Were I to grant that you can’t make Blue out of non-Blue I would assume I also couldn’t make Chess out of Deep Blue.
It’s a bit different because (from my perspective) the issue here is intentionality rather than qualia. You can’t turn something blue just by calling it blue. But you can make something part of a game by using it in the game. It has to be the right sort of thing to play the intended role, so its intrinsic properties do matter, but they only provide a necessary and not a sufficient condition. The other necessary condition is that it is being interpreted as playing the role, and so here we get back to the role of consciousness. If a copy of Deep Blue popped into being like a Boltzmann Brain and started playing itself in the intergalactic void, that really would be an instance of “zombie chess”.
We will have to return to definitions then. Can you have a game without players? Can you have a player without intentions? It is like arguing whether the Face on Mars is really a face. It is not the product of intention, but it does indeed look like a face. Is looking like a face enough for it to be a face? Deep Blue “plays chess” if you define chess as occurring whenever there is a conformance to certain appearances. But if chess requires the presence of a mind possessing certain minimal concepts and intentions, then Deep Blue in itself does not play chess.
It’s a bit different because (from my perspective) the issue here is intentionality rather than qualia. You can’t turn something blue just by calling it blue. But you can make something part of a game by using it in the game. It has to be the right sort of thing to play the intended role, so its intrinsic properties do matter, but they only provide a necessary and not a sufficient condition. The other necessary condition is that it is being interpreted as playing the role, and so here we get back to the role of consciousness. If a copy of Deep Blue popped into being like a Boltzmann Brain and started playing itself in the intergalactic void, that really would be an instance of “zombie chess”.
I’m not talking about parts. I’m talking about the game Chess itself (or an instance thereof).
We will have to return to definitions then. Can you have a game without players? Can you have a player without intentions? It is like arguing whether the Face on Mars is really a face. It is not the product of intention, but it does indeed look like a face. Is looking like a face enough for it to be a face? Deep Blue “plays chess” if you define chess as occurring whenever there is a conformance to certain appearances. But if chess requires the presence of a mind possessing certain minimal concepts and intentions, then Deep Blue in itself does not play chess.