The Thinking Machines:
SCHICK, FREDERICK
The Thinking Machines Dimensions of Mind. Edited by Sidney Hook. New York. 281 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Frederick Schick Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis University The theory of...
...The machines being built today are incapable of many of the intellectual operations men perform —but they have time on their side...
...Reviewed by Frederick Schick Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis University The theory of evolution obliged our grandparents to acknowledge an alliance with the lower species...
...The prime requisite is a set of what he calls "performatory analyses" of the "higher" functions -descriptions of machine computations whose language analogues would be considered marks of observing, learning, analyzing, etc...
...This time, however, we seem to be the lower species...
...The latter terminology, unlike the former, avoids all suggestion of mental activity...
...Scriven even offers some suggestions on how machines might be designed to perform the functions he describes...
...For if Putnam is right, what remains of the Philosophy of Man, of the ancient conviction that the study of the human species raises far-reaching philosophical problems which are not merely special cases of more inclusive problems...
...The venerable controversy between those who say machines "think" and those who say they do not (the problem of "other minds") is taken up again here in all its classic variety...
...The most provocative essay on the subject is contributed by Hilary Putnam, who argues: All the problems of the traditional philosophy of mind are as relevant to an analysis of selfdescriptive computing machines as they are to our understanding of man, "and thus have nothing to do with the unique nature (if it is unique) of human subjective experience...
...In a contribution to Dimensions of Mind, a symposium on the mentality of men and machines edited by Sidney Hook, Michael Scriven goes so far as to contend that whatever men can do, a super-computer eventually will do better...
...Fortunately, we set no such standards, and the mere construction of mechanical brains, no matter how powerful, is not likely to ruffle anyone's composure...
...Now if our conception of man's dignity was singularly committed to intellectual supremacy, there would be hard days ahead...
...Putnam's contrary conclusion is not likely to be accepted without a struggle...
...He deserves our fullest appreciation...
...This is the third such symposium Sidney Hook has edited in three years...
...This possibility deserves a more sober examination than it usually receives...
...But Norbert Wiener, another contributor to the symposium, reminds us that intelligence and subservience are incompatible virtues...
...A symposium which can boast at least half a dozen interesting contributions is certainly impressive...
...Whoever writes the program calls the tune...
...Several other contributions deserve to be mentioned, particularly the illuminating comments by Arthur Danto on Scriven's paper, and by Ernest Nagel and Sidney Morgenbesser on an article by Stephen Toulmin...
...They may even rebel, rejecting instructions their experience has taught them will not serve the purposes they were originally set to serve...
...However disquieting this may be, it poses no challenge to our image of man as comparable to the challenge Darwin posed...
...Such machines may eventually behave in a way their designers never anticipated...
...if man produced them...
...The belief in man's uniquely problematic nature always has been a source of gratification— our guarantee that we are indeed a breed apart...
...A more knowledgeable analysis predicts the machines will pose a threat not to man's dignity but to man's sovereignty...
...We now concede only the "lower" computational faculties to machines, and so minimize the scope of our own obsolescence...
...Suppose, for instance, we deny that machines really understand the questions they are given, deny they think about them, deny even that they answer, and contend instead they merely record questions, perform and conclude operations and finally provide answers...
...He sees no reason why machines cannot be designed to observe, to learn, to analyze, to interpret information, to be creative and even to make decisions in a manner more responsible and more sophisticated than those made by men...
...We assure ourselves too often that the machines will never outgrow their dependence on man's programming guidance, however capable they become...
...A similar challenge to man's dignity is posed today by the "thinking" machines...
...But as Wiener points out, some machines already are capable of writing at least a part of their own programs, i.e., capable of revising their basic behavior patterns in the light of past success and failure...
...Here we have a real challenge to our preconceptions...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 8
