On the nature of thinking. Private opinion

It is believed that a person perceives the reality of the senses. For the sake of simplicity, suppose one vision is used. The question is: what does a person see? It is rather obvious that there are color spots, because a person by definition cannot SEE, that is, perceive with his eyesight, something else.







By themselves, color patches do not possess semantics, but they add up to a common meaningful picture with the help of thinking.



Thinking works as follows: compares the color spots with each other and gives the result of the comparison.

If, again, simply, to accept that the spots differ from each other in color and position in space and time, the comparison can be carried out according to four criteria: a) by color, b) by location, c) by color change in time, d) by changing the location in time.

The result of the comparison is the establishment of a certain relationship between the color spots.

Relationships are binary: they answer the questions posed by either “yes” or “no”, for example, do color spots match in color or do they adjoin by location.

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In this case, relations are possible not only between the color spots, but also the relations themselves. You can always compare two relationships and get an answer, whether they coincide with each other (“yes” and “yes” or “no” and “no”) or do not match (“yes” and “no”).







Then you can compare the obtained pair results with each other and again get a binary answer in the form of "yes-no" and continue for a long time, depending on the number of color spots, and considering their changes over time - indefinitely. The result is a relationship between the relationship between the relationship between the relationship ... and at the very end - between the color spots (the fact that a person perceives directly the senses).

The resulting super complex relationship is a visual image - something that man perceives as reality, for example, the image of a green square.







Now the visual image of the green square can be compared with another visual image, by establishing a match or a mismatch between them, then continue further.







You do not see the color patches around you, namely that the constantly changing images of the surrounding world? So, the visual picture around us is a product not so much of sight, as of thinking, which transforms the color spots perceived by sight into a meaningful picture.

As proof, I will point out babies who clearly do not distinguish the details of the surrounding world. It would seem, why, if they have sharp eyesight? Because infant vision is acute, but the brain is not developed: it does not store the required number of images that allow you to perceive reality at an adult level. The infant is engaged in this in infancy, which compares visual spots, producing material for further comparisons and further conclusions at a greater and greater depth of abstraction.

So thinking is comparing. In this case, a single act of thinking is not one comparison operation, but several.







A thought, as it were, jumps from one compared element to another, finding in them something in common or different.

You notice a friend in the crowd, remember that you owe him a hundred bucks, and then you realize that your currency account has been canceled. A familiar one hundred bucks, a currency account are all previously recorded images (complex relationships between color spots), which, by comparison, add up to a new relationship, for example, the awareness of the undesirability of such a meeting. Several of these jumps, after which the chain of comparisons ends to give way to a new one, which requires a new association. If we managed to find a fundamentally new attitude, this attitude is stored in the memory, and it becomes possible to use it for new mental leaps from the image to the image (attitude to the relation). Next time, when you see a creditor, the first thing you will do is think about the undesirability of meeting with him and only then, if necessary, the thought can get the reverse transcript, for whatever reason the meeting is undesirable.

It remains to find out what speech is: without it, thinking turns out to be too simplistic. To solve this problem, we introduce into the system a second sense organ - a rumor, assuming that any reasonable word means any relation.

The spoken word "doctor" is a set of certain sounds, nothing more. At the same time, the word is associated with a certain attitude that has nothing in common with the pronounced sounds themselves - in this case, a person in a white coat. Thus, the word itself becomes an attitude involved in the process of thinking, moreover, in the indicated meaning.







Speech is necessary for communication - the way to exchange thoughts through telepathy has not yet been invented - but it is at this communicative stage of thinking that the possibility of its incorrect work arises.

This is rather paradoxical, but thinking itself is not mistaken. When a person sees two color spots and mentally compares them, the obtained comparison is by definition true, because the senses and thinking are not controlled by man. A visual illusion revealed by a discrepancy with the sensations of other people is possible, but the thinking itself works correctly. When assigning visual names to sound names, errors also cannot arise: it is obvious that the association of images with one or another sound is inert to semantics.

But the error is possible when communicating. How to check someone else's statement on the veracity? No, apparently, because you perceive only the result, not the thought process of the source. If someone says: “Do not go there, it’s dirty there” - you can either take a word or not believe it; the third is not given until you are personally convinced. But how else, because thinking operates with a comparison of complex relationships, which ultimately boil down to primary perceptions - color spots in our example? Try to identify any - yes any! - an abstract concept through changing the color and location of the spots in time, and you will see that the task is not trivial, almost impossible.

Tyutchev has a good philosophical line about this: “A spoken idea is a lie”. Absolutely fair ... how fair a spoken idea can be, of course.

Speech constructions are not only vague in their own right, they also call into question thoughts - if they use in their logical constructions not independently developed or tested, but uncritically borrowed images from other people.

Post Scriptum

What does this have to do with artificial intelligence? The fact that when creating it there are two ways:

1. In the first case, the reality perceived by the receptors of an artificial person is adapted to the vocabulary embedded in it. The robot is trying to identify color spots as concepts that were originally known to him. And if not?

I remember the story of Ray Bradbury (unfortunately, I do not remember the name), in which the boy meets a certain creature and tries to identify him - to understand who he was facing. “Do not do this,” the creature asks. But the boy continues, with the result that the creature becomes the one for whom he was considered.

A robot programmed for a similar way of thinking will never go beyond the limits of the human lexicon, no matter how hard it tries.

2. In the second case, the robot is given the opportunity to independently analyze the reality, determining the relationship between its primary elements - color spots. In other words, the robot is allowed to develop its own worldview ... Will this worldview coincide with the human one and will it be possible to use the familiar lexicon for naming its images? God knows.

There is a third option: to abandon the use of speech, making the robot dumb. Who said that a thinking creature can not be dumb? Of course, it can. But such an artificial intelligence — which understands everything, but is silent like an owl — is hardly suitable for its future creators.