尸体，思想和机器
What Rene Descartes can help us understand about artificial intelligence
By Courtney Suciu
With the publication of关于方法的话语1和the famous maxim, “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am.”), Rene Descartes profoundly shaped the future of scientific inquiry, mathematical reasoning and our understanding of consciousness. Additionally, inspired by early modern inventors, Descartes wrote copiously on the subject of bodies, minds and machines – exploring concepts and theories which, as we’ll explore, continue to shape the development of 21st-century technologies including artificial intelligence.
What is a machine?
In hisDiscourse, Descartes pondered at length about machines and mechanization which was a burgeoning topic in the 17thcentury, an age of prolific invention. The steam turbine, pendulum clock, air pump, adding machine, barometer, refracting telescope and reflecting telescope were among the emerging technologies of the time. Amid such advancements, Descartes was inspired to explore their nature and their relationship to the way the human body functions.
Michael Wheeler, one of the authors of the book历史上的机械思想2, categorized and described the three kinds of machines on which Descartes focused:
Type A: A material system that unfolds purely according to the laws of blind physical causation.
B型：作为一种机器的材料系统，但另外还有一定规范的正确和不正确的功能。
Type C: A material system that is a machine in the sense of B, but that is also either (1) a special-purpose system or (2) an integrated collection of special subsystems.
For Descartes, Wheeler explained, the whole universe, including the bodies of humans and animals, could be defined as A type machines, acting in response to physical causes. An example of a B type machine might be a clock which is judged on its ability to correctly tell time – if it fails to do so, an explanation can be determined to find out why. In the same way, the systems of the human body, such as the circulatory system, functions properly as it pumps blood throughout the body. When it ceases to function correctly, a diagnosis can be made to explain why.
The type C machine, Wheeler said, is represented in Descartes’s theory of the nervous system, of which in the “fine-grained details” the philosopher was wrong but in the abstract, his ideas correspond to electrical and biochemical transmission systems recognized by modern neuroscientists. The key to this type of machine, said Wheeler, is Descartes’s envisioning of “the existence of a locally acting bodily process through which the unaided machine can, in principle, continually modify itself, so that its future responses to incoming stimuli are partially determined by its past interactions with its environment.”
换句话说，C型机器是一种能够自动学习和适应的机器。
The bodily machine
笛卡尔认为心灵像截然不同，与身体分开，这表征了哲学家作为二元论者。根据笛卡尔的说法，头脑不能是一台机器，因为它是“无关紧要”，而机器基本上是一种材料系统。基本上，对于笛卡尔（和其他二元人士），身体用作心灵的自动化船只。
但是，我们的意思是“思想”？简而言之，根据笛卡尔思想，这是人类的部分不能自动化。如果我们认为人体是B型机器，可以轻松指向专业的子系统，根据规范和标准正确或不正确地工作 - 循环系统，消化系统，神经系统等。
But the human body can also be considered a C type machine, Wheeler explained, capable of automated learning and adaptation through exposure to new stimuli and from experience. C type machine functioning might include qualities like learning to walk and talk, sensory reception and even the development of human attachment and other emotional needs.
起初，我们可能会考虑与心灵相关的心理性质的这些C类型功能，但正如我们现在所知的那样，随着笛卡尔开始探索，我们的大部分学习和情感经验都是基于身体的专业子系统。例如，我们学会通过感觉刺激避免热表面;我们对父母和儿童形成情感依恋的能力与内分泌系统相关联。
These C type functions are also true of animals, and potentially, Descartes knew, of man-made machines which could be capable of such automated learning and modification. But if this is true, what makes us “human”?
根据笛卡尔：意识。
Descartes认为的意识并非由身体的专业子系统自动化。意识，我们在这里定义为独特的人类思考和理性的能力 - 并对自己说：“我认为，因此，我是” - 来自思想。
Wheeler explained a popular scholarly view of Descartes’ body-mind distinction: the ability to reason results from the many complex overlapping, subsystems continuously at work together in the body. While the mind is not part of the body, it cannot exist without the body.
This distinction is fundamental to Cartesian duality and is key to long-held doubts about the possibility of creating artificial intelligence.
没有心灵的情况如何存在非人类推理机？是否有可能创造一个人为推理的头脑？
机器人的原因是什么意思？
Crudely summarized, here is how Wheeler explained the limitations of machine “thinking”: Machines function to perform a specific task. Just as the circulatory system works to specifically pump blood throughout the body, a robot can be commanded to successfully perform a specific task based on a specific set of directions and data.
但是，当机器人给出矛盾方向或改变原始命令的新数据或刺激时，它将无法运作，因为它没有推理的能力。
因为在我们对身体机器的理解中，人体由多种相互关联的子系统组成能够receive and respond to unlimited stimuli, including contradictory directions and new data. Then the human mind considers which information is relevant, contemplates the consequences of possible outcomes and takes appropriate action.
Would it be possible for a machine to also function this way?
Well, consider an example provided by Wheeler: A robot is tasked with retrieving its power source from a room which also contains a bomb.
The robot knows the power source is resting on a wagon, so it decides (quite reasonably it seems) to drag that wagon out of the room. Unfortunately, the bomb is on the wagon too. The result is a carnage of nuts, bolts, wires and circuit boards.
The robot failed because it is limited in its ability to consider the consequence of moving the wagon – it simply was not designed to “think” that way. Wheeler described what would happen if the robot was replaced by a more sophisticated one “that operates by checking for every side effect of every plan that it constructs. This robot, too, is unsuccessful, simply because it never gets to perform an action. It just sits there and ruminates…there are just too many side effects to consider.” [Personal note – who hasn’t been this robot?]
为了成功，这种机器人介面需要可塑性来确定无限刺激的“动态变化的世界”，这是哪些信息与其预期函数相关，结果如何受到此类信息的影响，并确定如何进行？其他单词，它需要能够推理。
AI的身心挑战
从惠勒的例子中，很明显为什么要重复人类智力是如此艰巨的努力。当我们开始考虑这种推理机器需要什么样的“身体”时，挑战是复杂的。
即使人造思想可以配备上述这种灵活性，它仍然是其身体机器的局限性，因为Brian Duffy和他的共同作者在文章中探讨了“推理机器的未来：思想和身体。”3
对于Duffy等人来说，人工思想被称为“代理”，而且，如在笛卡尔模型中，他们展示了如何，虽然这样的思维与身体分开，但它仍然需要一个身体 - 平台或设备 -运作成功。他们必须没有限制，他们争论，这可能会阻碍人为思维能力动态聚集和合理地处理数据。
The problem is that “all platforms are not created equal,” Duffy et al wrote. They have “varying memory, processing power, bandwidth, display characteristics. Consequently, these agents have to be able to adapt to [these] different conditions” of their bodies, such as anticipating and responding to a shortage of memory or a slow processing speed, while still performing their original command.
While these concerns reflect some of the dilemmas presented in Cartesian notions of bodies, minds and machines, Duffy and his co-authors also addressed issues that go well beyond what Descartes would have likely anticipated. How could Descartes have imagined the pervasiveness of machinery in our society, and the intimate ways we interact with them?
For one thing, we live in a radically more image-conscious era than the 17th世纪，随着Duffy等人指出，“在实验中已经证明了”实体的影响和实体的声音/演讲的影响“在实验中已经证明。”
Duffy and his co-authors make the case that the agent’s “body” must not only empower the functionality of an artificial mind, but also “maintain the agent's identity in the eyes of the user.” “The next step” in the development of artificial intelligence, they write, “is to look at how we will interact with these systems, how we will interact and understand these machines.”
就像研究表明“一个人更有吸引力一样，它越有助于他人就掌握了更高的智力，”我们找到一台机器的吸引力越有吸引力，我们可能会发现它的越多，我们可能会觉得值得信赖，并且愿意与之交往。当然，这不是构建“更漂亮”机器人的论点，而是对美学在平台和设备设计中的重要性的主张。
进一步研究
Learn more about how the influential writings of Descartes – and other pioneers of the scientific revolution – have shaped the future of physics, space exploration, medicine and technology.
Central to this archive’s Collection 14 are publications relating to the Cartesian revolution, along with hundreds of items that demonstrate the remarkable medical, scientific and intellectual advancements of the time. Encompassing more than 1,100 printed items and nearly 490,000 pages of content, highlights include works by Descartes, such as editions ofLes Principes de la philosophie, copies ofLes Passions de l'âme,discours de la methode和a volume of his letters. Supporting these are a host of items which shed light on Descartes’s wider philosophical milieu and his reception. A leading advocate of Descartes was Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). His two-volumeDe la recherche de la verité(1674-5) appears in Paris and Brussels editions. Other followers include Claude Ameline (1629-1706), and Pierre Cally (1630-1709), whoseUniversae philosophiae institutioappears in its original Jean Cavelier 1695 Caen edition.
Bodley，A. M.（2015）。Android和我们的Cyborg Selves：什么Androids将教我们关于（帖子）人类
Loghry，J. B.（2013）。The Recreation of Consciousness: Artificial intelligence and Human Individuation（订单号3605083）。
McGettigan, T. (2017).Artificial Intelligence: Is Watson the Real Thing?IUP信息技术学报，13（2），44-69。
Obodiac, E. (2012).公民的转基因。后现代文化，22（3）。
Weigmann，K。（2012）。Does Intelligence Require a Body? The Growing Discipline of Embodied Cognition Suggests That to Understand the World, We Must Experience the World。EMBO Reports, 13(12), 1066-9.
Wheeler, M. (2010).塑料机：行为多样性和图灵测试。Kybernetes，39（3），466-480。
Baker, G., Morris, K., & Baker, G. (1995).Descartes' Dualism。
Descartes, R. (1990).Meditations On First Philosophy/ meditationes de prima philosophia : A bilingual edition。
Descartes, R. (1998).笛卡尔：世界和其他着作。
Kolak, D., Hirstein, W., & Mandik, P. (2006).Cognitive Science: An Introduction to Mind and Brain。
Pfrehm, J. (2018).Technolingualism: The Mind and the Machine。
Wilkinson, R., & Wilkinson, R. (2000).Minds and Bodies : An Introduction with Reading。
Notes:
- Descartes, R. (2015).关于方法的话语。可用Ebook Central。
- HUSBANDS，P.，Holland，O.，＆Wheeler，M。（2008）。历史上的机械思想。可用Ebook Central。
- Duffy, B. R., O'Hare, G.,M.P., Bradley, J. F., Martin, A. N., & Schoen, B. (2005).Future Reasoning Machines: Mind and Body。Kybernetes，34（9），1404-1420。可用Proquest Central.和SciTech Premium。
________________________________________________________________________________
Courtney Suciu is ProQuest’s lead blog writer. Her loves include libraries, literacy and researching extraordinary stories related to the arts and humanities. She has a Master’s Degree in English literature and a background in teaching, journalism and marketing. Follow her @QuirkySuciu
相关的帖子
我们在本周阅读的5件事：12/12/2019
A roundup of surprising, insightful and interesting stories from the Internet…