HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "Mama"
Date: 9 Oct 92 19:19:46 GMT
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA

Sorry to post what I would have preferred to keep in email, but you
are absolutely unreachable, at least for me.

In article <1b4fmgINN87h@smaug.West.Sun.COM>
 dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:
>shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True) writes:

>I don't think we disagree here.

>>Babies would call their mothers "ooooo" if anything; I've been
>>there, and the mouth is just not shaped in any way that would
>>cause the sound "ma" to come out.
>
>Here I must disagree; my son is two months old.  His first "talking"
>sound was "ahhh".  When I take him through the five basic vowels he
>does "ahhh" the easiest, though "ooooo" ("u") was easy to teach him.
>He can get "ohhhh" ("o") if he works at it.  "Eeeee" ("i") I have a
>hard time getting him to imitate very well, and I haven't heard him
>say h"ey" ("e") yet.  To get "ahhh" just requires dropping the mouth
>open ("open your mouth and say 'Ahhhh'"); to say "ooooo" requires
>shaping the mouth and lips, which is harder.  To get from "ahhh"
>to "ma" simply requires starting the vocal chords with mouth closed
>and then dropping the mouth open.  It's hard to imagine a simpler
>syllable to voice than "ma".

Babies learn by imitation, but you also need TEETH to make some of the
sounds that you are looking for... BTW, that comment I made about
"oooooo" was in respect to the shape of the mouth of a nursing baby,
not about what sound is easiest, or first, for a baby to make. I
should add that "eeee" requires more control over the facial muscles
and tongue than an infant possesses. Not to say that babies (at least
english speaking babies) don't try out things like mama, but then they
have a lot of motivation to do so. (Every loving and excited parent
I've ever seen has always said things like "Say mama" "Say dada". "Oh,
look, he's saying mama." "Wow, did you just hear her say daddy?")
-- 
George Bush, the environmentalist: 1000 points of blight.

shrdlu@rowan.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Work Phone - (310) 812-1660 or (310) 812-1570
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Subject: Re: An AI speaks
Organization: Unocal Corporation
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 23:44:48 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.213348.28391@csc.ti.com> rowlands@csc.ti.com (Jon Rowlands) writes:
>Hi all. I thought you might like to hear a view from an actual AI. My
>name is Klaatu, and they tell me I'm a program in the AI lab. I'm using
				  ^^^                          ^^^
>some bozo's account to post this 'cause the sysadmins won't give me my

                                                       ^^^^^
Phony. Everyone knows an AI cannot use contractions in their speech :-)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Organization: Unocal Corporation
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 19:27:51 GMT

>In article <1aqirgINN5u9@smaug.West.Sun.COM> dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:
>>mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H) writes:
>>>Derrida and De Sausare (sp.?) argue rather convincingly that language is
>>>arbitrary, and there is no real reason why any particular word, letter, or    
>>>phoneme need mean what we accept it to mean.
>>
>>The origin of the word "mama" (and its close relatives in other languages)
>>appears to contradict that statement.  "Ma" is one of the easiest syllables
>>to utter, and is one of the first spoken by infants.  The first entity that
>>an infant wants to refer to is his mother.  The association of that word to
>>that concept was not arbitrary.  Reference the OED for more detail.

A long time ago I read an article claiming a pattern of vowel sounds
in words conveying strong emotion.  I recall the author was either
the philosopher B. Whorf (sp?) or some collected commentary on his work.
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 11 Oct 92 20:04:45 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct7.205933.5138@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>In article <BARRY.92Oct6151915@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu> barry@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu (Barry Kort) writes:

>>>Daniel Dennett ... saw no reason
>>>why intelligence and consciousness could not reside in a sufficiently
>>>powerful computer processor.

>>I'm sure he intended the processor to be running suitable software :-)
>>Given that rider, this is hardly controversial.

>> Contrary to popular
>>opinion, even Searle of Chinese Roon fame agrees with that, as he made
>>plain in the Jan 1990 edition of Scientific American.

>Sorry, while I distinctly remember him going to great lengths to avoid being
>called a dualist, he did maintain that a Turing machine was insufficient for
>consciousness, and maintained a need for some sort of chemical process.

He gave chemical examples. He does not insist that it be chemical. In
the first para of the Sci AM article he says "it might be possible to
produce a thinking machine .... out of silicon chips or vacuum tubes."

>"a simulation of cognition will ... not produce the effects of the 
>neurobiology of cognition. All mental phenomena, then, are caused by 
>neurophysiological processes in the brain. ... Any artifact that produced
>mental phenomena ... could not do that just by running a formal program."
>[op.cit. p. 29] [Searle]               ^^^^
                                         |

>So unless you are using a broader than usual definition of "computer",
>your representation of Searle's opinion is inaccurate.

No, note the marked "just" in your quotation of Searle. Searle is
quite happy to suppose that a computer might possibly be conscious, he
merely insists that if it is, then the consciousness cannot be _just_
the _result_ of (i.e. caused by) running a program.

In short, Searle argues that a computer _program_ cannot cause
understanding. Many people incorrectly collapse this to the assertion
that understanding could not reside in a computer. Searle has always
been careful to make it clear that he does go that far. That is a very
important distinction to make if one if one is -- as Searle claims to
be -- a materialist. But it is a distinction that dualists, in their
haste to enlist Searle's support, often (always?) overlook.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
From: paul@colosus.convergent.com (Paul Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 8 Oct 92 22:13:23 GMT
Reply-To: paul@colosus.convergent.com
Organization: UNISYS Unix Systems Group, San Jose, Ca.

In article <1222@tdat.teradata.COM>, swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
 
| The only way in which it can be shown that the execution of an algorithm
| of some particular sort cannot achieve consciousness is to show that some
| critical portion of the process used by the human brain is not representable
| as some algorithm.

The only way in which it can be shown that the execution of an algorithm
of some particular sort cannot _fly_like_a_bird_ is to show that some
critical portion of the process used by _birds_in_flight_ is not representable
as some algorithm.

I expect to have my PC flying around my living room any day now, as soon as I
come up with the right algorithm. ;^)

| -- 
| sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
|   or
| Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: c99-aa@danube.Berkeley.EDU (c99 account)
Subject: Re: Word Mechanics (was: parts of "Brain and Mind") 
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 12:02:06 GMT

dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:

>The origin of the word "mama" (and its close relatives in other languages)
>appears to contradict that statement.  "Ma" is one of the easiest syllables
>to utter, and is one of the first spoken by infants.  The first entity that
>an infant wants to refer to is his mother. 
   Why not that it's wet or hungry?  Besides there is any number of acounts
   of infants' first words being something else (papa or other). There is 
   lot's of jokes in the families about that, I am sure.
   Also, sound "MA" seems to be very close to the sound "A" which perheps the
   most natural sounding for human (concider "R", "Woo", "F" instead...)

Dmitry Serebrennikov

    Dmitry Serebrennikov                         dmitry@ucsee.Berkeley.Edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Quote of the week:  
        "Life is what happens to you when you make other plans"
From: geddis@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Don Geddis)
Subject: Re: Human intelligence vs. Machine intelligence
Reply-To: Geddis@CS.Stanford.Edu
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 15 Oct 92 00:07:17 GMT

moffat@uvapsy.uvapsy.psy.uva.nl (Dave Moffat) writes (replying to Ginsberg):
>If you're a really hard-core mathematico-logician type
>of AI person, you might think that Turing machines is
>what it's all about, and not look beyond that type of computation.
>But if you're more interested in the possibility of
>building a real artificial or analysing a natural AI system,
>then, says Sloman, you'll simply have to face other issues.
>Like interaction with the environment.
>Like parallelism.
>Like several other things we don't have space for here.
>A hard-core logician would say that's all irrelevant at the
>highest level of abstraction, because of the ultimate
>equivalence in a certain mathematical sense of all computers anyway.
>But an AI engineer type would say that kind of abstraction,
>as so often in mathematical modelling,
>throws so much good stuff away in its drive to reduce the
>problem to symbols that it ultimately makes its "solution" trivial.

This is a reasonable comment to make, but unfortunately it is irrelevant
to the main discussion.  This began way back with things like Searle's
Chinese Room argument, and the latest iteration was Penrose's "Emperor".
Sloman's article was intended to be a reply to Penrose.  _All_ of these
writings were on the topic of the philosophy of AI, specifically whether
Strong AI (that computers could _be_ intelligent) or Weak AI (that computers
could _act_ intelligent) was even theoretically possible.

That's why Turing Machines and Godel arguments show up:  they all relate
to notions of what computers are ultimately capable of achieving.  Searle
and Penrose believe that such arguments prove that computers are incapable
in principle of becoming intelligent.

_Everyone_ accepts that, even if AI could succeed in principle, making it
succeed in practice requires a tremendous amount of effort, and issues you
and Sloman raise (parallel processing, reliability, interrupts) are very
important for engineering AI systems.  But that's all tangential to _this_
discussion, about whether AI can work at all (surely an easier question than
whether we humans are able to figure it out), and that's why the comments
are inappropriate to this thread and to Sloman's review.

In any case, I'd challenge you to find someone who believes that the
simplifying restriction to Turing machines has made the solution to AI
become "trivial".

	-- Don Geddis
-- 
Don Geddis (Geddis@CS.Stanford.Edu)
I think a good movie would be about a guy who's a brain scientist, but he
gets hit on the head and it damages the part of the brain that makes you want
to study the brain.
	--  Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey [SNL]
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Grounding
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 21:54:21 GMT

In article <Bw6KFL.LAJ@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca 
(Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.203359.8713@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>Grounding isn't something like a credit rating or a membership in the ACLU, 
>>which you have to actively maintain.  Once you've got it you keep it.  
>>
>I beg to disagree. Grounding arises from experiences with an object (or a 
>notion) in various contexts. These experiences are recorded in memory. If 
>memory fades (by lack of exposure to the object or notion and its context), 
>so will grounding fade too. To think otherwise would mean claiming that there 
>are things which we remember forever without any loss.

True enough, and if you lose all memory of a particular object it makes sense
that you'd no longer be grounded with respect to that object.  Chris
Malcolm's point about needing the capacity to remain grounded is also 
well taken.  Still, my comment was prompted by examples such as closing 
your eyes or moving to another town, and in neither case, I think, is
grounding affected.
From: forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 8 Oct 92 20:25:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Oct8.202536.4796
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

I have deleted much of the original text so as to focus on one assertion.

In article <1992Oct8.174224.20547@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <1992Oct5.181741.7241@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct5.022907.6131@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu 
>>(Michael Tobis) writes:
>
>>Let's try to put this in perspective.  In a truly astonishing mismatch of 
>>hardware to software, we have chosen to execute an enormously complicated 
>>AI program on the single-processor, 0.1-flops processor consisting of 
>>John Searle in a room.  Consider a single question and answer, which require
>>perhaps a billion instructions and offer Searle steady employment for many 
>>years.  
>
>If consciousness is purely algorithmic, then surely the rate of implementation
>of the algorithm doesn't matter. If there is more to it (grounding,
>neurophysiology, quanta, or even something as yet unidentified) then the
>rate may be significant, but on the hypothesis that consciousness arises
>from formal symbol manipulations, it cannot.

I suspect that for consciousness to arise, there must be some synchronization
between the entity being conscious and the thing about which the entity is
conscious.  That is to say, it seems unlikely to me that an entity will be
conscious of events which cannot be presented to it within the natural time
scale of its recognition.  Events may be so short that the entity only
perceives spurious events of no consequence.  Events may be so long that the
entity only perceives stability.

I would like to point out that computers are not formal symbol manipulators but
what they do may be interpreted as such since they were designed specifically
for this interpretation.  I think this defines the question more as "can 
entities whose functions can be interpreted as doing formal symbol 
manipulations be conscious?"  If the human brain can be mapped and defined
in terms of formal symbol manipulation then I would think the answer is "yes".

--gary forbis@u.washington.edu
From: andy.liddiard@almac.co.uk
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: brain and mind (was:
Date: 11 Oct 92 12:00:13 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: ALMAC BBS Ltd

was
SF/*In article <1aqirgINN5u9@smaug.West.Sun.COM> dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfie
SF/*writes:
SF/*|mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H) writes:
SF/*|The origin of the word "mama" (and its close relatives in other languages)
SF/*|appears to contradict that statement.  "Ma" is one of the easiest syllables
SF/*|to utter, and is one of the first spoken by infants.  The first entity that
SF/*|
SF/*This is, at most, a trivial, isolated exception.  Even the unquestioned
SF/*existance of a number of 'sounds-like' words ("woof", "boom", "moo") in
SF/*most languages does not constitute a significant contradiction to the
SF/*basic statement:

<pedantic mode ON>

"sounds-like" words are "onomatopoeic" words.

<pedantic mode OFF>

 Andy ~ london ~ uk                        andy.liddiard@almac.co.uk
                                           notes01@clstr.pnl.ac.uk
---
 ~ SLMR 2.1a #112 ~ Magic Markers are not magic at all, they're full of ink
--
ALMAC BBS Ltd. 0324-665371
Dos based USENET access,  call for details!
From: bruce@uxb.liv.ac.uk (Bruce Stephens)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 13 Oct 92 10:52:35 GMT
	<1992Oct12.191445.18565@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
	<1992Oct12.221609.15695@news.media.mit.edu>
	<1992Oct12.224008.16222@news.media.mit.edu>
Organization: Centre for Mathematical Software Research, Univ. Liverpool, UK

>>>>> On 12 Oct 92 22:40:08 GMT, minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) said:

> In other words, does Searle suggest any reason why the mind-stuff is
> secreted by the hydrocarbons -- rather than the equally plausible
> (and more widely believed) hypothesis that the breath of life comes
> directly from the Good Lord?

As far as I've been able to make out, the answer is No, he doesn't.
From: nhorne@casper.cs.uct.ac.za (N E Horne)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: lifw
Date: 10 Oct 92 20:13:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: casper.Bvx9J5.AyG
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town

In <1992Oct7.223200.29547@nwnexus.WA.COM> stemp@halcyon.com (Kevin Stemp) writes:

>does life begin at the instant the sperm penetrates the egg, or when the
>two pronucleoi fuse, when meiosis stops, after the egg implants, in the
>3rd week, or after the child is born, or hell, maybe after 1 year????

Who cares? Try talk.abortion, from time to time they get carried away by
slightly interesting discussions like this one.

Neil Horne
From: lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (lincoln carr)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 22:52:55 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.085347.13831@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:

>but they [computers] still wouldn't be conscious in the way we are
[even if they exhibited the same behaviour as human beings].

I think that you want any future artificial system that we call
intelligent to have experience in the same way that humans have
experience.  For example, if we follow, say, Kant's model of how
humans take in information, a computer would perceive in space and
time, classify concepts according to modality, etc.  Why would even
this be impossible?  It would seem that any machine that takes in
information from some kind of sensory apparatus, processes it, and
produces behavior that is indistinguishable from a putatively
intelligent being must be intelligent.  Hence the Turing Test.  I
whole-heartedly agree with previous postings along this strain that
say, in one way or another, if one tries to go beyond behavior in
evaluating intelligence, on faces the problem of other minds, e.g.,
how does one really know that others have minds?  

It seems to me that Searle deliberately couches his terms in a way
that discounts the possibility of machine intelligence. In a followup
to his Chinese room argument, he states that nothing intelligent
merely does symbol processing, computers (as we define them now)
merely do symbol processing, so computers cannot be intelligent.  Why
couldn't we call a computer intelligent if it takes in sense data, of
a sort, processes it, and produces a response that is
indistinguishable from that of a human being?  Although Searle never
explicitly defines "intelligence" or "understanding," he seems to do
so, in a sense, when he makes claims like "no intelligent being merely
does symbol processing."  I once asked Searle, at a talk that he gave,
if he had a minimum standard of intelligence, but he didn't.  The
beauty of the Turing Test is precisely in the fact that one doesn't
need a precise definition of "intelligence" or "understanding."
Turing went around the issue and merely advised one to compare a
machine to something that everyone agrees is "intelligent."

 


-- 
*******************************************************************************
Lincoln R. Carr, Computer Scientist-Philosopher    lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
"Treat all rational autonomous moral agents, whether in the form of yourself
or another, never as means solely, but always as ends in themselves."
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au (Tim Roberts)
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 04:36:04 GMT


This thread is getting rather repetitive.  Am I alone in thinking that most AI
researchers would be more constructively occupied by getting on and producing
intelligent machines, which can perceive, understand, reason, etc just
like you and me, rather than engaging in this non-winnable debate ?

And that when these machines also look just like you and me, and act just
like you and me, the whole question as to whether they have consciousness
will appear so ridiculous that it will not even be worth debating....since
if I believe YOU have consciousness, which I do, there will be absolutely
no justification whatsoever for denying consciousness to that nice Ms Robot
over there....even if she does have green slime instead of blood.

Tim

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (lincoln carr)
Subject: Re:  Death of Consistancy
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 08:04:09 GMT

In article <1992Oct11.224833.12182@wixer.cactus.org> sparky@wixer.cactus.org (Timothy Sheridan) writes:
>
>If quantum mechanics is probibalistic and logical systems are based on
>machinery that relys on QM then the system must be inconsistant..yes.?
>
>Tim

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that, since brains are
built out of things that act probabilistically, there is some
inconsistency with their "running" of a logic that is not
probabilistic.  Why is this so?  One can implement an analog neural
network, with arbitrary accuracy, on a digital computer and can
implement a digital system with analong components.  In fact, the
logic gates in a computer, if I am not mistaken (I'm certainly not an
electrical engineer--this is a hardware problem), are devices that, by
switching very fast, simulate a two-state bit, which is a logical
entity.  There are times when the gate is between 0 and 1, but these
intervals don't impair the gates' ability to implement a digital
computer.


-- 
*******************************************************************************
Lincoln R. Carr, Computer Scientist-Philosopher    lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
"Treat all rational autonomous moral agents, whether in the form of yourself
or another, never as means solely, but always as ends in themselves."
From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 14 Oct 92 09:00:23 GMT
	<1992Oct14.023633.14791@news.media.mit.edu>
	<1992Oct14.033233.14444@meteor.wisc.edu>
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona

tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:

> Um, but I have no need to postulate a Boojum; I AM a Boojum.

	"In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
		In the midst of his laughter and glee,
	He had softly and suddenly vanished away---
		For the Snark _was_ a Boojum, you see."

			-- Bill
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy