The intention of the one who makes a chair is relevant, but not necessarily completely determinate. If someone says "I am making a chair," but it turns out that the thing has the shape of a hammer, it still will not be a chair.
When exactly is the intention relevant? If two objects have the same shape but different intended uses, and you still classify them the same, then the intention is not relevant. More generally, if we have variables X, Y and want to test if a function f(X,Y) depends not only on X, but also on Y, we have to find a point where f(X1, Y1) is not equal to f(X1, Y2). Are you saying that sometimes intention matters, just not for chairs? If not, I can only assume that intention doesn't determine anything and only shape is important.
I already notice the similarity between all the things that are called feelings
Yes, in this case by "meaningful" I meant, "can be meaningfully extended to robots". I admit that this wasn't clear.
If it turned out that I did not have a brain
Indeed, if it turned out that you did not have a brain or anything equivalent, you would have falsified my theory. Falsification is a good thing. Unfortunately for you, you do have a brain.
It matters whether it feels similar
Are you going to feel the robot's feeling and compare?
Are you saying that sometimes intention matters, just not for chairs?
Intention matters for chairs as well. I am saying that all of the circumstances are relevant, and one factor like intention may not completely settle it, but it is one of the factors that determine the matter.
Yes, in this case by "meaningful" I meant, "can be meaningfully extended to robots". I admit that this wasn't clear.
Unquestionably, it can be meaningfully extended to robots. You simply mean the same thing that you mean in the regular case. The only questio...
(This post grew out of an old conversation with Wei Dai.)
Imagine a person sitting in a room, communicating with the outside world through a terminal. Further imagine that the person knows some secret fact (e.g. that the Moon landings were a hoax), but is absolutely committed to never revealing their knowledge of it in any way.
Can you, by observing the input-output behavior of the system, distinguish it from a person who doesn't know the secret, or knows some other secret instead?
Clearly the only reasonable answer is "no, not in general".
Now imagine a person in the same situation, claiming to possess some mental skill that's hard for you to verify (e.g. visualizing four-dimensional objects in their mind's eye). Can you, by observing the input-output behavior, distinguish it from someone who is lying about having the skill, but has a good grasp of four-dimensional math otherwise?
Again, clearly, the only reasonable answer is "not in general".
Now imagine a sealed box that behaves exactly like a human, dutifully saying things like "I'm conscious", "I experience red" and so on. Moreover, you know from trustworthy sources that the box was built by scanning a human brain, and then optimizing the resulting program to use less CPU and memory (preserving the same input-output behavior). Would you be willing to trust that the box is in fact conscious, and has the same internal experiences as the human brain it was created from?
A philosopher believing in computationalism would emphatically say yes. But considering the examples above, I would say I'm not sure! Not at all!