Can Humans Truly "Think"?

[Utah]

I am interested in peoples thoughts on this, especially rduke55 as he has expertise in this area. I apologize in advance if this is a bit scattered but I have been up for almost 24 hours thinking about it.

Yesterday, I got into a valuable but heated argument with my head of technical development. I had made some very cool new AI improvements to a neural net based expert system and I was talking a bit of smack to him as we are very competitive. He then floored me with a simple challenge: "Make a neural net learn addition". I said, "piece of cake" and I made a quick net that took about 2 seconds to derive the simple function. But, then I realized that it hadnt learned addition at all and it had no "concept" of addition. Worse, it was assuming it already knew the number system and it was using addition itself to learn addition. I had accomplished nothing.

So, we started digging into it and we realized we couldnt do addition until we first learned to count. But we couldnt learn to count until we learned what an object was. We played with it a bit and came up with the first concept being "greater/less than". We decided to start there and we are going to teach it to first recognize greater/less than using images of irregular dots only. Then, we would teach it to count and then teach it addition using nothing but images with no numbers.

We realized that everything we were talking about is simply classification. That fact is really Neural Net 101 stuff. But I never really thought how far that concept extended. Formulas are merely classification. Numbers are classifications. The problem is that greater/less than is also merely classification. So, it must be possible to reduce the problem further.

After thinking about it almost non-stop, I think the answer is symmetry. We, at birth, are simply given a main imperative to find symmetry as symmetry can define any discrete situation - ie, once you understand it it looks the same from all directions. Basically, this means that once you know the rules of the situation they will always yield the same results. Examples, E=MC^2, solving a puzzle, playing poker, etc.

So, if this is correct, the mind doesnt truly think or create anything. Rather, it simply classifies the environment within which it lives. Thus, while we have more power to classify situations than a computer, we are still just as "dumb" as we are simply operating a BIOS command - classify everything you can.

Where is the flaw if my thinking? If it is flawed, how does a human learn starting from ground zero? How does a baby go from womb to counting to 10?

Is there anything worth reading on this as this may have all been thought through before?

[almostbusto]

creating a classification is creation.
classifying something is thinking.

i 'think' you have a very strange definition of 'truly thinking' and i can't really comment on your post until you flush out what you mean by that.

[arahant]

[ QUOTE ]
So, if this is correct, the mind doesnt truly think or create anything. Rather, it simply classifies the environment within which it lives.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you need to clarify what you mean by 'think'. I consider 'thinking' precisely what the mind does, pretty much by definition.

What is it, precisely, that you believe the mind ISN'T doing, that we previously would have thought it WAS doing?

[yukoncpa]

Hi
Michio Kaku, in his book Visions has a chapter on Machines that Think. He talks about how things such as human emotions are just sophisticated methods of classification.
Link to one page of book found at Amazon.com

edit - well my link doesn't go to the page. Not surprisng. But you can look on page 91 to get an idea of where he is coming from by doing a "search inside this book" and typing "Machines that think"

[Utah]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So, if this is correct, the mind doesnt truly think or create anything. Rather, it simply classifies the environment within which it lives.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you need to clarify what you mean by 'think'. I consider 'thinking' precisely what the mind does, pretty much by definition.

What is it, precisely, that you believe the mind ISN'T doing, that we previously would have thought it WAS doing?

[/ QUOTE ] Creativity. Thinking of ideas that are unique and invented from whole cloth. Being able to extrapolate correct responses with incomplete or new sets of parameters without using hardcoded rules. We are simply a biocomputer drone with an instruction set with sophisticated input/output capabilities.

We are no different than a computer than can read a single digit input. It can read that input and execute some output. Given that it knows 1 and 2 it may be able to understand 1.5 because it can use previous classifications. However, the computer has no concept of ice cream.

The human operates the same way. The human mind has no ability to conceptualize anything that is not gathered from inputs - sight, smell, touch, etc or is originally hardcoded. In fact, a human cant conceptualzie at all. It can merely recall classifactions from memory. We have no more ability to break out of our environment than the computer does.

Note: I may be 100% wrong. I just dont see the flaws yet in the argument. But, there may be lots of them [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Rduke55]

Unfortunately I just got back from a wine lunch (Holiday season and all [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] ) so I'm fairly worthless.
But that's a great question. A lot of people debate that.
If I had to give a one word answer though it would be "gestalt". We have this huge web of ideas,associations, and relationships for a term or object that goes beyond that objects properties or where we classify it - and we classify it one way in one situation or another in another.
I think people often separate what you are talking about from "Thinking" as differences in process thinking vs. gestalt thinking. Some of the people working with computer vision are beating there heads againt the wall because they are having huge problems getting computers to see the forest instead of the trees.
As to your classification idea, I think Russell and Whitehead has a proposal where a number n is the set of all possible sets with n numbers. It eventually collapsed for a number of reasons.
It's a great discussion though. For some reason we have a subjective, unified whole of an idea of what "nine" is.
I'm rambling. Sorry.

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
The human operates the same way. The human mind has no ability to conceptualize anything that is not gathered from inputs - sight, smell, touch, etc or is originally hardcoded. In fact, a human cant conceptualzie at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with that. Why do you say this?

Also, there was a thread that started talking about Kurzweil in SMP that may be relevant.

I'm late for a party so I'll be back later (probably less rational though)

[Utah]

[ QUOTE ]
The human operates the same way. The human mind has no ability to conceptualize anything that is not gathered from inputs - sight, smell, touch, etc or is originally hardcoded. In fact, a human cant conceptualzie at all.

I disagree with that. Why do you say this?

[/ QUOTE ]

I say this because I couldn't come up with a concept that wasn't a derivative of known classifications gathered through observation. Sure, I can mix and match and combine and mold. But, nothing new is created.

I can't come up with a concept that is akin to a computer understanding ice-cream.

I could be wrong though. But, I can't think I am wrong until I can see an example of an idea out of whole cloth that cannot be broken down and reduced to earlier classifications.

Can you give some examples?

[madnak]

You really should read through the Kurzweil thread.

[Utah]

[ QUOTE ]
You really should read through the Kurzweil thread.

[/ QUOTE ]I just did a quick read and it is very interesting. After more thought and a deeper reading I am sure I will have comments. There seems to be some big misconcpetions about AI in that thread. Additionally, is a new technical computer architecture that can solve the CPU/complexity problem. The CPU model is a huge current hurdle and my company runs into it every day.

However, the thread does not answer my fundamental question of this thread.