Topics Mind

Question I was just playing chess against my computer, and suddenly I realized that computer chess has no rules. In computer chess there are things that happen and things that don't happen; there are "laws of nature" (although "nature" is here a computer running a certain software), but there are no rules in the sense of "things regarded as customary or normal", as my dictionary says, or in the sense of "a convention set forth or accepted by a group of people". This way, computer chess is very different from over the board chess. Do you agree?

Accepted:
November 17, 2006

Comments

I'm not sure that any of your reasons for thinking that the computer is not following rules is convincing. After all, for humans too "there are things that happen and things that don't happen." There are laws of nature that our bodies and brains are acting in accordance with, etc. And wasn't the computer's code programmed by human beings who intended the computer to behave as if it were following certain rules? Does your claim boil down to the intuition that human players are conscious of following rules whereas a computer is not? But is that so? Are human players really conscious of following rules? Or do they just act? Do you feel that there must be a difference because you think that humans are conscious while computers are not? But why believe that? Of course, you're right that computers play differently from humans. I expect most very good players could (today) tell whether their opponent was a computer or a human. But that's not the difference that I think you're trying to get at.