Philosophy Discussion Forums

Snakeranger wrote:No, but eventually most people will think "yes."

Care to elaborate?

That depends how you want to believe it. A math professor once told me it is "impossible" for a machine (synthesized) music to surpass a performance by a human. I do not share this view.

Well first of all, look at a composer like Bach. Someone who created very abstract music, akin to that of the 20th century composers, but without sacrificing beauty for intelligence. Almost all his pieces are beyond what the sonority of an instrument can offer. Composers like Chopin and Scarlatti used the limitations of the instruments they wrote for to their advantage. This is why Scarlatti (usually) does not maintain the right character when played on a piano, and Chopin does not sound natural on a harpsichord. With Bach, both the harpsichord and piano have strengths that the music entails. Of course, they each have a weakness too.

A synthesizer programmed to play Bach's music can bring out a level of contrapuntal clarity unsurpassed. It can also play strictly with rhythm, with dynamics that are precisely manipulated, and with the right timbre balances (if created that way). Of course, the person behind the synthesizer will be doing the "real" creating. But nevertheless, I feel that machines are merely extensions of the human brain, and can be manipulated in ways that surpasses human capabilities.

Creativity, self awareness and common sense define our human essence. It is through these distinct capabilities that humans can create poetry. Poetry breaks the rules and has semantic value. A computer may create a piece of work that is seemingly artistic, yet it is superficial and only a simulation, and as Searle notes, can a simulation be regarded as the real thing? Kasparov’s defeat by the computer Deep Blue may demonstrate the mathematical capabilities of artificial intelligence, but Deep Blue did not think, or play with same creativity and genius of Kasparov, so can Deep Blue be really thought of as an actual Chess player in the same sense that Kasparov is? Artificial Intelligence theorists strive to create a computer in the image of man, yet this quest surely suggest more about our need to relate not only to one another, but the world around us. This distinction between the mind and body and its relation to the world is an issue that has been very real and prevalent in the history of our existence. Descartes distrusted the certainty of the external world, and Kant held reason as our triumph over nature, functionalism however intends to reduce our human uniqueness and represent it undifferentiated to the mechanical material world. Yet it can now be understood that creativity in the human brain triumphs over an algorithmic deduction of the mind. A computer that is unable to break rules and create new information, cannot create art in its true form.