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"Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

psychclassics.yorku.ca

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Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#101

Post by maksimur »

lisper wrote: post #44
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

> These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. Sure, but it is also important not to lend too much credence to these arguments, because they were devised from a position of ignorance. In particular, in 1879 we didn't have neurobiology, nor the theory of computation and complexity, and we barely had evolution. OoS had been published just…

Agree with you except that the value in studying ancient thinkers and intellectuals is also in recognising patterns and seeing how they probably recognised patterns too.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#102

Post by murderfs »

ryanklee wrote: post #62
karaterobot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figuratively, how all my physicist and computer science friends rolled their eyes when I took degrees in the humanities. Literally, how true the joke is about the difference between an English major and a large pepperoni pizza is that the pizza can feed a family of three. On the other hand, the humanities did plenty to devalue itself, by adopting the view that 'value' itself is likely a social construct.

> the humanities did plenty to devalue itself, by adopting the view that 'value' itself is likely a social construct. The humanities is not a monolith. If you ask a philosopher in the analytic tradition, which is the tradition in which most of the philosophical world resides, they are likely to disagree with social constructivist views.

And if you ask a philosopher in the continental tradition, you're likely to get 1000 words of self-contradictory jargon that sounds deep, but means absolutely nothing. You don't get to point at Neil deGrasse Tyson, and sweep, for example, Zizek under the rug.

The Sokal affair was not some sort of isolated aberration, the truth is that enormous chunks of the humanities are worthless.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#103

Post by FrustratedMonky »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #90
ryanklee wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are his words. They are not out of context. I don't see how any of that negates the effect of one of science's pre-eminent public advocates bad mouthing philosophy and the humanities. People hear this and take it at face value. It informs their opinions. It shapes their lives. And it's his purpose to shape people lives. He is partially responsible for the proliferation of similar views throughout the intellectu…

Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought. Philosophy should be capable of defending itself, it shouldn't need to rely on deferential treatment and a widespread presumption of value. Philosophy doesn't deserve deference or respect simply because it's an academic discipline. We've…

"Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought."

Not what this discussions is about at all.

That is some straw man rhetoric.

That actual point was "Hey STEM people, you are talking in circles yourselves, and re-inventing the wheel, maybe checkout what some other fields have already studied"

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#104

Post by hackinthebochs »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #103
hackinthebochs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought. Philosophy should be capable of defending itself, it shouldn't need to rely on deferential treatment and a widespread presumption of value. Philosophy doesn't deserve deference or respect simply because it's an academic discipline. We've…

"Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought." Not what this discussions is about at all. That is some straw man rhetoric. That actual point was "Hey STEM people, you are talking in circles yourselves, and re-inventing the wheel, maybe checkout what some other fields have already s…

The issue of NDT and Hawking dismissing philosophy is a mostly separate issue from the original topic and ryanklee turned this branch into that narrow issue. My reply is specifically addressing that subtopic.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#105

Post by Vecr »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #31

Fwiw nothing with outside influence is automata as the true randomness from quantum phenomena propagates. Eg. If you take in real world visual input to a system that from that point on is deterministic the output of that system is now non-deterministic. Similar to how Shrodinger talked about the macro scale cat being alive and dead at the same time. So the arguments that the neurons in the brain are deterministic or…

As said before in this thread, that won't give you free will, and elsewhere on HN, that you won't even get an uncaused cause. Think of your brain as a cryptographic hash function running on a non-reversible computer mixing the quantum noise into its state if you want, so you get your avalanche effect and chaos theory stuff (though I think that's majorly overstating it, people don't behave that erratically). See Good and Real by Gary L. Drescher (2006), but also see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38789146

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#106

Post by lisper »

maksimur wrote: post #101
lisper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. Sure, but it is also important not to lend too much credence to these arguments, because they were devised from a position of ignorance. In particular, in 1879 we didn't have neurobiology, nor the theory of computation and complexity, and we barely had evolution. OoS had been published just…

Agree with you except that the value in studying ancient thinkers and intellectuals is also in recognising patterns and seeing how they probably recognised patterns too.

Yes, I totally agree. I'm just saying that one should be skeptical about their conclusions because they didn't have access to much of the knowledge we have today. (William James in particular I have seen cited by religious people in support of religious arguments. He may have been a really smart guy, and there might be a lot to learn by studying him, but he just didn't know the things we know today -- no one did in his day -- and so it's not surprising that he got a lot of things wrong, including his answer to the titular question. We are in fact automata. Very, very sophisticated automata, but automata nonetheless.)

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#107

Post by kouru225 »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58
kouru225 wrote: post #32

When people say we’re nothing but computers, neurons firing, chemical reactions, etc they think they’re saying that humans aren’t special. But I take it to mean that the rest of the world is way more special than we’ve been giving it credit for.

By this point I think the "nothing but" part is the bit that's actually wrong. It's about putting yourself up on a pedestal while downplaying others. Of course, at some point those "others" (be it peoples, genders, creatures, or machines) turn out to be as good or better at certain things than you are. And what do you do then? You won't have anywhere to go psychologically without devaluing yourself. So then you end u…

Yes exactly. It’s hierarchical thinking from an anthropocentric pov. IMO the longer I live and the more I learn, the more I see hierarchical thinking as the biggest obstacle towards learning and understanding.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#108

Post by chr1 »

bmitc wrote: post #100
chr1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Feynman also did not see value in philosophy, and he was right. The submitted article is a good illustration why. There are two hypotheses: one is that consciousness is essentially a computation, the other that it is an unknowable stuff. Philosophers spend time talking how one or the other hypothesis "feels right" to them. Scientists try to see what results can be obtained through computation. Now we got to t…

> Richard Feynman also did not see value in philosophy, and he was right. Do you realize that physics requires the adoption of a philosophy? Physics addresses problems that are effectively easy. Physicists have tools, such as mathematics, at their disposal and can make wildly simplifying assumptions. Philosophers are often trying to address what the questions even are and then try to develop new tools to both explore…

Unfortunately it is not possible to find out new questions or develop new tools by just thinking about stuff. You need to also do something concrete, at which point you cease to be just a philosopher and become also a mathematician, physicist, historian, economist etc.

In the example of question of consciousness, the point of view presented by William James here was obvious to people long before him. Scientific observation have shown the possibility of the alternative theory: that we are automata. We still do not have a definitive answer which one is correct, but philosophy have not contributed anything towards finding the correct answer. And the only progress we had in last 2500 years was due to science.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#109

Post by lern_too_spel »

ryanklee wrote: post #55
kbenson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has NDT been saying that? I wouldn't know, since I mostly consume him as small segments of larger appearances, but it seems half the time he's conversing with someone he's spouting philosophy as he sees it, so it would be surprising to me that he denigrates it.

1. Tyson dismissed the intellectual value of philosophy in a podcast, which led to criticism from those within the discipline[1]. 2. He has been quoted saying, "What they teach in the humanities is not 'skepticism' or 'critical thinking.' It's mental masturbation disguised as critical thinking"[5]. 3. Tyson warned that philosophy "can really mess you up" and has implied that philosophy does not progress in the way sc…

Is he wrong? Give me a result published by a philosopher, and I'll give you a contradictory result published by another philosopher.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#110

Post by chr1 »

spookybones wrote: post #95
chr1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Feynman also did not see value in philosophy, and he was right. The submitted article is a good illustration why. There are two hypotheses: one is that consciousness is essentially a computation, the other that it is an unknowable stuff. Philosophers spend time talking how one or the other hypothesis "feels right" to them. Scientists try to see what results can be obtained through computation. Now we got to t…

You’re talking about metaphysics. Epistemology will be one of the most important issues with AI. And let’s not ignore ethics. You seem to speak as someone who hasn’t read any philosophy. Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer, and plenty of other physicists would disagree with your sentiment.

I am saying that so far progress in metaphysics came not from philosophers but from physicists, who actually do experiments or math calculations.

Similarly progress in understanding AI will come from people who actually build and experiment with AI, or with brains.

As for ethics, i don't see how is it relevant.

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