On the Impossibility of Artificial Intelligence

Author(s): Paul Weiss

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1990), pp. 335-341
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20129018
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 ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE*
PAUL WEISS

JLs there A warrant FOR saying that computers, or other machines,

are intelligent? Will there ever be a time when it will be proper to
say that they think? Both questions can be reasonably answered
affirmatively, unless there is something amiss in saying that a sun
dial or a watch tells time, corporations are quasi-persons, floods
threaten lives and bodies, or that computers are property.
When we think in this vein, we in effect bring that about which
we speak into a humanized world, a world in which it continues to
be and function as it had before but, in addition, is characterized as
having traits and activities beyond the powers of inanimate beings.
No one today is bothered by such expressions as a bitter wind, a
dangerous terrain, or a hot day. Men seem to have spoken in this
vein apparently since the beginning of recorded time. The char
acterizations may be said to be metaphorical, but to have become
stale with use. There may well come a time when it will be just as
unnoteworthy to remark that a computer is intelligent.
If the discussion regarding the possibility of artificial intelli
gence were nothing more than a dispute about the ways in which
language is or might be used, it would not be very interesting, since
it would refer to nothing more than the way the word "intelligence"
might be commonly employed. If, instead, we are interested in
knowing whether or not computers actually think, or clocks really
tell time, and mean that they have the kind of consciousness, infer
ential powers, imagination, sensitivity, responsibility, memory, and
expectations that humans have, we must turn away from linguistic
usage to ask instead whether it will ever be possible for machines,
no matter how quick and adroit, to be conscious, to infer, imagine,
be responsible, and so forth.

* Presented at the Eighth International Congress of Cybernetics and

Systems, New York City, June, 1990.

Review of Metaphysics 44 (December 1990): 335-341. Copyright ? 1990 by the Review of

Metaphysics

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336 PAUL WEISS

A computer is a machine. Like other machines, it is made up

of a number of gross physical bodies, joined in such a way that they
continue to be distinct from one another. Each of those bodies
encompasses a multiplicity of smaller units, all subject to cosmic
conditions and laws. When we speak of a machine as being nothing
more than a multitude of such units, we take it to be functioning in
accord with those cosmic laws. They do this when they fall. If we
view them as being composed of a number of parts that we have
managed to yoke together, they will instead be taken to be complex
cosmic units, together with other complexes.
Although there are some who allow for the existence of nothing
other than units within a cosmic space-time, the nature of experi
ments, the ability to attend, the deliberate use of instruments, and
even the determination of where one is to attend to the ultimate
units or their effects, makes evident that those thinkers, like the
rest of us, do and must acknowledge something more. Even the
existence of water stands in their way. It flows, is frozen, or con
denses, and so far is distinct for H20. Where this formula refers
to molecules, "water" refers to a gross, palpable mass having marked
appearances and distinctive ways of functioning. Water does not
come into existence or pass away with the coming to be and passing
away of man. It was present before men existed; it then acted in
distinctive ways, limited but not controlled by the units within it.
It is not identifiable with any machine, even one made of ice and
able to produce Boolean results at great speed.
Existing before there were men or any other living beings, water
is more than an aggregate of unit entities. If it is located in the
cosmos, it will be as a complex encompassing such units, each with
its own nature and way of functioning. It and stars, mountains,
and clouds make evident that there is more to reality than irreducible
units or aggregations of them. Those units are encompassed by,
are locateable in, and have their positions affected by the adventures
undergone by the complex singulars in which they are. To find such
units in the sun, we must learn where the sun is and keep abreast
of its movement. If the sun be denied reality, or if it be treated as
a kind of blurred reference to the units within it, remarks about it
would at best be summary ways of referring to those units. We
would then have to say that references to stars, mountains, water,
and even to chemical elements, are just quick means for referring
to a plurality of units that no one ever encountered. These com

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 337

plexes belong to a complex cosmos, having its own distinctive kinds

of entities, distances, and laws.
The cosmos does not depend for its existence or functioning on
man. Without humans, of course, it would not be known, but their
minds do not produce what makes what is claimed be true. If
knowledge could do this, it would have to produce the very beings
who know as well as the very earth they stand on. A man would
remain suspended until he could create a place that he could then
verbally deny existed.
The denial that there are any complexes not only eliminates
the earth and the heavens but precludes actual experiences, the use
of instruments, the application of theories, the men who might en
tertain these, machines, and, of course, computers as well. The fact
is not denied but only complicated when one remarks that what men
affirm may not report exactly what occurs. It makes no difference
that the denial is confined within a language, for not only does this
embrace complexes of its own, within which irreducible units are
contained, but they are offered by and to humans.
Were humans no longer to exist, they might well leave machines,
and thus computers, behind. These would still continue to be made
up of complex objects within which there were simple cosmic entities.
So far as it is allowed that men can be self-conscious, responsible,
and afraid, that they can infer, believe, and speculate, one will allow
that they do what the complexes cannot. Humans exist in a realm
of their own all the while that their bodies continue to be together
with other complex cosmic units and the bodies of other natural
beings.
Trees, insects, animals, and humans as well, are all complex
beings. They are natural realities existing in a distinctive, histor
ically determined world where what had occurred makes a difference
to the nature and import of what is alongside as well as to what
comes later. Nature cannot be reduced to the cosmos without losing
its characteristic rhythms, temporality, associations, and members.
The quaint, unverifiable theory of a big bang, with its supposed
beginning of time and perhaps space, seems to allow for no affecting
of its occurrence by the past, provides for no account of customs,
natural selection, or a future giving a new import to whatever had
preceded it. We could, of course, speak of a history of the cosmos,
but that history would be different from one pertinent to natural
beings. While the cosmos contains groups of units of various kinds

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338 PAUL WEISS

and magnitudes, nature contains complex, affiliated singulars in sit

uations affected by the past and the incipient future. When, then,
evolutionary theory is used in geology, one must avoid speaking as
though it occurred in the very same kind of time and space that
characterizes the world of the living. Some of these live in com
munities with natures, rhythms, and histories, not reducible to
any other.
Just as there are those who take all cosmic beings to be just
aggregates of simples, so there are those who take all natural and
even living beings to be just cosmic complexes. To do this, though,
they have to ignore the ways the living function together. Nothing,
however, is gained if one follows the lead of the emergent evolu
tionists and treats the living as though it existed in a realm above
the cosmic. Living beings are where their contained cosmic entities
are, but exist in a different way, in a space and time having its own
distinctive distances. Men, in addition, because they have a history
no others live through, must so far be distinguishable from all nat
ural beings while continuing to be together with them, and so far
also be subject to the conditions that govern them. Entirely dif
ferent from all other beings, they nevertheless also exist in the same
geological epoch with natural objects and other complex entities.
Computers are complex entities. Since they are the products
of human invention, they are also encompassed within human his
tory. We accept that history when we say that there might well
come a time when computers will be credited with features now
thought to be uniquely human. Within the compass of that human
history, not only do economies, politics, art, and wars find a place,
but they there dictate some of the roles that computers have.
To remark that we are now living in a "machine age" is but to
say that machines are playing a role in our history. Although that
history is the history of humans, it inescapably encompasses what
ever they acknowledge or use. Human history pulls into it whatever
concerns man, and therefore whatever man might make. Computers
do not thereupon lose their status as machines or their place in the
cosmos.
We rightly speak of computers as property and treat them as
partners in games. They are these just so far as they interest hu
mans. As part of the human realm, they are subject to human
assessments, to economics, and conceivably to politics, not because
of anything they do, but because and so far as the concerns of me

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 339
reach them in somewhat the way in which individuals are caught
up in the affairs of societies, states, and nations. What is then done
is no different in principle from what we daily do when we take the
sun to rise in the East and set in the West, take it to be pale yellow
or flaming red, or to be a source of warmth and daylight. It is also
what is done when gold is taken to be a measure of economic value,
or when a day is divided into twenty-four hours.
The so-called problem of artificial intelligence does not arise in
an acute form until one moves from the consideration of a human
ized, historical world, in which nonhuman objects also have a place,
to the human realm occupied only by humans, exercising powers no
other beings have. The intelligence these exhibit is not separable
from a consciousness, memory, hopes, fears, sensibility, desire, ac
countability, and other private powers, all interinvolved with a dis
tinctive character and individuality.
Computers cannot be intelligent even in the way subhuman liv
ing beings are, since these too have privacies in which intelligence
is intertwined with other powers, and both affect and are affected
by their bodies. To put the matter cautiously: chess-playing com
puters are not only not more intelligent than awkward amateur
chess players, they are not intelligent even in the way in which
subhuman living beings are, since these, like humans, have an in
telligence which is interinvolved with such other powers as sensi
tivity and expectation. If a computer could be more intelligent than
an ant or a bee, it should also be said that it might be more intelligent
than any man, just so far as it was able to produce results not pos
sible to any human.
Computers can duplicate many of the things men do. They can
keep better and more accurate records, produce multiple replicas,
and keep on working without stopping, as long as their parts hold
out and energy is supplied. Physically viewed, they are stronger
and in some respects more dexterous than any human is. If rapidity
and accuracy were our only criteria for the determination of the
presence of intelligence, we would today have to place computers
not only above the primates but above all humans. We do not do
so, because we know that they are never more than machines, with
out common traditions, political duties, inalienateable rights, or an
inner life. They do not dream, believe, or hope. Nor can they think,
for they cannot form concepts. They are unable to do any mathe
matical work, since they deal only with numerals and have no way

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340 PAUL WEISS

of attending to numbers. They may repeat, but they do not remem

ber; they may follow one move with another and come to rest at a
prescribed terminus, but they cannot infer, any more than they can
dream, plan, or believe.
A computer has no privacy, though many of its parts are hidden.
It is not able to feel pain or pleasure; it has no feelings or emotions.
There is nothing that it knows. Though it does arrive at outcomes
that intelligence endorses, it is not intelligent, for it is not alive.
Artificial intelligence, in short, is not intelligence at all, any more
than an artificial rose, even if well perfumed and able to deceive, is
a rose.
As we saw earlier, we can and do speak of a computer as thoug
it could add, search, produce a message, and the like. When we do
we merely credit to another, more complex machine the kind o
characterization we impose upon a set of gears hidden by materi
on which we have put twelve numerals to enable us to tell the time.
One of these days we may, in a similar way, speak of computers
being not just artificially intelligent but simply intelligent, just
we now speak of them as having not artificial but just plain bugs
worms, and viruses. Intelligence is possible only to some of th
living and then only some of the time. It is not to be credited to
machine unless it be proper to speak of anything that can be re
as providing an acceptable answer to a problem or question as having
replied to the problem or question. A parrot can say "7 + 5 = 12
but that does not mean that it knows how to add.
Taken by itself, a computer remains just an aggregate of part
well put together, knowing nothing, unable to decide, to infer, or to
act. There never will be a time when it can escape these limitation
unless it could become alive, reflective, expectative, able to fear, hope,
and reason. It will then no longer be just a computer but a livin
being with a privacy of its own.
It is possible to mimic humans, copy their ways, and duplicat
what they produce. But one does not duplicate what they are or
the powers they have by duplicating what they might do and achiev
No matter how clever a copyist is, he falls short of being a creato
Were a human just a simple cosmic being, or a number of the
joined together, he would not be alive, able to claim that a computer
was intelligent. He may, though, make such a claim when he take
a computer to be part of his humanized world. Once this truth
recognized, there is nothing more to do but await a time when "i

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 341
telligence" and particularly "intelligent machines" have become
stale metaphors, hardly worth thinking about. All the while, it will
be eminently desirable to increase the range and speed of the ma
chines, and take them to be part of the humanized world to whatever
degree we find it convenient or congenial to do so.
We can imitate, but we cannot manufacture, beings that are
intelligent, since this would require our producing living beings.
We cannot produce beings which are intelligent in the way humans
are, without our producing beings having sensitivity, sensibility,
rights, intentions, traditions, and imagination. We can place what
we make alongside our clocks, thermostats, and thermometers and,
like a child with its doll, credit them with human powers. There
is no harm in doing this, but there also will be no gain in under
standing what the object does. Why then are so many so deeply
concerned about the issue? Is it not that they take humans to be
just bodies, that they suppose that humans privately do nothing
more than calculate, and that those privacies are caused by or even
tually will be duplicated by bodies? But a privacy is more than a
mind, a mind is other than a brain, and a brain is more than a
congery of cosmic units.
We have all heard about altruistic genes, of the wisdom of the
body, as well as the right and left side of the brain dictating rational
and intuitional activities and outcomes. These are the result of
reading back, into subordinate parts, features dependent on the na
ture and activity of single, undivided human beings. Defenders of
the idea of artificial intelligence reverse that procedure by first mis
construing the nature of intelligence and then exciting themselves
about the uninteresting humanization of one of their tools. Behind
it all perhaps is the tacit supposition that life can be produced in
the laboratory and that speed, flexibility, and accuracy are all that
is needed to warrant the claim that a machine is intelligent.
These are issues that need discussion by artificial intelligence
advocates. Until then references to it will remain little more than
attempts to deal with what is not well-defined?intelligence?by
presupposing actions by what has not been well understood?human
beings.

The Catholic University of America

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