6-34 Mental states only arise under the constraints of natural law.
. . . is disputed by . . .
6-35 Drugged Gigantor-building Norwegians in Texas.
The claim (Selmer Bringsjord, 1992)
Imagine that in the year 2020 the computational structure of the
brain has been mapped out. Four billion Norwegians have been spread
out across the state of Texas and are attempting to build Gigantor-an
enormous Turing machine composed of the Norwegians, railroad cars,
tracks, blackboards, erasers, and golf carts. Furthermore, the
Norwegians have been drugged, covered with electrodes hooked to
a central console, and are under the control of whatever impulses
are sent to them. Their actions are now under the dictate of natural
law. Because Gigantor lacked mental states before the electrode
intervention, it seems unlikely that Gigantor will have any mental
states after the intervention. Hence even satisfying Pollock's
requirement that the information be guided by natural laws isn't
sufficient for the creation of mental states.
The Bringsjord argument
Here is the argument in Bringsjord's words: "It's the year
2020. The big state of Texas, you hear one day, has been purchased
by the Norwegians, who, though confined to a thin sliver of Scandinavian
land in 1991, and at that time only 4 million in number, now outnumber
the Chinese, and are extremely wealthy. Furthermore, the Norskies
go in for gargantuan engineering projects in this day and age;
in particular, they want to build a standard Turing machine down
in Texas which represents the flow chart which describes the human
brain. . . Sometimes the Norwegians "sub out" to foreign
contractors; you are such a person. The Norwegians have hired
you to help build an agent, a person, something they call 'Gigantor.'
Gigantor is to be Texas-sized; and his "brain" is to
be composed of a standard Turing machine stretching across the
Lone Star State--a Turing machine which is isomorphic to flow
charts for human brains. The Turing machine that you have been
hired to help build is to be made of Norwegian citizens themselves
. . . Norwegians and railroad ties and tracks, and blackboards
and chalk and erasers. So there you are: picture yourself with
a hard hat on, picture golf carts for moving Norwegians around
the construction site, picture them dutifully linking railroad
track together, picture them feverishly writing symbols on the
blackboards placed in the squares between ties, and so on and
so on" (S. Bringsjord, 1992, p. 210-211).
However, the next step in Bringsjord's argument goes a step further: "There is a neurologist, Jones, who has a bird's eye view of the Norwegians all working away. Jones, we can assume, gets some overhead satellite shots of the Norwegians in their tracks with a special drug of his invention, and then he hooks up electrodes to each brain in the Lone Star complex, and runs these electrodes, with the help or wires, back to a special console of his design. When the drug wears off, Jones will be able to sit comfortably at his console and punch into his keyboard permutations which causally necessitate that the Norwegians behave as they were behaving when they were going about their work willingly. The important thing to notice . . . is that the Norwegians are now acting not of their own free will, but under the dictates of physical law. And yet it seems obvious that Jones' actions can't suddenly have taken us from the absence of mentality to Gigantor, a genuine agent with hopes and fears like our own" (S. Bringsjord, 1992, p. 221-222).
References
Bringsjord, Selmer. 1992.What Robots Can and Can't Be.
Boston: Kluwer.
Links
is disputed by 6-36 Gigantor is still
under human control.