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Well just because it was a joke doesn't mean I don't still want an answer. :)
A tree isn't human because there are enough significant physical differences to justify two different names/taxonomic categories. That should have been obvious to you. I don't think we mean exactly the same things when we say "human."
I think that when you say "human," you mean more than just the species Homo Sapiens, you also include the concepts of mind and soul. I think you believe that humans are special, or fundamentally different from other animals.
I don't believe Homo Sapiens are really that special when compared to other animals. We are not the only creatures that have developed tools or language. We are not the only creatures to feel emotions or pain, or to be "aware" of our surroundings. Insect societies are fundamentally not too far different from ours. Dogs and pigs are more intelligent than human infants. Butterflies see the world in colors we can't even imagine.
Our greatest claim to being superior to other animals is probably our accomplishments in the STEM fields. But, in that we are quickly being overtaken by machines.
To me, it seems intuitively clear (read: I'm not claiming I can provide a logical proof) that humans are on the other side of an important threshold of intelligence as compared to most or all other animals on earth. And including machines in the discussion seems premature. For all we know, the ability to attain consciousness is related to the materials that form our brains and anything silicon-based is incapable of consciousness.
But even so, I agree we aren't special in any absolute sense. I don't see why chimps or dolphins couldn't evolve to cross that intelligence threshold, if it exists. And despite our remarkable ability to understand abstract concepts, I take it as a given that there are limits to our ability to understand the universe, much as a cat can never understand how a DVD player works the way that we can.
I thought dolphins and mice already had become intelligent. :)
I didn't say that machines were conscious, only that they are very quickly becoming much better at using mathematics and may soon be better than humans at STEM related tasks.
I meant crossing the intelligence threshold that humans have crossed, not just having any degree of intelligence. I'm not sure how to clearly define it. But I think mice would have trouble understanding this discussion. :-) Understanding theory of mind is one important threshold. I think humans have crossed another important threshold (or more than one) in terms of understanding abstract concepts, even compared to chimps and dolphins.
Also I think consciousness is very relevant to claiming machines are "using mathematics". Unless the machine itself becomes conscious, we are using machines to do mathematics. The machine is just a physical structure and reaction, like a crystal lattice. You wouldn't claim a crystal lattice is intelligent or using math, just because we can use math to describe interesting aspects of its structure, would you?
I don't think you understood the joke. It was a vague reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Your point about machines not being aware that they are using math reminds me of the Chinese room. Do you agree with it?
I'll get back to you regarding the Chinese room once I have done more research on it, but I want to return to the discussion of classification of trees and humans again. You can distinguish between trees and humans based on their appearance. Do all trees share something that makes them trees?(Aristotelian form.) Do you have an understanding of what a tree is?
When I say human I mean a rational, sentient, living, material, substance. I'm not a materialist (as I said before, I follow the Scholastic school of thought), but you can't successfully argue against my stance by saying that you have a different idea (which is immaterial) of what a human is. I'm not asking what you think I think a human is, I'm asking what you think a human is.
"I don't believe Homo Sapiens are really that special when compared to other animals. We are not the only creatures that have developed tools or language. We are not the only creatures to feel emotions or pain, or to be "aware" of our surroundings. Insect societies are funduamentally not too far different from ours. Dogs and pigs are more intelligent than human infants. Butterflies see the world in colors we can't even imagine. "
You're completely missing the point. I'm saying that we aren't distinguished from other animals based on these things, so what do you use to distinguish us?
As regards STEM, I'm not an artistic person and I'm not saying art is more IMPORTANT than other things, but it seems to be a difference between humans and other animals. Can you explain why we have art museums and no other animal does?
We are distinguished by biological differences.
Art is a refined extension of beauty. In addition to merely noticing beauty, we create it. Beauty is simply an evolutionary adaptation that makes us seek symmetry and harmony. Other animals can perceive beauty, but only humans have the resources to make art and build museums around it.
Our brains are closely related to consciousness, but they are not necessarily the same thing. And knowing if anything silicon-based is capable of consciousness or not leads to the mind-body problem.
While I agree with Voidious that we don't know enough about our brains to say for sure, I personally speculate that a very powerful supercomputer running very smart software could think like us. I guess that makes me a physicalist.
A normal computer with very smart software could think like us. A supercomputer only provides speed.
@Chase-san
Really? The human brain has over two petabytes of long-term memory.[1] Does your computer have a hard drive that size?
@Voidious
You seem to imply a difference between a conscious being deciding to use math and a computer receiving instructions and giving outputs. But, if consciousness is deterministic, is there really any difference between a conscious being receiving inputs (from its senses) and deciding to use math, and a machine receiving inputs (indirectly from conscious beings) and deciding to use math?
You have said that you believe humans are mostly deterministic. There are also many instances of people behaving deterministically. Among them are, as I've noted before, people who have transient global amnesia.
If we are purely deterministic, then no, there's no difference. Math only exists in our minds, so to me, if there's no consciousness, there's no math.
I didn't say we aren't conscious. I said that our consciousness is deterministic, i.e. we give the same outputs when we receive the same inputs. We are just a "physical structure and reaction."
I'd still like to know what you think about the Chinese room thought experiment. It seems very relevant to our discussion.
Why do you assume that we are deterministic? Don't you think it at least seems like we make choices?
We do make choices. I never said or even intentionally implied that we don't.
Determinism is simply the idea that everything in the universe has a causal relationship with everything else in the universe, and can only behave in one way. For example, let's say that I decide to eat a pizza for lunch instead of a salad. A determinist would say that all my past experiences, as well as the environment around me, and countless other things directly caused me to choose to eat the pizza.
Notice that from the deterministic perspective, I actually make a choice. I use all my memories to weigh both options and choose the one that benefits me the most.
Please, listen to the Radiolab clip I linked to. About five minutes in, they tell the story of a woman with transient global amnesia. It is an excellent example of human determinism.
I think most people (including me) would define "choice" in such a way that determinism contradicts it. If there was only ever one possible outcome, no choice was made, only the illusion of one.
I believe that humans are like computers; we have inputs and outputs. When we have the same inputs, we will have the same outputs.
But, we still make a choice. The woman in the clip decided to say the same things over and over, because her inputs were roughly the same.
Well, you're free to use the word that way, but I definitely assign a different meaning to the word, and I bet most people do too. To me, it sounds like the difference between perceiving a choice and actually making one.
That still isn't a supercomputer, that is just a storage network. But if I recall the storage capacity of the human brain is still in dispute. Some say its incredibly vast (like you did just now), others claim it is just better at storing the information. I am more in the second camp.
It isn't compression exactly. I would say it is more of useless information is discarded, and useful information is only partially stored. Say I may learn something, but if I never use it, i'll forget its meaning. Meaning my brain got rid that useless information because it was never used. Studies show we forget up to 75% of what we learn on a daily basis. Of course if it got used a lot at some point it will stay in there for future use, though the exact details will get fuzzy with disuse.
It will go from "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." to "fox jumped over dogs" to "fox (general notion of going over) dog". That makes no sense, so fox... oh, over the dog. What can we use to go over a dog. Well we could jump, or we could hover, fly. But a fox cannot hover or fly, so it was probably jump. So we reconstruct it to be "the fox jumped over the dog." Information was lost, but the general meaning remained.
To further enforce this, I had forgot part of the original saying above. I had lost 'quick'. But then I remembered that oh, its one of those sentences that uses all the letters. I noticed it didn't have a 'q' in it. So I suddenly recalled, oh, "Quick". Well the dog isn't quick, I don't think it quickly jumped, so the fox must be the one who was quick, as most foxes are.
