The Question That Was Always There — Coda The last of the series. Four pieces asked what minds do, whether choosing and calculating differ, whether competence implies an occupant, and how the thing came to be built before the question could be stated. Here the positions are put in one room. Nothing is settled, because […]
The Question That Was Always There — Part IV Fourth in a series. Part I found that knowledge is not intelligence. Part II found that choosing and calculating can share one instant. Part III found that competence can occur with no one home. This part asks how a species came to build such a thing […]
The Question That Was Always There — Part III Third in a series. Part I found that knowledge is not intelligence. Part II found that choosing and calculating can share a single instant without contradiction. Both were about what minds do. This part is about what can do it without a mind. Put a slime […]
The Question That Was Always There — Part II Second in a series. The first, “The Grammar of a Language No One Speaks,” argued that knowledge is not intelligence — that holding every rule is a different thing from the live act of meaning. This one stays with the live act, and asks what happens […]
The Question That Was Always There — Part I First in a series. There is a question I want to follow across several pieces — whether the thing we call understanding is what these machines, or these minds, actually do. It begins here, where it is oldest and plainest: with the difference between knowing a […]