Ovidiu Cristinel, Stoica (2023) Does a computer think if no one is around to see it? [Preprint]

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Abstract

I show that a computer cannot think unambiguously about anything, not even about a number. If thinking is a computation, a computer would have different, possibly opposite thoughts, corresponding to many computations it implements at the same time. The user interface allows us to see only one of them.

I show explicit situations in which, if we assume that the computer can think of a number, we have to conclude that it thinks, in parallel, of all numbers within a range. These numbers can in principle be extracted by using a very expensive computation. I give an explicit example of a program doing this, with available source code for independent verification.

Using an indexical argument, I show that the human mind does not have this ambiguity. Therefore, even if the human mind can be simulated by a computer (as computers are currently understood), it cannot be reduced to computation.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Ovidiu Cristinel, Stoica 0000-0002-2765-1562
Keywords:	Computational theory of mind; Artificial Intelligence; Philosophy of Computer Science
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Consciousness
Depositing User:	Ovidiu Cristinel Stoica
Date Deposited:	23 Jun 2023 12:18
Last Modified:	23 Jun 2023 12:18
Item ID:	22234
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Consciousness
Date:	22 June 2023
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22234

Available Versions of this Item

• Does a computer think if no one is around to see it? (deposited 23 Jun 2023 12:18) [Currently Displayed]
  • Does a computer think if no one is around to see it? (deposited 26 Jun 2023 12:54)
    • Does a computer think if no one is around to see it? (deposited 12 Jul 2023 12:20)
      • Does a computer think if no one is around to see it? (deposited 23 Dec 2023 23:26)

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