If a machine can fool a person into believing that it itself is a person, it must be considered as AI. In other words, AI is a person. — TheMadFool

Careful with the syllogism. Not that the computer, if it passes the test, is a person. It is that the computer is intelligent.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's the principle of the identity of indiscernibles which, unlike its converse, the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, is, last I checked, controversial. — TheMadFool

What you call "the identity of indiscernables," a phrase I hadn't heard before, is a central one to how I see the world. If you can't tell the difference, there is no difference. Both the Turing test and the P-zombie apocalypse are good tests of the principle.

Careful with the syllogism. Not that the computer, if it passes the test, is a person. It is that the computer is intelligent. — Caldwell

You can't tell the difference and, ergo, by the Turing rule, the AI is a conscious (makes it a person) OR, intriguingly, if that's a hard pill to swallow, acknowledge the problem of other minds.

What you call "the identity of indiscernables," a phrase I hadn't heard before, is a central one to how I see the world. If you can't tell the difference, there is no difference. Both the Turing test and the P-zombie apocalypse are good tests of the principle. — T Clark

I avoided including p-zombies in the OP because I wanted to focus on the Turing principle.

Anyway, since you brought it up, let's discuss.

A person (P), an AI (I), and a p-zombie (Z) are all identical as in they can't be identified if all 3 are in a room.

Ergo, as per the Turing principle:

1. P, I, Z are all actually conscious. P-zombies are impossible (physicalism) but AI is conscious.

2. P, I, Z are all not actually conscious. P-zombies are possible (nonphysicalism) but other persons lack consciousness (solipsism).

You can't tell the difference and, ergo, by the Turing principle, the AI is a conscious (makes it a person) OR, intriguingly, if that's a hard pill to swallow... — TheMadFool

Dude, don't re-interpret the Turing test. Stick to what the Turing test says.

Dude, don't re-interpret the Turing test. Stick to what the Turing test says. — Caldwell

I have done no such thing.

I avoided including p-zombies in the OP because I wanted to focus on the Turing principle. — TheMadFool

I'm mostly interested in the broad principle you described, what you call the "identity of indescernibles," rather than the specific examples, i.e. P-zombies and the Turing test. It pops up all the time, e.g. different interpretations of quantum mechanics or the existence of universes outside our own.

I'm mostly interested in the broad principle you described, what you call the "identity of indescernibles," — T Clark

So, what's your take? Do you think the Turing principle (identity of indiscernibles) is justified/unjustified?

Does it follow that, if X and Y are indistinguishable, X = Y?

So, what's your take? Do you think the Turing principle (identity of indiscernibles) is justified/unjustified? — TheMadFool

As I noted, the so-called "identity of indiscernibles" is central to my beliefs. So, yes, the Turing test is a reasonable way to see consciousness. And there's an even broader principle. As William James wrote:

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?

Not only are two things the same if you can't tell them apart, they're the same if there is no practical, meaningful, concrete difference between them or their consequences.

My examples have been hypothetical. Can you cite any real-world examples of the Turing principle in action?

[reply="TheMadFool;600773"

How about being on hold? A very polite bot does not recognize that a live person expects variation even when repeating the same statement. Leibniz was an ass. The identity of indiscernibles is inane, would make us real suckers for Raven, or is it Mystique?

Turing didn't think a human could be fooled. He also set conditions on the test that would make it very hard not to be. Language is not what philosophers want us to think it is. It is a living growing drama. It is intimacy. Something a machine can never bring to it. A young man of my acquaintance, when annoyed at you, would call you a tino-nino. If very annoyed, a tino-nino-nuckinuck! No machine could ever get the meaning, but even a simpleton human would instantly grasp it. If we are forced to stick to defined terms the sophisticated systems available today certainly could give us a run for the money, but if forced to throw away the lexicon, the human will win hands-down every time. The fact is, all linguistic terms are the result of a synthesis that is still perfectly enigmatic to science and to philosophy, and AI can only win the Turin-Test by locking us into fixed terms and ignoring the mystery of synthesis. It's a drama intimated amongst us, not explicated and recorded in some unchanging format. And if AI really wants to fool us, I suggest it teach its systems how to avoid mindlessly repeating the same assertions without at least altering its inflection to recognize the uniqueness of a real human listener.

Turin didn't think a human could be fooled. — Gary M Washburn

This is interesting. I’m not sure either that a human would necessarily be fooled—it seems logically possible for an AI to be indiscernible from a human, but in reality a person could discern the two if they understood the limitations in the AI’s programming and exploited them to discover it.

it seems logically possible for an AI to be indiscernible from a human — AJJ

This might be wrong then, since limitations in the AI’s programming would be unavoidable.

Something a machine can never bring to it — Gary M Washburn

What if there aren't any machines? What if that is just a concept we project onto experience?

Imagine you have a dream. In the dream there is AI that communicates to you. The reality would be that this AI in the dream is a symbolic representation of your subconscious, or a collective unconscious etc. If Idealism is true (perhaps a big if), then the whole world is either a collective consciousness or singular consciousness. Either way, it would mean that AI would be stemming from consciousness, even though the AI (carrier of the message) itself could just be a projection or thought form, not itself possessing the consciousness.

Its kind of like......no matter how good a book is, how intelligently written, how lively the characters in the book, we know that it is only a carrier of a message, and not the intelligence itself.

You overestimate and underestimate at the same time.

Can't say I've ever had a dream involving a computer or "device". Maybe it's a generational thing.

What AI can never get past is that every time a human uses a word it conveys a difference. Maybe just a unique inflection or tempo, a micro-pause or elision. Something in every word that situates its meaning uniquely.

What? AI? I think you mean I am saying Turing did, as far as I have read of him.

Turing principle — TheMadFool

When I look up "Turing principle" it discusses the computability of functions. I don't think that's what you're talking about. What do you mean specifically?

When I look up "Turing principle" it discusses the computability of functions. I don't think that's what you're talking about. What do you mean specifically? — T Clark

I edited the OP to correct the confusion.

Isn't a function by definition "computable"?

I edited the OP to correct the confusion. — TheMadFool

When I was a psych major long, long ago, I remember reading about computer generated therapy. Here is a link to a program created back in the 1960s. Pretty limited, but apparently some people couldn't tell that it was computer generated.

http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/eliza.htm

Pretty limited, but apparently some people couldn't tell that it was computer generated. — T Clark

Sure. I have met living therapists who are less engaged than a computer and no one seems to notice they aren't really there either...

I don't think it would be hard to create the illusion of intelligence, after all, most conversation is just a little dance of mechanized and predictable semantics.

This is interesting. I’m not sure either that a human would necessarily be fooled—it seems logically possible for an AI to be indiscernible from a human, but in reality a person could discern the two if they understood the limitations in the AI’s programming and exploited them to discover it. — AJJ

The human examiner could not be fooled. The critics of Turing Test had already addressed its limitation -- the "test" is very limited to the basics to which both the human and computer subjects could say yes or no. So the test itself is not representative of what we, humans, would call adequate measure of human intelligence or consciousness. It is intentionally rigged so that not only the human subject, but also the computer could respond.

So the test itself is not representative of what we, humans, would call adequate measure of human intelligence or consciousness. — Caldwell

This appears to highlight a problem with claiming that two things are the same if they aren’t discernible: whether they’re discernible or not is subject to the type of examination you’re able to make; it doesn’t seem right to say that two things are the same simply because someone hasn’t under certain conditions been able to tell otherwise.

Yes, that is the inevitable conclusion.

The premise underlying the Turing Test is:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's the principle of the identity of indiscernibles which, unlike its converse, the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, is, last I checked, controversial. — TheMadFool

Never having read anything by Leibniz, I am assuming that the "principle of the identity of indiscernibles" would dictate that two items which are utterly indiscernible must be held to be identical, ergo the same type of thing?

Never having read anything by Leibniz, I am assuming that the "principle of the identity of indiscernibles" would dictate that two items which are utterly indiscernible must be held to be identical, ergo the same type of thing? — Michael Zwingli

Yes.

See below to a Marvel comics reference. Raven/Mystique refers to a shapeshifting supervillain/superhero.

Raven, or is it Mystique — Gary M Washburn

Thanks for the link to ELIZA. Very interesting.

To all three of the above members

1. The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals: No issue here. If a and b are the same thing, for every predicate applicable to a (Px), Pa, that predicate is also true for b, Pb. In other words, if a = b implies $Pa \leftrightarrow Pb$.


2. The principle of the identity of indiscernibles: Problematic. Why? Some but not all properties maybe shared. For instance, snow is white and also swans in the northern hemisphere are white. As far as whiteness goes, snow and these swans are indiscernible. Are snow and white swans identical? No! This is the weak version of the principle.

In defense of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, it applies only if the objects in question are indiscernible in every sense i.e. if for every/all predicate Px, for a (Pa), it is also true that Pb, then a = b. This is the strong version of the principle and is, to my reckoning, clearly true.

What about the Turing test? Clearly, it's an application of the Turing rule (the identity of indsicernibles, 2 above) but then people know that an AI is a machine and ergo, is definitely distinguishable from a person. So, people may raise an objection to the Turing test, that is to say, the Turing rule is the weak version of the principle of identity of indiscernibles.

However, study closely what it is that's being assessed - consciousness. Consciousness has some behavioral correlates. For simplicity, let's say that the following predicates are true for consciousness: Pc and Qc where c is consciousness. Suppose now an AI (i) is such that Pi and also Qi. Put simply, the AI (i) is indistinguishable/indiscernible in every and all respects from consciousness (c). This, as you might've already noticed, is the strong version of the principle of identity of indiscernibles. In other words, the Turing test and the Turing rule are immune to the Raven/Mystique rebuttal.

Identity is not an attribute. There is absolutely nothing it is "like" to conscious. Uniqueness is not a myth. There is no calculus, no formulation, that can infer it. You can't use analysis to achieve synthesis until you are capable of recognizing its limit. Its limit, that is, that there is nothing there at all. You might as well determine who you are by the accumulation of scars and scabs on you. They may mark you out, but do not tell you who you are. What they ("attributes") tell you is who you aren't. Analysis is nihilism.

Yes...See below — TheMadFool

I am currently chewing over...thinking about these two "principles". I have another question. Is "the indiscernibility of identicals" a proposition of Liebniz, as is "the identity of indiscernibles"?

I am currently chewing over...thinking about these two "principles". I have another question. Is "the indiscernibility of identicals" a proposition of Liebniz, as is "the identity of indiscernibles"? — Michael Zwingli

This might help: Identity of indiscernibles/Indiscernibility of identicals

1. The indiscernibility of identicals: $\forall x \forall y[x = y \rightarrow \forall F (Fx \leftrightarrow Fy)]$
For any x and y, if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties.

2. The identity of indiscernibles: $\forall x \forall y[\forall F (Fx \leftrightarrow Fy) \rightarrow x = y]$
For any x and y, if x and y have all the same properties, then x is identical to y.

This might help: — TheMadFool

Thank you. I have drawn a couple of conclusions about this, but am yet thinking it over. I will post something later today.