Thinking about Thinking: How many humans does it take to create a Thought Event?

To begin: Something I have written about in other forums…The Cogito.

Part I

Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am.   Am what?  What has this “thinker” become?  And is Thinking an atomic level Essence indivisible from “I am”.  Applied to humans, the implication is certainly that without Thinking, you are Not.  But again, Not What? Human?

Meta-Cognition is the fog that ceaselessly clouds the realm of logical attempts to refute, or validate the statement, regarding the Cogito. 

If I do not possess any manner of meta-cognition, can I possibly know that I am Thinking.  If I lack the ability to ascertain whether or Not I am Thinking, Am I?

Cogito Ergo Sum.  Succinct and to the point.  But correct in any defensible way?  These 3( Cogito Ergo Sum) words do not include any sort of suggestion that while I may lack the meta-abstraction to evaluate the truthfulness of “I Am”, the same could be established by some quorum of observers, or via a self-administered and standardized evaluation. 

A further point of philosophical debate that seems always ready to throw a spanner into scientific works is the question of Brain vs Mind.  Machine vs Ethereal Essence?  Tangible vs Linguistic Construct?

If a man, in total isolation, unschooled and completely ignorant in the various sciences and philosophies of Mindfulness, exercises a consideration of something, was this truly a “thinking” event?  With no a priori understanding of Meta-anything, can we say with certainty that a “thinking event” has just come to pass?  And here we( or maybe just I) are, providing surrogate meta-meta-cognitive evaluations.

So how many “thinkers” does it take to screw in a light bulb. None.

How many philosophers and scientists does it take argue the existence of Thinking into being?  Quite likely more than one.

How many humans does it take to attempt to establish the occurrence of a “thinking event”?  Quite likely also more than one.

The temporary conclusion to this thought exercise might be a question:  Are self-awareness and meta-cognitive ability required to be present in order for “thinking” to occur?  And if one must Think in order To Be, can we possibly know, with any degree of non-faith-based certainty, when the genesis of “Thinking” actually occurred?   

Regarding the suggested necessity to be Intelligent in order to Think:  Many well respected researchers and highly respected scholars have independently and collectively put forth a myriad of standard evaluations to attempt the demonstration of a quantifiable presence of Intelligence in many forms of beings, including those that may not be of organic origins, but may be in part constructed from naturally occurring elements (Silicon, etc.)  Unfortunately, it must be considered that manifestation of “Intelligence” may not be limited to a finite number.  Further, it must also be considered that variations of Intelligence may exist in forms beyond the current comprehension and subsequent definitions put forth by those who seek to articulate the essence of Intelligence. To suggest otherwise would be akin to reasoning that all manners of Intelligence are current understood to the point of scientific explanation.

Part II

What makes the Turing Test for the presence of Intelligence particularly clever( in my opinion at least) is that he recognizes the potential impossibility, or at minimum, the highly distracting digression that would be required to irrefutably derive a universally accepted definition of Intelligence.  Instead, he focuses on the potential ability of a machine to imitate the response patterns of human, in such a way that they be indistinguishable from a human.  Among the various challenges inherent to this test, is the well observed unpredictability of humans, especially as the bio-psycho-social, and of course cultural, diversity of human test population increases.

There have been many successful exercises that have correctly predicted the behavioral patterns of humans, but at the same time, we should be aware of a long history of failures to accurately predict human behavior, and the successes and failures to articulate “timeless” truisms regarding human behavior show no indication of ever coming to a *predictable* conclusion. 

Can a machine now, or ever, imitate human response patterns to a structured evaluation such that man and machine become indistinguishable?   Quite possibly given the right pairing of the current undefined variations of human behaviors, and the more defined spectrum of machines. In other words: if by chance a human who displays a certain variation of behavioral patterns happened to be compared to a particular type of “Imitation Machine”, the results may well contain the possibility of being indistinguishable.

Even more interesting ( to me at least) is the influence that the ubiquity of machines is having on human behavior.  It would seem that the trend towards human imitation of machines may be increasing at a rate that is more accelerated than the trending  of a machine’s ability to perfectly imitate a human test subject.  But there is a dramatic difference in the manner in which these trends may be converging.  This difference I believe is best observed through a simple test of “manipulative minimization”.

The reversion of humans towards basic instincts given the complete separation from anything mechanical is with some degree of certainty going to be far more dramatic(and readily observable) than the separation of machines from humans.  Taken to some degree of extremity, and given some reasonable amount of time, it may be that while mechanical devices remain in a predictable steady state, which some may currently refer to as “over simplistic” relative humans; stripped of generations of mechanical prosthetic augmentation, humans may in fact regress to level of behavioral simplicity that trends towards that of a steady-state machine.  For many, the concept of a rapid decline in human behavioral complexity given the absence of mechanical behavioral manipulators is difficult to accept.  In many cases, those that find this concept hard to accept are the “thinkers” who have entirely confused their purposed “evolution” with the effects of the ubiquitous presence of mechanical prosthetics.( which I have previously discussed so I won’t be covering that concept at the moment) .

So, in my opinion, we cannot ignore the possibility of a state of human behavior that either already exists, or comes into existence, whereby humans unintentionally imitate machines in such a way that the Turing Test becomes predictably passable by a machine.

So what do we suppose might happen, if we give a variety of humans, ranging from experts in AI to humans with minimal exposure to mechanical devices, and ask them to behave in such a way that their behavior becomes indistinguishable from that of the most sophisticated AI machine that currently exists?  A “Turinual[sic] Reversion” Test.  But for all I Know, this may a standard scientific protocol practiced for the past 64 years….