Babbage located Intelligence in the Mind not the attentive crafting body. Discuss with reference to articles by Schaffer and Zimmerman. ~ Jam jacobs

ABSTRACT

This post gives a brief discussion about how babbage have viewed "intelligence".The post starts with how i think about intelligence,who is babbage? and what are his views on "intelligence" with reference to articles by Schaffer and Zimmerman

Let me start with my aspect of intelligence!!!

Intelligence is in mind or in crafting body??

Answer to this question can’t be answered directly, but it would be appropriate if define intelligence by TIME…

Growing with the evolution, man started to produce “goods” which started for his own requirements. At this time, the crafting body was thought as intelligence. Since there was no machine then to replace the “bodily labour” it’s the crafting body which has to do the work.

Slowly he entered in producing in large scale and the “profit” stimulated production lead to what is called as INDUSTRIES and always in greed of producing the most he could.

That is where the division of classes and gender got triggered and the word “supervisor” forcefully entered into the dictionary of human race. The adjective forcefully is added because of “discipline” which entered because of the “investment” wasn’t by the “labourer”

And still it continues… intelligence is defined by the “mind” because the bodily labour can be done by a “machine” and Charles Babbage was one among then who wanted to “substitute” “mind” using a machine.

Charles Babbage difference engine has become a water mark in the history of automata.

The difference engine is given significance because In other cases, mechanical devices have substituted machines for simpler tools or for bodily labour. But difference engine substitutes mechanical performance for an intellectual process.

Obviously intelligence lies in the mind or else we would have remembered Joseph Clement as the inventor or the difference engine rather than the “mind” behind the invention (Charles Babbage).

Let’s start peeping into the history of Charles Babbage.

Charles Babbage is a English mathematician, pseudo philosopher (analytic philosopher) ,inventor(mind) of the First mechanical computer which eventually led into complex designs.

Babbage was embarrassed with the British negligence over his machine, its clear from the following example :

“Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple. [...] Impart the same principle or show the same machine to an American or to one of our Colonists, and you will observe that the whole effort of his mind is to find some new application of the principle, some new use for the instrument“. ~ Charles Babbage quoted in Richard H. Babbage (1948), “The Work of Charles Babbage“, Annals of the Computation Laboratory of Harvard University, vol. 16.

Babbage had anticipated the impact of his Engine when he wrote in his memoirs: “As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.“

And yet it had a very high impact or else why will we consider some one as “Father of computers”

My eyes on Schaffer and Zimmerman’s views

Schaffer viewed that the machine’s intelligence is highlighted if the labour running the machine is seen “invisible”(of no/low significane).

Babbage gave importance to the result rather than the process by which it is done. The end result was identical if it was a machine or a human who does the work. He equalized the machine and the power needed to the skilled labour. This made the skilled labour to be seen as a equivalent to the machine handled by an unskilled labour(to be given less wage).As I have mentioned above the shift from the multiple “small” scale enterprises to “capitalist” “large” enterprise has forced the “supervising” term to check the discipline made the labour to do work in a “programmed ” fashion without using his “own knowledge”, by this we can say intelligence exists in mind rather than the skillful artisan,because there is no use of his skill as “all the thinking” is done by the inventor or the supervisor and the “skillful” does a work of low significance. According Babbage the owner of an article is the person who designs rather than a person who crafts it.

'My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind'

This concretes that the according to Babbage the owner of an article is one who designs it rather than who crafts it.So it clearly states the importance he gives to the mind than “crafting body”.

Babbage supports division of labour,he thinks that process of division of labour decreases the cost and increases the productivity.By this he gives priority to the machine(mind who invented the machine) rather than the crafting body.

For Babbage the intelligence is limited to the mind of the inventor.