Douglas Hofstadter’s Eight Abilities for Intelligence: Humans vs. Artificial Intelligence

 

Forty-two years ago (in 1979), Douglas R. Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid was published. It became a very popular and influential work.

Hofstadter’s main subjects in that book (at least as I read it) are Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, self-reference and “strange loops”. He also tied these subjects to artificial intelligence (AI) and the nature of computers.

Just to get one thing straight out of the way to begin with.

Neither this piece nor Hofstadter’s book have much — or indeed anything — to do with the debate about IQ (i.e., intelligence quotient) and how it’s related to human groups and individuals. (This has become such a politicised issue — on all sides — that it’s hardly worth contributing to.)

Predictably, the question “What is intelligence?” is raised (if often obliquely) in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Thus Hofstadter offered his readers eight “essential abilities for intelligence”. So what immediately follows are some biographical details and quotes from Hofstadter which may help put this piece in some kind of perspective.

Hofstadter once said that “a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology”. Indeed his work “has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence”. Yet Hofstadter himself has also (rhetorically?) said that he has “no interest in computers”.

Hofstadter has also advanced various sceptical positions on AI. For example, when Garry Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, Hofstadter wrote:

“It was a watershed event, but it doesn’t have to do with computers becoming intelligent.”

Yet despite all that, Hofstadter did once write (in his collection of articles Metamagical Themas) that

“in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?”

Indeed Hofstadter went so far as to organise a symposium (at Stanford University and in April 2000) called ‘Spiritual Robots’.

Eight Essential Abilities for Intelligence?

The following piece is not a set of arguments which attempts to state that computers are identical to humans when it comes to all aspects of intelligence. Instead, it’s simply an attempt to challenge what are seen — by many — to be absolute and (as it were) eternal differences between computers and human beings when it comes to intelligence.

It’s worth saying here that some of my responses to each of Hofstadter’s eight “essential abilities for intelligence” may get a little repetitive. That’s mainly because what can be said about one such ability — in relation to artificial intelligence or computers — can be said about (some of) the others too.

In any case, much depends on how one takes these abilities. And, as we shall see, it certainly depends on how the words (or concepts) contained in the sentences which express them are interpreted.

It’s also worth noting that Hofstadter’s eight essential abilities for intelligence have been extensively quoted over the years (though little discussed) in the literature on AI and other related matters. (See the pages of quotes — on Google Search — here.)

The following is the relevant extract from Hofstadter’s book (to which I’ve added numbers):

“No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behavior and intelligent behavior lies, in fact, to suggest that a sharp border exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly:

(1) to respond to situations very flexibly; (2) to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; (3) to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages; (4) to recognise the relative importance of different elements of a situation; (5) to find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them; (6) to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them; (7) to synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways; (8) to come up with ideas which are novel.”

It can be seen in the above that Hofstadter uses the words “intelligent behavior”, not the more abstract and general word “intelligence”. This suggests that he believed that if any x is capable of behaving — or acting — intelligently, then it is intelligent. Thus this position works against the idea that intelligence is some kind of entity in the mind or brain that effectively works as a kind of all-purpose and private mental “organ”. Behaviourists (from Gilbert Ryle and before) have, of course, argued against this conception of intelligence — and for many good reasons.

I shall now tackle each essential ability for intelligence one by one.

(1) To respond to situations very flexibly

The problem here is that not all adult human beings “respond to situations very flexibly”. Some human beings are very inflexible and they are so in many different ways. So reacting very flexibly can’t be entirely definitive of what it is to be a human being. Of course many humans do respond to situations very flexibly — yet the point still stands.

And neither can it be said that all computers (or all computer programmes) don’t respond very flexibly. In many contexts, they do. Think of an Internet search in which your wording (either for a question or for something else) is very ungrammatical or includes misspellings. Despite all that, the search picks up on these things and still provides a good answer. Of course sceptics may question this and say that it’s not a good example of responding to a situation very flexibly. But why isn’t it a good example — at least within this limited context? That said, one can also cite the well-known case of computerised robots and their not being able to navigate very well around new environments (but see here). But this is also true of some adult human beings and all young children. (Incidentally, many other animal species are better navigators than most humans.)

Of course all this will partly depend on what “very flexibly” means because, as with all Hofstadter’s examples, this phrase is — to some extent at least — vague. Indeed Hofstadter probably wouldn’t have denied this problem of vagueness when it comes to these abilities for intelligence.

(2) To take advantage of fortuitous circumstances

This is even vaguer — or simply broader — than (1) above.

The obvious thing which will be argued here is that computers won’t know anything about specific “fortuitous circumstances”… unless they’ve been programmed to know about them. Of course if they’ve been programmed to know about specific fortuitous circumstances, then they won’t actually be fortuitous circumstances to that computer. The problem here is that human beings also need to be programmed (or educated) enough in order to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances. And, as with all the other abilities cited by Hofstadter, some human beings are not very good at taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances. Still, compared to most computers (or computerised robots) and in most situations, humans are good at this.

Yet all that hints at a central problem.

This particular distinction between humans and computers isn’t absolute. Indeed there’s no categorical reason why computers can’t be programmed to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances.

Again, this is not an argument which states that computers are identical to humans when it comes to all aspects of intelligence. Instead, it’s simply to challenge what are seen — by many — to be absolute and eternal differences.

(3) To make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages

Some human beings are often not very good at making sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages. Indeed some adult humans are no good at this in any circumstances. Of course many other human beings are good at this. Yet because not all human beings are good at this, then this can’t be seen as a clear cut and definitive dividing line between human beings and computers. In other words, in order to make clear cut and definitive distinctions between human beings and computers one mustn’t rely on the best human beings and the worst computers to do so. (This is what the physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose does when he highlights the ability of higher-level mathematicians to “see” Gödelian “truths”.)

It’s hard to reason as to why computers can’t— at least in principle — be suitably programmed to make sense of ambiguous or contradictory messages. Sure, it would need a lot of detailed and fine-tuned programming; though human beings also need a lot of detailed and fine-tuned programming to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages.

(4) To recognise the relative importance of different elements of a situation

If anything, a computer could be better at recognising the relative importance of different elements of a situation than many human beings. (A point which also applies to some of the other abilities cited by Hofstadter.) This would of course depend on the “situation” and its “different elements”. In addition, we’d need to know how exactly humans recognise the relative importance of different elements of a situation and if it would be possible — or impossible - to replicate this cognitive ability in computers. As it is, this ability — as expressed by Hofstadter — is almost too vague to comment upon.

(5) To find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them

As already stated, some of these responses may be getting a little repetitive. This is because what can be said about one ability for intelligence — in relation to computers — can be said about others too. Thus the main response to (5) can also be found in (6) below.

A computer could be better at finding similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them than most — or even all — human beings. That primarily because a computer may have easy access to a huge amount of data. Of course human beings also have easy access to a huge amount of data (in memory, by reading books, etc.) too. A computer may, of course, find many irrelevant or useless similarities between situations — which are otherwise different — without “knowing” that they are in fact irrelevant or useless… yet the same is true of some human beings in some circumstances. So it must now be said that computer programmers have spent much time “training” computers to ignore irrelevant or useless information and therefore irrelevant or useless similarities or differences. (See Daniel Dennett’s ‘Cognitive wheels: the frame problem of AI’.)

(6) To draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them

The ability to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them too is hard to grasp because it’s a fairly vague ability. And again it must be said that a computer could be very good at this. After all, some computers have very-easy access to a vast amount of data which they can quickly sort out. Admittedly, a large data pool may not be helpful here if the computer hasn’t got the ability to “draw distinctions” in the first place. However, that’s unless a computer — or its programme — contains something that enables it to draw distinctions. And then we’d need to know how that can — or could — be done.

As it is, computers (or programmes) do often make the mistake of linking things which are really dissimilar (as in Internet searches based on word connections); rather than of drawing distinctions between things which are otherwise similar. But, here again, many adult human beings do this too. After all, don’t psychologists tell that adult human beings tend to automatically use (or employ) “stereotypes” and “generalisations” in which clear distinctions are ignored and vague similarities are emphasised?

(7) To synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways

It can be intuitively accepted that this ability does seem to go beyond what computers will be capable of… at least at the present time. It does seem like a problem to get a computer to take “old concepts” and put them “together in new ways”. This would require a lot of semantic nous and contextual skill.

Yet all this depends.

It depends on which kind of concepts are being discussed. It may even depend on what’s meant by the word “concept”. Computers can certainly — and with ease — shuffle numbers and equations around. They can even answer questions that haven’t been asked before — and surely that would require putting old concepts together in new ways.

(8) To come up with ideas which are novel

Firstly we’d also need to establish what an “idea” is. Computers can, after all, establish their own theorems (although a distinction has to be made between proving theorems and creating them — see here), design better routes from A to B, connect given sets of data to other data, respond to human questions which themselves express ideas (say, in Internet searches, etc.) and so on.

In any case, surely it would be very easy for a computer to come up with ideas which are novel. What’s important is whether those novel ideas would also be interesting, informative, useful and relevant. In other words, novelty in itself can be a very shallow phenomenon. That said, even if it is a shallow phenomenon, it may still be something that computers are very bad at. As it is, it’s hard to say if computers are bad at creating novel ideas because the notion is fairly vague and/or broad. I suppose we can say — and few AI aficionados would at present deny it — that no computer could come up with a novel theory for a new form of political government or a solution to the mind-body problem. That said, most humans couldn’t do these things either. In addition, it isn’t — in principle — impossible that a computers could do these things.

Finally, no one is claiming that any computer can do these kinds of thing today. The claim is that it is possible — and even very likely — that some of these things will be done in the future by computers or by other examples of AI.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Nigel Warburton (the Bestselling Author) on What Philosophers Should Do

 

i) Introduction 

ii) The “Classical Conception” of a Philosopher? 

iii) Fake Philosophers 

iv) Real Philosophers

The British philosopher Nigel Warburton is well known as a writer of what’s often called “popular philosophy”. He’s written various introductory books on philosophy, including the bestselling Philosophy: The Basics. He runs a philosophy weblog Virtual Philosopher and podcasts interviews with established philosophers at Philosophy Bites. He’s also written for the Guardian newspaper.

The “Classical Conception” of a Philosopher?

Nigel Warburton approvingly states what he believes is the “classical conception” of a philosopher. He puts it this way:

“The classical conception of a philosopher is someone who thinks about their own life, as well as about the nature of life.”

Warburton then contrasts that conception with what he believes many (or even most) academic analytic philosophers do. He continues:

“You wonder about the competence of some people who, having thought about their own lives, have decided to devote them entirely to making a mediocre contribution to an obscure debate. It’s like deciding to spend your life solving crossword puzzles.”

Perhaps one can see why Nigel Warburton doesn’t have much time for academic philosophers because… well, he’s written a lot of popular philosophy… Yet Warburton himself has a strong and long academic background.

At first Warburton was a pupil at the fee-paying Sevenoaks School; which is one of the United Kingdom’s most expensive schools. He then gained a BA from the University of Bristol and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. More relevantly and perhaps ironically, Warburton was a lecturer at the University of Nottingham and later joined the Department of Philosophy at the Open University.

So, like so many members of the elite and so many academics, Warburton has a go at elitists and academics (i.e., for being academics, not for other things). Indeed Warburton himself recognised this when he said that he was once in an

“awkward position as a lecturer because I didn’t feel completely committed to the academic world of philosophy”.

Warburton was a professional academic from before 1994 until 2013 and a student of philosophy before that. Indeed it’s highly likely that publishers wouldn’t have been interested in Warburton’s popular philosophy if it weren’t for the fact that he’d previously gained a PhD from Cambridge University and also been an academic.

Fake Philosophers

Warburton hints at specialisation and academic philosophy. That is, he wonders why academic analytic philosophers “have decided to devote them entirely to making a mediocre contribution to an obscure debate”. What’s more, he believes that this is “like deciding to spend your life solving crossword puzzles”.

Warburton is also prepared to defend his position. He said elsewhere:

“I’d be happy to have a debate with someone who thinks that, who does what I call ‘crossword puzzle philosophy’, just footnotes to footnotes. Is that real philosophy? Is that what Socrates did? Is that what Hume did? I don’t think so.”

There’s more from Warburton on academic analytic philosophers here:

“A lot of professional philosophers lack the imagination required to think about what it’s like not to understand something. Some have got into a complacent habit of speaking to each other in a kind of technical language, which is almost at times the avoidance of doing philosophy. They’re part of a culture of people who always say the same things and make the same moves: just making finer and finer discriminations between whether they’re a particular kind of materialist or a particular kind of functionalist. People stake out little claims. When faced with the need to explain what they’re doing and why it should be of interest to anyone at all outside of that culture, many flounder.”

I agree with much of that. However, I don’t believe that Warburton’s vision of political-activist philosophy (see later) is a better alternative. Indeed isn’t that exactly what we have with much continental philosophy?

I used the words “academic analytic philosophers” above because it’s clear that such people are Warburton’s prime — or even only — target. That can be seen from what else he has to say on this matter. Yet Warburton must also realise that most well-known continental philosophers (even the “relevant” and politically-active ones) made their name as academics too.

Warburton has some more critical things to say about academic analytic philosophers. He classes (in scare quotes) “the best philosophers” as those who’ve “passed all the exams”. He then adds that they (i.e., other academics) believe these philosophers are the “best philosophers [because] their peers say they’re the best philosophers”.

Warburton then gets all essentialist (or purist) about philosophy by asking this question:

“Are they really in the spirit of philosophy when they do this?”

So what is “the spirit of philosophy”?

Was the spirit of philosophy the same in 5th century BC Greece as it was when Francis Bacon was writing in the 17th century? What about 18th-century philosophy compared to the philosophy written in the 1930s when the logical positivists were in their heyday? And do the writers of popular philosophy automatically capture the spirit of philosophy when they attempt to make sure that their philosophy is (as it’s often put) “relevant”?

Specialisms

All academic disciplines have their specialists and specialisms.

This means that everything Warburton has just said about philosophers can also be said about most anthropologists, economists, historians, psychologists, sociologists, literary theorists, etc. Indeed many of the academics of some of these disciplines are far worse offenders than academic philosophers.

For example, haven’t sociologists, political theorists, literary theorists, etc. “got into a complacent habit of speaking to each other in a kind of technical language”. Aren’t they “part of a culture of people who always say the same things and make the same moves”? Finally, aren’t the following words from Warburton also perfectly applicable to many — or even most - other academics (i.e., those academics outside analytic philosophy)? -

“When faced with the need to explain what they’re doing and why it should be of interest to anyone at all outside of that culture, many flounder.”

In addition to all that, many poets, novelists, composers, etc. have made (to use Warburton’s words) “mediocre contribution[s]” to their disciplines too.

So philosophy isn’t like mastering the game of Monopoly or taking up amateur gardening. But even here I must hold my horses and say that some non-academic philosophers have also written highly complex and detailed philosophy. That is, philosophy that certainly wasn’t either about (to use Warburton’s words) “their own life” or about “the nature of life”. In other words, their not being academics didn’t stop them from writing about, for example, causation (as with Aristotle) or “hyperbolic doubt” (as with Descartes).

I quoted Warburton’s use of the words “mediocre contribution to an obscure debate” earlier. So here it must be asked if Warburton means either of the following two things:

(1) That the content of much (or all) academic analytic philosophy is mediocre.

Or,

(2) That the impact of the philosophical content is (or has been) mediocre.

First things first: many great philosophical works in history had — at least initially — a mediocre impact. What’s more, who’s going to decide if the content is mediocre anyway? Indeed is the content definitionally mediocre precisely because it has (or had) a mediocre impact on society at large?

Relevance

The ironic thing is that Warburton seems to argue against relevance in philosophy. Or, more accurately, he’s against the Government — and institutions and academics working on its behalf — “measuring” the relevance of academic philosophers’ works.

Specifically in reference to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), Warburton said:

“One of the most disturbing things about academic philosophy today is the way that so many supposed gadflies and rebels in philosophy have just rolled over in the face of the REF — particularly by going along with the idea of measuring and quantifying impact, a technical notion which was constructed for completely different disciplines. I’m not even sure what research means in philosophy. Philosophers are struggling to find ways of describing what they do as having impact as defined by people who don’t seem to appreciate what sort of things they do. This is absurd.”

He continued:

“Just by entering into this you’ve compromised yourself as a philosopher. It’s not the kind of thing that Socrates did or that Hume did or that John Locke did… Why are you doing this? I’m getting out. For those of you left in, how can you call yourselves philosophers? This isn’t what philosophy’s about.”

So perhaps Warburton is (or was) against the government and its representatives calling the shots when it comes to academic philosophers’ work. (This has been called “government interference”.) As it is, he nonetheless seems to be keen on political — and even party-political — commitment. That said, this isn’t my subject and it’s probably advisable not to tread on a subject that will be very dear to academics’ hearts.

Real Philosophers

So what do Nigel Warburton’s words “classical conception of a philosopher” actually mean?

I ask that because, even since the ancient Greeks, it’s been the case that not all philosophers wrote exclusively about their own lives and/or the nature of life.

Surely Warburton should have said the following instead:

The average layperson’s conception of a philosopher is someone who thinks about their own life; as well as about the nature of life.

Warburton makes it fairly clear (in various places) what he believes real philosophers do and what real philosophy is.

For example, in an interview he stated the following points:

“Philosophers are very well-placed to be critical participants about the nature of the democracy they’re living in, but very few respond to contemporary events. For instance today the big discussion is about gay marriage. It’s being discussed in Parliament.”

Warburton then goes on to tell us about fake philosophers and what they do. He continued:

“Philosophers today have mostly got their heads down. They’re concerned with writing for a journal which will publish work that takes them two or three years, and only five people will read it. These are people who could be contributing to something that’s incredibly important. Gay marriage is just one example of many. I don’t think philosophers responded particularly well to 9/11… philosophers are by and large more interested in getting a paper in Mind or Analysis than they are in commenting on the major political events of our time.”

The fact is that countless sociologists, economists, psychologists, political theorists, political writers, etc. are producing a vast amount of work on precisely the same kind of subjects Warburton mentions — as do continental philosophers! So does Warburton really want philosophical work on these subjects? Perhaps he’d also find purely philosophical work (or analysis) equally dull, boring and (to use his own words) “rather dry” precisely because it still isn’t (as the phrase has it) “politically committed” . As we’ll see, Warburton is politically committed (in a strident and obvious way) and he seems to demand political commitment from other philosophers too.

I say all that because after taking note of Warburton’s Twitter account, I soon noted that he uses his profile as a vehicle for crude and tribal political activism. More accurately, over the weeks I saw almost zero philosophical tweets or even political tweets with philosophical content. Instead, all Warburton seemed to tweet was crude and politically-tribal stuff. (It’s worth noting here that Warburton isn’t anywhere near as politically Manichean, zealous and extreme as Professor Ray Monk — see here. There are a number of other analytic philosophers on Twitter in Monk’s mould too.) Thus Warburton seemed to be no different from the countless other political activists on Twitter. Again, there was no philosophy there; though there was plenty of politics…

And then I realised that Warburton has two different Twitter accounts. He uses one account for the mainly political stuff (see here) and the other one for purely philosophical stuff (see here and the screenshots above and below). Yet that very neat-and-tidy division seems to work against Warburton’s general position on philosophy. If Warburton demands that philosophy be relevant when it comes to politics, and he also believes that philosophy can be very useful when it comes to political issues, then why has he completely separated philosophy from politics and created two distinct Twitter accounts? Again, Warburton’s politics account on Twitter contains no philosophical analysis at all; although it does contain various tweets about philosophy.

Of course Warburton will probably say something like this:

It’s only Twitter. What do you expect? Long-winded philosophical expositions?

… Well, some people on Twitter do advance cogent, if short, arguments — sometimes over a couple of tweets. (For example, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Julian Baggini, etc.) And that certainly doesn’t also mean that I agree with them either.

So Warburton has two sets of followers on Twitter. One group follows him because it likes his crude and politically-tribal tweets. And the other group is interested in the philosophical issues Warburton covers in his other Twitter account. Again, doesn’t this neat division work against what Warburton is claiming to do? In other words, why doesn’t Warburton use his knowledge and philosophical skills when he posts his political tweets? Does Warburton really need to be so crude and politically tribal — even on Twitter? Is that what being relevant is all about?

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[I can be found on Twitter here.]