HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Date: 8 Apr 92 07:32:44 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

In article <1992Apr7.211654.7694@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <1992Apr7.002306.9823@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr6.182533.109@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>>>
>>>Varying degrees of sophistication have no bearing on the question of
>>>presence or absense.  A small mind is still a mind, just as a small ball
>>>is still a ball.
>>
>>And a small giant is still a giant, etc.  Is a small large X still an
>>X?  Yes, I suppose, if all X's are Y's (for all X and Y), which
>>appears to be the thesis here.
>>
>I'm not sure what bearing your use of contrary relational terms has on
>this discussion. Are you attempting to cast doubt on the (analytic,
>as far as I can tell) assertion that a small ball is still a ball. The
>problem with analogizing "mind" to terms like "giant" and "big" is that 
>"mind" has no such obvious relational connotations. If you think it
>does (i.e., if you think there was a point to your apparent non-sequiter)
>please make them explicit.
>
>>
>
>
>-- 
>Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
>Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
>University of Toronto
>---------------------


Here you are mistaken. There are such things as small minds
and big minds. Would you not agree that small animals have
small minds, insects have even smaller minds. The problem
you are having is that you want to be able to limit the
size of a mind (quantize mind?) this cannot be done without
introducing a whole bunch of other problems, such as what is
the smallest mind, etc..
-- 
*****************************************************************
*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
*****************************************************************
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Date: 10 Apr 92 23:58:08 GMT
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine

In article <1992Apr8.155954.10355@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
|It seems you haven't been paying close attention. The question is not
|whether there are "small" anbd "big" minds. The question is whether
|an answers to that question has any bearing whatsoever on the
|question of whether something can be said to have a mind at all.
|I have argued that it does not. A small mind is just as much a mind
|as a big mind is.

But where do you draw the line?  When does a 'small mind' cease to be a mind
and become something else?

Remember, biological reality does not come in nice, predefined chunks,
there is a continuous range of variation from forms like shrews through
forms like fish through forms like insects to forms like hydra to things
like trees (and rocks).  Does a hydra have a mind at all?  A planarian?
How about an earthworm?  or an ant?  What about a hagfish?  a dogfish?
[In case you haven't noticed, the above list is in order of increasing
neurological complexity].
-- 
---------------
uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)

Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:4331 sci.philosophy.tech:2116
From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Subject: Re: The Challenge
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 15:21:36 GMT

  In article <1992Apr2.181357.25444@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

  >Come on, Drew, isn't this a bit, well, petulant?   

Referring to this paragraph of mine:

  >>Anyway, what I plan to do is post the following message in the future
  >>when the Room comes up:
  >>
  >>From the FAQ file (that is, of Fruitlessly Argued Quagmires):
  >>
  >>Searle's Chinese Room argument appears to be less an argument than an
  >>opportunity for people to disagree about understanding and semantics.
  >>At least in this newsgroup, there are few people who are willing to
  >>defend the Chinese Room argument as such, although there are many who
  >>think that those who attack the argument are trivializing important
  >>questions.  The consensus seems to be that it is better to discuss
  >>those questions directly than to put them in the context of the
  >>Chinese Room.  I have come to this conclusion because no one was
  >>willing to accept the following
  >>
  >>                    ** CHALLENGE **

  >[original challenge deleted]

I crafted this paragraph to avoid petulance.  I would welcome
suggestions on how to edit.  I am sincere in wanting to have a message
we can post to quickly acquaint newcomers to the newsgroup with the
state of play on the Chinese Room.

[Michael had some other responses that I will address separately.]
From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robert Rosen & Physical form of Church's Thesis
Date: 13 Apr 92 00:53:57 GMT
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging

In article <539@trwacs.fp.trw.com> 
erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>The question is asked--is a turbulent flow useful as an algorithm for
>something?
>
  It was me who asked this question, but actually not quite
this question.  Precisely, I asked whether there is any
useful computation that can be made using a chaotic process
(such as a turbulent flow) that cannot also be made by some
Turing machine.

  The answers you give are reasonable, but it is not obvious
that the turbulent flow produces any useful information that cannot
equally well be produced by a detailed digital simulation of
the flow.

  If you could identify such information, you would have a
counterexample to the Church-Turing thesis.

	-- Bill
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: intelligent organic goop
Date: 8 Apr 92 21:37:06 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr6.145603.22619@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>Consider weather as a rough analogy.  We know how it works (Navier Stokes  
>equations + thermodynamics + boundary conditions of solar input...).  Fifteen  
>or so years ago the phenomena of chaos became widely known.  When applied to  
>weather the upshot seems to be that conditions cannot be predicted more than  
>about two weeks in advance.  [...] Actually, to be precise, the weather is  
>predictable in principle, but not in practice in the physical world.
>
>In an AI, the next second's "thought" might be reasonably predictable given  
>knowledge of the current "thought"-state of the AI [Here I have to weasel-word 
>about whether the AI is hardware goop or extremely complicated software]. I  
>argue that the thought five minutes or an hour hence is inherently  
>unpredictable just as weather a fortnight hence is.  In contrast, the overall  
>shape of the AI's "personality" may be understandable just as climactic  
>patterns are.

This seems to me to be different (and more reasonable) than your earlier
comments about parts of the system being "unidentifiable."  It's not hard
to believe that the behavior of an AI might be unpredictable in practice
though not in theory.

>If you could look at the code (or circuit for hardware) of the AI and starting 
>with the current thought after only a little work arrive at a prediction or  
>calculation of the next thought, would this not trivialize the thought?  You  
>would be in the position of Searle with his Chinese room.  Where's the  
>intelligence? You would look at your yellow-pads of state transition diagrams, 
>all separately comprehensible and with an easy to see overall pattern, and  
>conclude that the AI you had hand simulated was not so intelligent after all.   
It sounds like you just want the program to be very complex before you call
it intelligent.  I suspect Searle would say that it doesn't matter how 
complex it is-- it's still unintelligent, to him.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 04:00:57 GMT

In article <92099.165657JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <1992Apr8.010858.5398@news.media.mit.edu>, minsky@media.mit.edu
>(Marvin Minsky) says:
>>
>>In article <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>>>
>>>    Are you suggesting that ...  computations are _not_ syntactic?  In what
>>>manner would they not be?  From what I understand, whatever the computer doe
>>>_is_ "formal" and "precise", although we may interpret its output as
>>>_meaning_ something imprecise.
>>
>>Nonsense. What the computer does is what it does, just like a brain.
>
>   What does this mean?  That a computer does whatever it does (which tells
>us nothing) or that a computer does whatever a brain does (which is a central
>issue here, not something that can be simply assumed or stated without
>support)?
>
>>It is _you_ who may interpret what it is doing as formal or precise.
>
>   Does this mean that you reject the isomorphism that many philosophers
>find between computers and formal systems?  And if so, on what grounds?
>(Directing me to an article would be an acceptable response here, although
>some stated reasons would be easier to discuss on the net.)
>  John Emmer  
>  Philosophy Department  
>  Penn. State University 
>  JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu     

I mean that a computer is a machine, in practice finite state.  Its
behavior can be described in many ways, formal and informal.  And of
course one could use, in particular, various kinds of monogenic
production rules.  But my point was simply to object to using terms
like "syntactic" and "formal" -- along, I fear, with their various and
curious implications -- as though these were substitutes for simpler
and less ambiguous terms like "finite-state" or "deterministic
machine".  To be sure, if you yourself don't subscribe to those hidden
assumptions, then no harm is done.  However, there appear to be those
who are convinced that "syntactic" means "devoid of semantic" --
without substantial justification for the implication that
finite-state (or, in Penrose's view, "algorithmic") machines cannot
have any degree of meaning, understanding, consciousness, etc.  What
do you mean when you say a machine is "syntactic"?
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Functional Equivalence (Was: A rock implements every FSA)
Keywords: functionalism, behavioralism
Date: 14 Apr 92 20:35:36 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA

Wasn't the issue of equivalence defined by Turing (1937) and Kleene
(1936)? Why reinvent the wheel?

-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
From: petersow@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Wayne Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The 'Big Bang' and the origin of 'mathematical  objects'
Date: 7 Apr 92 00:23:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: saifr00.1992Apr7.002301.3928
Organization: Honeywell Air Transport Systems Division


Mr M says about Mr Silber's discussion on the origin of mathematical
objects.

    " I don't think this discussion is in the domain of philosophy
of AI.  Query to everyone out there--is the tendency of mathematicians
to be philosophical realists an issue of interest here?"



Yes, I believe that Eric Silber provides this whole group with a
valuable service by commenting on Buddhism and on realism.  I per-
sonally dont agree with his point of view, but I credit his
willingness to open his view to critique.  This is refreshing.
One's fundamental view of reality has everything to do with the
philosohy of AI.  We are lead into discussions of self, intelligence,
knowledge, consciousness and so fourth.  Many people start by
assuming theories like the big bang, and evolution are true.  Their
opinions about the foundations of AI will be different than the
objective realists or mystical idealists.  We need more of these
types of discussions to at least sort out the differences.

Regards 
Wayne Peterson

"What happenned before the Big Bang?"
From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Date: 6 Apr 92 12:13:30 GMT
Organization: University of Central Florida

In article <1992Apr2.202206.25306@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>  
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
| In article <1992Apr2.132116.26024@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas  
Clarke) writes:
| 
| Thus with proper of identification of  
| >{single state} X {physical states} the single-state machine implements the  
| >5-colour-map-checker, computationally as well as behaviorally.
| 
| No it doesn't, for the usual reasons.  (I hate to say "strong conditionals"
| again.)
| 
I still don't get your conter argument.  Referring to the more general  
machine/rock with I/O case, the condition that the rock produce identical I/O  
behavior to the machine seems to me to estbalish sufficient boundary/initial  
conditions to insure that the rock reproduces the machine in all respects.  In  
this respect it seems Putnam's argument is correct.

If you are saying that that there exist sufficiently complex I/O behaviors  
(e.g. intelligent behaviors) so that the state identification Putnam uses must  
be undecidable/uncomputable/chaotic (or something equally nasty), and hence  
practially worthless, then I intutively agree, and intellectually maintain that  
the matter is an open question.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: tomh.bbs@cybernet.cse.fau.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robert Rosen & Physical form of Church's Thesis
Date: 10 Apr 92 22:24:35 GMT
Organization: Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

In article <538@trwacs.fp.trw.com> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) 
writes:

>tomh.bbs@cybernet.cse.fau.edu writes:

>>Rosen claims that the physical form of Church's Thesis is false.
>>This means there are physically realizable processes that are
>>not effectively calculable.
>
>Rosen is correct in this claim. The effectively calculable models are
>countable, and the physically realizable processes are uncountable.
>...
>>3) What happens if we use an analog computer instead of a digital one?
>>   The analog computer still has the 'initial condition' problem.
>>
>I'm not sure what problem you're aluding to here. Do you mean the 
problem
>of calibration?

Well, the idea is to use an analog computer to 'compute' one of those
non-effectively computable physical processes.  The difficulty is that
an analog computer cannot be started with a specified exact initial
condition, due to limitations of finite precision.

Wolfram [1] has talked about "computationally irreducible" physical
processes.  He maintains that the physical form of Church's thesis
holds - "one expects in fact that universal computers are as powerful
in their computational capabilities as any physically realizable
system can be, so they can simulate any physical system."
But there are processes that can only be 'computed' by the process
itself; such processes are irreducible.

Church's thesis holds because physical laws (or as Rosen would say,
contemporary physical formalisms) are all computable.  Rosen also
points out that this places severe restrictions on natural systems
(the real world), and that this justifies throwing out all those
formalisms as being too restrictive.

Perhaps this doesn't matter though.  Rosen doesn't say much about
self-organization in _Life Itself_, but he does say qualitative is
more than just quantitative: "mathematics has more to offer besides
numbers and ... perceptual qualities may be expressed in terms of
them," i.e. that measurement is not simply quantization.  He argues
in a different direction from there, but to me (knowing what I know
about open systems and self-organization), that the qualitative
properties of a system are more important than its precise physical
state.

[1] S. Wolfram, "Undecidability and Intractability in Theoretical
Physics," Phys. Rev. Lett. 54:735-738 (1985)

>Harry Erwin
>Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

Tom Holroyd
Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL
tomh@bambi.ccs.fau.edu
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Categories: bounded or graded?
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 01:31:59 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.010721.17700@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>  In my opinion the belief that natural categories are defined
>by invariant features leads to all kinds of nasty problems.  

No more nasty than those lead to by the idea that they're graded.
See Osherson & Smith.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
---------------------
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Date: 9 Apr 92 13:45:54 GMT
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto

In article <1992Apr8.073244.29543@ccu.umanitoba.ca> zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum) writes:
>
>Here you are mistaken. There are such things as small minds
>and big minds. Would you not agree that small animals have
>small minds, insects have even smaller minds. The problem
>you are having is that you want to be able to limit the
>size of a mind (quantize mind?) this cannot be done without
>introducing a whole bunch of other problems, such as what is
>the smallest mind, etc..
>-- 
Please edit your followups more carefully.
I am not mistaken. You haven't been following the thread very closely.
The question is not whether ther are "big" and "small" minds, but whether
ther answer to such a question has any bearing on the *presence* of a
mind. It is not I who introduced the mind "quanta", but whoever it was that
said a thermostat has an "atom" of a mind. 

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
---------------------
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 01:08:58 GMT

In article <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <1992Apr4.061244.767@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil
>Rickert) says:
>>
>>In article <1992Apr03.164328.8107@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark           )
>>Rosenfelder
>>writes:
>>>
>>>Searle seems to use "syntactic" to mean "formal", or "manipulating...
>>>symbols [with] precisely stated rules."  "Semantics" he seems to equate
>>
>> Would that Searle were that precise in his use of "syntactic".  But he
>>also says that every thing a computer can do is syntactic, and this
>>therefore includes computing averages and correlations of very imprecise
>>floating point information.
>>
>    Are you suggesting that such computations are _not_ syntactic?  In what
>manner would they not be?  From what I understand, whatever the computer does
>_is_ "formal" and "precise", although we may interpret its output as
>_meaning_ something imprecise.

Nonsense. What the computer does is what it does, just like a brain.
It is _you_ who may interpret what it is doing as formal or precise.
From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Date: 6 Apr 92 22:41:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: organpip.1992Apr6.224129.7406
 <1992Apr6.023638.518@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr6.182533.109@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging

Bill Skaggs:
>  I think I'm a backer of strong AI, but I don't believe that
>mind is an all-or-nothing concept.  Minds come in varying degrees
>of sophistication.  

Christopher Green:
>Varying degrees of sophistication have no bearing on the question of
>presence or absense.  A small mind is still a mind, just as a small ball
>is still a ball.

  Is a single molecule of rubber a ball?  How many molecules of
rubber does it take to make a ball?

  I believe that all natural concepts are fuzzy at the edges.  For
prototypical exemplars presence and absence are clear, but there
are always doubtful exemplars where presence or absence is a
matter of degree.  

  I like to think of SHRDLU as having mind to a very small degree,
and a thermostat as having an "atom" of mind.  A rock, because it
contains no representation of the world and does not communicate
or act purposefully, has no mind at all.

BS:
>The essential ingredients are a picture of
>the world, the ability to use it to accomplish goals, and some
>ability to communicate.  

CG:
>This is all very appealing, but all very vague as well. Longuet-Higgens
>(or however it's spelled) once built a little toy robot that used a
>square of paper to (mechanically) keep track of where it was on a table
>top. When it got to the edge of the paper, it would stop moving. This also
>happened to be (no counterfactual support here) when it was at thee edge
>of the table as well. This seems to satisfy your description. Would you
>credit it with a mind? (Try not to say 'no' simply because it can't 
>communicate. Stopping might be considered communication that it is at
>the edge of the table, just as much a the whining of a dog is.)

Well, it seems to me that the concept of mind is intrinsically
somewhat vague.

I don't quite understand the description of the robot.  Does 
the robot have some sort of representation of its position?  Does
it move according to some plan?  Or does it just move randomly
around on the paper until it comes to the edge?  The answers
to these questions determine how much mind I would be willing
to attribute to the robot (but very little in any case).

	-- Bill