Pros and cons of chess

The lack of randomness, at least to me, is actually a con.  I believe that was partly one of the big motivations for developing variants like 960.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910405-1,00.html

On one end there is Reuben Fine and his book "The Psychology of the Chess Player", where chess players appear more of basket cases, with repressed sexual urges, repressed aggression etc. Reading this makes you wonder if playing chess (and actually enjoying it) is actually a sign of mental illness. Then, all the data out there are showing that an active mind will less likely to descend into senility and playing chess (or other thinking games) may actually help to delay the knocking of the Alzheimer's. I think the answer is moderation; solving tactical puzzles for 5 hours on Sunday while missing out on everything else is certainly not OK. For me chess is a constant mental performance check and monitoring my (by now limited) learning ability. At the end chess is for you what you make it to be.

I totally agree with Twobit's point about chess as mental exercise to keep the brain fit and ward off degenerative disease for the elderly. There is solid scientific evidence for such things (mostly using other games, but I have no doubt that the same is true of chess). For example, I recall recently reading a study from Hong Kong, where they found that getting elderly people to play Mah Jong caused significant slowing of cognitive decline.

Could you knock it off with that tasteless image?

Hm. You basically rephrased two of your own PRO points; namely:

1. "There is a boost to the ego from winning"
2. "Chess can be an enjoyable obsession"

I figured that since you did not limit the scope of your original post, the introduction of the minority (1% of the human population) would be able to counter almost all of the points in your CONS. There may only be a small amount of them, yet they still count.

As far as the rest of the human population, it goes without saying.

You do have guts, but this comment is wholly unfair, especially coming from someone who is supposedly knowledgeable in philosophy.

I'm not going to go into depth because it'd take too much space. Basically I think JG27Pyth may not be calling things wat they are usually called in the philosophy of mind department, but he isn't far off.

Strong Supervenience is far from outdated, and Ontological Physicalism is accepted by many relevant philosophers. There is no theoretical reason why a contemporary philosopher should mock the idea that objects could be built with physical properties that have corresponding mental properties.

As for the practical side of things, yeah we aren't there yet. Not in the next 1000 year probably. But if you were so much into the practical, you should have studied engineering and not philosophy. 

Are we discussing how machines are sentient beings (ala Data of Star Trek TNG)?

Has the worldwide academe of philosophy agreed on the definition of "sentient" and if it could be applied to inorganic things and other species that are not obvious?

Great thread discussion going on here.

In regards to chess=brain exercise, I think the same can be said about any past time that forces the brain to "work". I believe there are even studies that have shown that just reading helps the brain.

As someone who likes to play chess (and read hehehe), as well as play ice hockey, I can attest that it doesn't really matter what you do with your free time, as long as you aren't just sitting there, with your brain turned off.

Exercise the body (sports or go for a walk or anything!), or keep the brain busy by playing chess (or any brain taxing game), or read. 

The small amount of time I spend watching TV is devoted to entertainment, but too much idle time makes me feel tired, physically and mentally. Seems the less I do, the less I want to do.

So, chess (for me anyhow) promotes a general sense of well-being. But that argument works for most activities. Why chess in particular? No idea. I think it could be the complexity. Not just that each piece moves/captures differently, but the combination of tactics and strategy needed to play a game, keeps it fresh. Against most opponents, you need to change up how you play, to be successful.

Whereas, some games have one or two basic strategies for winning, and as long as you stick to them, you can be successful. (Boring)

Chess = complex = different each game = not boring 

(I can't bring myself to call chess exciting :P )

Try 3 minute and 1 minute chess. See if that doesn't pump up your adrenaline.

If that doesn't work, bet money on the game. Most people aren't thrilled to lose $5 every minute.

I hate bullet games, which is why I hadn't even considered that. Very decent way to look at chess as exciting. :)

We are not just machines. That's a bad metaphor. Your fantasy that objects could be built to have "mental properties", neglects the fact that no one knows what "mental properties" are, how "mental properties" upsurge, where exactly do they come from, why they interact with physical objects, when do they start and stop, and who is able to explain them. When you start saying things like "not in the next 1000 years probably", you may as well say, 'I don't know what I'm talking about, but I like daydreaming'.

I used to think consciousness was one of the biggest philosophical mysteries. It is only recently that I realised that it merely appeared to be so, since it was the electrochemical process that I am that was considering the issue. Having realised this, I see consciousness as an attribute of the analog electrochemical machine that is a human. It can be pinned down to the activity in a particular part of the brain and modified by various physical mechanisms.

Your consciousness only appears to be something very special and metaphysical because it is you that is thinking about it. Our perception of the consciousness of others is an extrapolation of one's perception of onesself to other beings that are clearly very similar. An interesting issue is the wide spectrum of attitudes to animal consciousness and how this has changed over time. The notion of cruelty can sometimes extend to very primitive beings such as insects with less neurons than the bytes of memory in a Sinclair Spectrum computer (modern computers have a similar number of bytes to the number of neurons in our brains).

The claim that a robot can never be conscious may seem obvious, but when an attempt is made to pin down what it means, it proves difficult. It is certainly possible for a robot to sense itself, to react to things that happen to it such as damage, and pretty much anything else one might imagine as a human behaviour (in principle, and in the long term). The fact that it is not conscious appears to be in the end an axiom rather than a conclusion.

Is there a scientific definition of consciousness based on hard scientific empiricism that can distinguish that of a human from that of a super-advanced robot? If you wish, the robot could be a computer, emulating every electrochemical process in the human body accurately, and hence every behaviour (this will be impractical for quite a while, but feasible).

Or if a human has a metaphysical aspect as well as a physical one, how do the two interact? Does the soul override the laws of physics and act as a master controller on some part of the brain, causing neurons to fire without a physical stimulus being necessary? Or does it act more subtly, choosing between different possible futures where quantum mechanics would suggest they would be randomly chosen? Or is it more reasonable that the physical body simply obeys the laws of physics perfectly, with no metaphysical interference, and is all that we are, humble as that might make us feel?

Machines may be a bad metaphor, but I didn't use it. I would just say we are physical objects, and to me it seems very plausible that the mental supervenes on the physical. 

That it is hard to narrow down the mental to a very specific bunch of words does not mean that it does not exist. You deployed a similar tactic when it came to 'intelligence' earlier on, and to me it only seems like you are out to score easily. If I specified 'cow' by saying, among other things, that it has four legs - you could say "what about a cow with three legs?". I don't think Elroch was gutless, he probably expected something like that.   

If you know anything about philosophy (of mind) you don't need me to explain that 'mind' is defined and understood differently in different theories. You could start a debate belonging to the philosophy of science claiming that they then aren't talking about the same thing. That too would not be very impressive, as the relevant philosophers clearly do think there's enough similarity to disagree about it.

If I said we couldn't build a time machine in the next 1000 years, I could still know what a time machine is. In a similar fashion, I think philosophers of mind are able to have some understanding of what they are studying. While there is much we do not know, we do know that the brain is very complicated. So if I say in the next 1000 years, I'm assuming that we couldn't build something that complicated within the next 10 years.

I like daydreaming, but you don't know anything more about what you are saying than I do. 

My question is why are we forcing the definition of consciousness and being sentient against the human template only? Is it because we have ourselves to use as examples only? Actually, I make my own argument by using the word "sentient" instead of simple consciousness which even rthat arachnids share.

@ Elroch, your statement that a computer emulating the brain would have the same mental properties is a version of the "Supervenience" thesis, claiming that the mental supervenes on the physical. It basically states that mental properties supervene on physical objects with corresponding physical properties, and that any physical system that has the same physical properties will have the same mental properties. 

Of course, it is only a thesis, but nevertheless a very relevant one in the Philosophy of Mind.

The second thing you adressed, about 'Mind' being above the laws of physics (or not) and the question if we can understand it from understanding a physical system is more linked to soft and hard emergence.

Anyways, Tryst has absolutely no right to claim philosophical superiority by calling your reasoning 'outdated'. Throwing in M.I.T. made no sense either, but I suppose some would think it looks smart.

I think you are quite spot on, and since you aren't using the exact lingo I suspect you have not taken courses in the philosophy of Mind. Still, very understandable and rather good.

First, I didn't say that my solitary mental life does not exist, I said no one knows what it is. Second, I don't know what you mean by 'deploying a tactic' regarding ones meaning of the word "intelligence". One could readily post a picture of a "cow" if the reader did not know what a cow was, but the same could not be done with "intelligence". Your analogy is lacking there. Your "Time Machine" analogy is equally lacking, when comparing it's possibility to that of creating a solitary mental existence in a machine. I don't know what you mean when you say "supervene". Are you talking about alchemy, physical properties changing into other physical properties? How about what you seem to conclude: physical properties changing into...what? What is my solitary mental existence which you are not privy to, yet you seem to think someone out there in a thousand years or so will be able to magically put it in a machine?

Who are the "relevant philosophers" I should be reading? Aesop? Jules Verne? Phillip K. Dick?

good point. it's a GAME and like every game is time consuming & stuff. pro's are making money on games as allways and us, as amateurs, play for the love of the game. Chess is relaxing for me and my brain and goes hand in hand with good music. And yes, it's obsessive, consumes my free time but... going to a pub and make me drunk all day is better? or smoking like a furnal? or watching p0rn all day? are these last three obsessive? Which is the good obsession to have? Is anyone here not having obsessions of all sorts?

Chess can certainly be an addictive waste of time, but in the world of everyday reality, a waste of time compared to what? People who spend endless hours sitting in front of a TV watching boring escapist entertainment or playing video games? The direct truth of life is that most people's lives are stunningly boring, and serve little meaningful purpose. Chess is just one more deviation from reality, which means that your question can apply to most other human pursuits. That's the bare-bones answer to your quasi-philosophical question, which I believe you were aiming for.

my point exactly...compared to other obsessions (tv & stuff) this is quite a good and relaxing waste of time...