Science Fiction, Technology, and Our Modern World - Essay Example

The batch enables him to give back certain Chinese symbols, he will, therefore, give answers to questions. The answers are exactly similar to those of a native Chinese just by looking correlating the symbols and reading instructions in English. The man in the thought experiment does not comprehend Chinese but still produce coherent answers. A computer cannot possibly become conscious because of following code to produce answers, which it does not understand. This experiment proves that computers do not understand communication, and the programs will never be able to create minds or learn. Q2. Factionalism theory is a doctrine that states that what makes something a mental state such as thought, pain or desire does not depend on its internal constitution.

It solely depends on its functionality or the role it performs on its cognitive system in which it is part. It explicitly means that its causal relations to sensory stimulations, and not mental state and behavior determine mental state identity. Language of thought theory postulates that thinking and thought happen in a mental language. The language consists of a representation system realized physically in the thinkers’ brain and has combinatorial semantics and syntax such that representation operations are only sensitive to the synaptic properties of representation.

The thought is, therefore, a representation token that has a syntactic structure with relevant semantics. Looking at Data in The Next Generation (TNG) on the Star Trek, an Android strives to understand emotions and become a human being. Data and almost all Sci-fi related robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and androids that scientists have created are all anchored in the theories of functionalism. Q3. Arguments refuted by Dennett against robotic conscience include an old fashion dualism that robots are purely material while consciousness require immaterial mind-stuff.