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roadside_picnic 3 days ago

> our belief that only biological entities can think

Whose belief is that?

As a computer scientist my perspective of all of this is as different methods of computing and we have a pretty solid foundations on computability (though, it does seem a bit frightening how many present-day devs have no background in the foundation of the Theory of Computation). There's a pretty common naive belief that somehow "thinking" is something more or distinct from computing, but in actuality there are very few coherent arguments to that case.

If, for you, thinking is distinct from computing then you need to be more specific about what thinking means. It's quite possible that "only biological entities can think" because you are quietly making a tautological statement by simply defining "thinking" as "the biological process of computation".

> thinking is a core part of our identity, unlike swimming.

What does this mean? I'm pretty sure for most fish swimming is pretty core to its existence. You seem to be assuming a lot of metaphysically properties of what you consider "thinking" such that it seems nearly impossible to determine whether or not anything "thinks" at all.

goatlover 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

One argument for thinking being different from computing is that thought is fundamentally embodied, conscious and metaphorical. Computing would be an abstracted activity from thinking that we've automated with machines.

roadside_picnic 3 days ago | parent [-]

> embodied, conscious and metaphorical

Now you have 3 terms you also need to provide proper definitions of. Having studied plenty of analytical philosophy prior to computer science, I can tell you that at least the conscious option is going to trip you up. I imagine the others will as well.

On top of that, these, at least at my first guess, seem to be just labeling different models of computation (i.e. computation with these properties is "thinking") but it's not clear why it would be meaningful for a specific implementation of computation to have these properties. Are there tasks that are non-computable that are "thinkable"? And again it sounds like you're wandering into tautology land.

kapone 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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