quote
active
quote:can-machines-think-this-should-begin-with-definitions-of-the-meaning-of-the-terms-machine-and-thinkCan machines think? This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms machine and think.
Foundational epigraph setting the paper's methodological stance on conceptual clarity.
Source paper
extracted_from(2021) · Joshua Bongard · Michael Levin
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Thinkers (1)
thinker
- Alan TuringauthoredComputer scientist who anticipated the symmetry between morphogenesis and cognition as early as 1952 in his chemical theory of morphogenesis.
Related by similarity (8)
cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edgeEntities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.
- Foundational definitional question motivating the entire paper
- What is an appropriate definition of machine, and does it apply to all, some, or no living forms?question0.792Central interrogative driving the paper's entire argumentative structure.
- First central claim of the paper: the machine concept used in organicist critiques is historically contingent, not essential
- Evolutionary algorithms and self-organizing systems blur distinction between evolved and designed.
- William James aphorism cited by Levin to support the idea that thought forms possess minimal agency rather than being purely passive data.
- Emerging field studying psychological properties of LLMs; the paper aims to bridge psychometric methodology with this field
- The paper's overarching constructive goal, paralleling Langton's 'life as it could be'
- All models exhibit above-baseline representation of the think word when instructed to think about itfinding0.767In the intentional control experiment, all tested models show above-zero cosine similarity to the think word's concept vector.