Can Computers Think?
 

A Philosophical question that's been asked for years. Can computers think? Why or why not?

Accomplishments: A computer defeated one of the best Chess players in the World. A computer can make calculations. A computer can "play games". A computer can auto-pilot a plane.

You get the idea. So then, what do you think? Can a computer think? What's your opinion? Why or why not?

Computers only do what you instruct them to do. By inputting millions of commands based off of thousands of different personality types, you can tell a computer to "matrix" the feelings and personalities and randomly rationalize situations based on the most common responses. In all reality for someone not tech savvy it would seem like the computer thinks and feels, but the person that programmed the computer would understand all too well that its only regurgitating data in a creative, pre-programmed fashion.

Computers cannot think or feel.

Now the new question comes up...

What is thinking? Not dictionary-wise. Take it into perspective. What makes a person "think"? A mentally handicap person can think. A person whom is in an almost vegetable state (Not dead, but not in the state where they're being kept alive by just machines) can think. What is thought? Why can't computers use a thought process?

A more straight forward question is 'Will a computer be able to invent?'

Because they have no conscious therefore they can not make an independent choice.

A computer will only think when a person does not need to tell it how to think.

I study AI and in my curriculum was a 4 week non-stop course about 'filosophy and AI'. There was a lot of high-brow bantering involved, but most of the time we were simply discussing 'can machines think' (or even: 'can artificial intelligence exist'). After 4 weeks, we did not reach a conclusion. Many of my peers where at one side of the fence, many on the other.
It mostly comes down to the definitions of 'thinking' and 'intelligence' you're maintaining. Under some definitions, machines can think, under others, they cannot.

In the perspective us humans might see as "thinking" may not be all the same as a computer's way of "thinking". Maybe we are all, perhaps, pre-programmed (either genetically, or biologically) from birth to make our decisions without really thinking about them. Or maybe I'm just shooting stray thoughts :p

Bottom line; Computers are only as smart as their creator. So the computer's perception of thought is more or less predetermined.

Your thoughts aren't stray in my opinion, it's actually believed in Psychology that one's thought may be somewhat predetermined by genetics and such. Personally, I'm more of a nurture guy than nature. Still, I do wonder what thinking is. In psychology, it states that when one plays a video game, their thinking process is no longer registering information and is in a way resting. This is actually good for taking break from studies due to the fact that while your brain is resting, the information you learned earlier is still being rested as well, allowing you to process it better later. However, if we're not thinking while playing video games, is it because we already know? And is that just a Psychological view of thinking? Anyhow, perception is a bitch XD

Are you sure that's true? I'm pretty sure that all the learning, pattern recognition, problem solving and decision making (among other things) required to play a game demands a lot of thought.