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Re13: The Care Factor

Retraice1

A constraint on intelligences.

Air date: Tuesday, 10th Nov. 2020, 1 : 25 PM Pacific/US.

What intelligence can't do

While it's impossible to know all the things an intelligence might do, what it cares about might reveal a boundary, a region of things that the intelligence just can't or won't do.

Taking care seriously

If intelligence has a bright (or at least interesting2) future, the role of what we call 'care' will be central to that future.

Two philosophers, Haugeland and Frankfurt, writing at about the same time, pointed out 'the importance of what we care about'.3 Haugeland was talking about AI; Frankfurt was calling out 'care' as a philosophical domain distinct from epistemology and ethics.

Two beings, one doesn't care

Haugeland argued that, in understanding simple textual (or spoken) stories, the burden of knowledge is profoundly on the reader.

He tells the story of two beings, only one of which understands the difference between losing a part of one's body and losing a child.

'Computers don't give a damn'

Haugeland also captures some of the implications with his opening (and closing) line:

"The trouble with artificial intelligence is that computers don't give a damn."4

How could computers understand, without having and living a life, without a chronology, and feelings?

To understand each other, we must have knowledge about how the world works (intentions, situations, common-sense), and, crucially, what it's like to have a life and care about the things in it. He called it existential holism, and said it was fundamental to understanding natural language.

Common-sense

On the challenge of common-sense in artificial intelligence, see, for example, Gary Marcus and Oren Etzioni in Ford.5

Existence

You have to be a whole person even to understand the simplest human conversations.

A tar pit of creatures and language

If we ask which living creatures 'care', we're quickly faced with the problem of definition.

Other words compete with 'care' in their meanings: motivation, desire, want, need, will or willpower. If they're all different, exactly how? If they're all the same, why so many words?

Logical, causal and 'volitional' necessity

Frankfurt6 says philosophy has systematically analyzed epistemology (questions of 'is', knowledge, belief) and ethics (questions of 'ought', morals, action), but failed to notice 'the importance of what we care about'.

He also coins a term, 'volitional necessity', to describe the sense a person has when they can or cannot do something for reasons that are neither logical nor causal, and in a way that does not tend to entail feeling helpless. What is affecting such a person, he says, is care.7

Things you're not going to do

If it is possible to know what an intelligence cares about, it seems very likely that it is possible to know what is unthinkable to that intelligence.8

References

Adams, Z., & Browning, J. (Eds.) (2017). Giving a Damn: Essays in Dialogue with John Haugeland. MIT. ISBN: 978-0262035248. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0262035248 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0262035248 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016598

Churchland, P., & Churchland, P. (2000). Foreward to the second edition of Von Neumann's The Computer and the Brain. In von Neumann (1958).

Ford, M. (2018). Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it. Packt. ISBN: 978-1789131512. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1789131512 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1789131512

Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge. ISBN: 978-0521336116. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0521336116 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0521336116 https://lccn.loc.gov/87026941

Haugeland, J. (1998). Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Harvard. ISBN: 0674382331. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0674382331 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0674382331 https://lccn.loc.gov/97044542

Retraice (2020/09/07). Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re1 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

von Neumann, J. (1958). The Computer and the Brain. Yale, 3rd ed. First published 1958. Third edition 2012. ISBN: 978-0300181111. Searches for this edition: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0300181111 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0300181111 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011943281 Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Computer%20and%20the%20Brain

Index Etzioni, Oren, 1

Marcus, Gary, 1

1https://www.retraice.com/retraice

2Churchland & Churchland (2000) p. xliii. See also Retraice (2020/09/07).

3Haugeland (1998) pp. 58-59. Frankfurt (1988) p. 80 ff.

4Haugeland (1998) pp. 47, 60. Cf. Adams & Browning (2017).

5Ford (2018) p. 319, pp. 494-496.

6Frankfurt (1988) p. 80 ff.

7Frankfurt (1988) pp. 85-88.

8Cf. Frankfurt (1988) pp. 177 ff. on 'Rationality and the Unthinkable'.