked in exactly the same wasy as they always had then I have to admit (grudgingly; I don't want to be the same as a robot!) that we probably could recreate a biological brain one day. This is years and years into the future, though, because even if we knew how, if we were to make a brain as complex as ours it would be absolutely massive and probably still not as fast as a human brain. But, you know, give the scientists a chance, we've had millinos of years of evolution to get this good.

However, this means that we are no better than a robot, really, and that if we say that a robot is simply a symbol-shuffler, we must also be the same. It's an interesting thought, just because I think I'm conscious, doesn't mean I actually am. Maybe a machine will think it's conscious.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that there must be something that seperates humans from machines as we now know it. Or, at least, I would like to think there is. Maybe that thing is imagination?

We are assuming that it is possible to create a specific mind electronically. But all of the minds in the world are individual and unique. We wouldn't be able to make a new mind, it would have to be a copy of someone else's. This may be why we feel that we are different in some way to a robot. It can only be a copy whilst we are unique. And our uniqueness gives us something else that we consider a machine to be incapable of - imagiantion. They can only follow established rules whilst we, supposedly, think for ourselves. It is the uniqueness of our minds that allows this to take place.

Organic processes are funny things. I'm not sure that you can recreate every organic process with electronics because the results are so variable. Even in my limited experience, we have used enzymes as catalysts in experiments and we know that the results produce vary dramatically, even though we follow the same method each time.

In a similar way, a mind is formed by an organic process. So maybe machines can think like a human, but until we can recreate the biological process that goes into forming a mind, which I don't know is possible, machines will not be able to think creatively, as they will have to think in the same way as someone else. Imagination due to a unique mind sets us apart from machines.

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In 50 words news, I fixed Machiavelli's entry and Margie pointed out that I had done Hume twice, so here's a condensed version of him:

Hume
Scottish, 18th Century. Atheist. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. Ethics based on passion, logic irrelevant. Is-ought distinction (Hume’s Law). Miracles explainable. Observable knowledge reliable. Self = illusion. Inductive reasoning bad, one example may prove it wrong (1000 swans are white =/= all swans are white).