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Comment by andrewmcwatters | Hacker News Reader

These aren't wild assertions. I'm not using charged language.

> Reasoning and consciousness are seperate(sic) concepts

No, they're not. But, in tech, we seem to have a culture of severing the humanities for utilitarian purposes, but no, classical reasoning uses consciousness and awareness as elements of processing.

It's only meaningless if you don't know what the philosophical or epistemological definitions of reasoning are. Which is to say, you don't know what reasoning is. So you'd think it was a meaningless statement.

Do computers think, or do they compute?

Is that a meaningless question to you? I'm sure given your position it's irrelevant and meaningless, surely.

And this sort of thinking is why we have people claiming software can think and reason.

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> > > Reasoning and consciousness are seperate(sic) concepts

> No, they're not. But, in tech, we seem to have a culture of severing the humanities for utilitarian purposes [...] It's only meaningless if you don't know what the philosophical or epistemological definitions of reasoning are.

As far as I'm aware, in philosophy they'd generally be considered different concepts with no consensus on whether or not one requires the other. I don't think it can be appealed to as if it's a settled matter.

Personally I think people put "learning", "reasoning", "memory", etc. on a bit too much of a pedestal. I'm fine with saying, for instance, that if something changes to refine its future behavior in response to its experiences (touch hot stove, get hurt, avoid in future) beyond the immediate/direct effect (withdrawing hand) then it can "learn" - even for small microorganisms.

You have again answered with your customary condescension. Is that really necessary? Everything you write is just dripping with patronizing superiority and combatative sarcasm.

> "classical reasoning uses consciousness and awareness as elements of processing"

They are not the _same_ concept then.

> It's only meaningless if you don't know what the philosophical or epistemological definitions of reasoning are. Which is to say, you don't know what reasoning is. So you'd think it was a meaningless statement.

The problem is the only information we have is internal. So we may claim those things exist in us. But we have no way to establish if they are happening in another person, let alone in a computer.

> Do computers think, or do they compute?

Do humans think? How do you tell?

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