HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 14 Oct 92 23:49:37 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

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

>I'm open to the possibility that a machine
>(conceived of in the reductionist way you suggest) could think, but does
>this automatically mean that its mind would be imbued with the same
>conscious experiences that accompany our thoughts, in all their wondrous
>splendour?  What I'm saying is that maybe machines could one day think,
>but they still wouldn't be conscious in the way we are.

Dennett's ingenious and interesting answer to this question is to
suggest that neither these thinking machines nor we ourselves are
conscious in the way we think we are, but that there are good reasons
why we, and they, could both be subject to the same kind of illusion:
not an illusion in the sense of a folly, but a useful illusion, a user
illusion, a virtual machine, which simplifies the operation of the
brain.

As it were :-)

-- 
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: rapaport@acsu.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: unpublished chapters of "The Turing Option"
Date: 8 Oct 92 21:25:06 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci

In article <1992Sep28.143838.5772@hawk.cs.ukans.edu> spratt@hawk.cs.ukans.edu (Lindsey Spratt) writes:
>Gregory Benford's "Tides of Light" also seems to make extensive use
>of the ideas in  your "Society of Mind", Marvin.

There's also:

Justin Leiber, Beyond Rejection

which is about "transplanting" a *tape* of someone's mind into an alien
body, which then has to be prevented from rejecting it.  Since Leiber is
a philosopher, the book is full of philosophical implications.  Leiber is
also the son of the late Fritz Leiber of SF fame.

			William J. Rapaport
			Associate Professor of Computer Science
			and
			Center for Cognitive Science

Dept. of Computer Science||internet:  rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu
SUNY Buffalo		 ||bitnet:    rapaport@sunybcs.bitnet
Buffalo, NY 14260	 ||uucp: {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!rapaport
(716) 645-3193, 3180     ||fax:  (716) 645-3464
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:55:33 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.170930.9523@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu 
(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>In article <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>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.
>
>That a mere machine could think?  I don't remember any such statement
>by Searle.

How about this, from the first paragraph of said article (I keep a copy
handy for use in comp.ai.philo polemics):

  "Can a machine think?  Can a machine have conscious thoughts in exactly
   the same sense that you and I have?  If by 'machine' one means a physical
   system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one
   mean?), then humans are machines of a special biological kind, and humans
   can think, and so of course machines can think.  And, for all we know, it
   might be possible to produce a thinking machine out of different materials
   altogether-- say, out of silicon chips or vacuum tubes.  Maybe it will
   turn out to be impossible, but we certainly do not know that yet."

In _Minds, Brains, and Science_ he adds green slime to the array of 
potentially mind-causing materials.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Failing Algorithms (Was: Brain and Mind (Was: Logic and God))
From: system@CODEWKS.nacjack.gen.nz (Wayne McDougall)
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 09:19:09 NZDST
Organization: The Code Works Limited, PO Box 10-155, Auckland, New Zealand


In article <1992Oct5.022907.6131@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu 
(Michael Tobis) writes:
>If I am an algorithm, and you remove neurons essential to the 
implementation
>of the algorithm, I don't know the answer to your question. Since I 
can't>imagine that I am an algorithm, I can't imagine what answer you 
propse.
>

Consider then a "supervisory algorithm", which monitors the input and 
output to this algorithm. With a memory, this "supervsiory algorithm" 
(SA) could "notice" that a particular class of question, which earlier it 
could answer (according to its memory), no longer produces an answer or 
produces a different answer.
With its memory, it could "test" its hypothesis that its algorithm has 
been "damaged". It could then initiate repairs, either from first 
principls (!) or from relearning (from a backup?). At the very least it 
could mark as questionable the output from that algorithm.


Compare this with one of my self-appointed tasks after I'm concussed: 
recalling a sample of times tables (and observing the speed of my 
responses). Notice that those in the early stages of Alzheimers disease 
are AWARE of their loss of abilities. Note those who will stop driving 
because they determine they no longer have the skills required to do so.

To extend the notion of SA, it need not proceed to an infinite 
regression. While a level of SA would be desirable, there is no reason 
why a lowerlevel SA could no monitor those at higher levels, and SA peers 
could monitor each other. Compare this with the voting / polling with the 
computer system on the space shuttles.


Now if you have a well-grounded system with suitable feedback, the SA can 
also test the validity of its sub-algorithms by "testing" the answers. 
Internal reasonableness tests can also operate. Note that this step would 
be beyond many human check-out operators who will punch the wrong key on 
the till (missing neurons?) and try to bill me $100 for a packet of 
toothpaste. 

In summary: A SA can imagine it is exectuting a lower-level algorithm, 
and respond accordingly. A dense net of A and SA's could become quite 
impressive IMHO.


-- 
  Wayne McDougall, BCNU
  This .sig unintentionally left blank.

Hello! I'm a .SIG Virus. Copy me and spread the fun.
  Scot Wilson, The man with One T.            u9044140@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au
    "Its Scot with 1 T because all the other four letter words were used."

Warning: This .signature may be suddenly, and without prior notice, be cut shor
From: majid@nakano.me.tohoku.ac.jp (Majid Nili Ahmadaabaady)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: forecaster
Date: 10 Oct 92 09:30:56 GMT
Organization: Robotic Lab., Dept. of Machine intelligence & Sys. Eng., Tohoku
	Univ.,Japan



 Many years ago, the accuracy of weather forecasing was lower than
these days because of lack of knowledge and accurate instruments. But
human gradually extracted some relation between some parameters and
weather forecasting and made some proper instrument in order to
measure these parameters. After this simple and non professional
introduction I have a question:
Is a weather forecaster who uses this instruments and theories
intelligent?
If the answer is no, why?
If the answer is yes, aren't some animals like horse so ? If yes, it
is intrinsic. Is it modelable?

--
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 11 Oct 92 20:23:59 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct11.172208.9206@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) 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.

>> ... this is hardly controversial. Contrary to popular
>>opinion, even Searle of Chinese Roon fame agrees with that.

>It seems to me that Dennett and Searle are in irreconcilable opposition 
>over this issue, as Dennett made clear in "Consciousness Explained" [p.439].  

>what do Dennett and Searle agree on? 

They see no reason that intelligence and consciousness could not
reside in a machine in general, and in a computer specifically. They
are both materialists, and they both consider that human beings are no
more than complex biological machines. They are also aware that the
brain is quite likely to be the organ of mind, that the brain performs
(among other things) complex information processing tasks, and they
both agree that complex information processing (which can be done by
computers running programs) may well be crucially _involved_ in mental
phenomena. This much is simply the position that a well-educated
scientific materialist -- which they both claim to be -- must start
from.

Searle's point is that _if_ a computer were to manifest mental
phenomena (he argues mainly for understanding, but it is clear that he
considers the argument to apply to mental phenomema in general) then
these mental phenomena would not have been caused _just_ by the
running of a computer program. Dennet considers that this insistence
of Searle's that mental phenomena _must_ derive from some essentially
non-algorithmic process, Searle's famous "causal powers", is a kind of
crypto-dualism.
-- 
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: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 7 Oct 92 23:58:10 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <BvoFn3.Ext@nic.umass.edu> quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi) writes:
|	Now, of course, if Ms/Mr Flynn is claiming that human brains
|are not central processor cpu's with seperable memory/storage
|subsystems and all those other features of conventional first-fourth
|generation computers which we are familiar with, s/he is quite
|correct.  The architecture of human brains is unquestionably much
|different from any existing humanly-designed electromechanical
|computational devices.  Then again, the question of single processor
|vs. multi-processors is a bit of a misunderstanding of this
|architecture, I take it -- since I assume that some variation of a
|connectionist model of human brain architecture is correct.  ...

At least close enough for the issues being discussed here.

|Clearly, something like parallelism exists across many computational
|levels within the human (or generally "chordate") nervous system.  So
|for example, in pattern recognition lower level feature recognitions
|combine in a multivariate fashion within total object recognition; but
|total objects are themselves similarly conditioned by all the "other"
|sensory objects which contextualize and shape recognition.

Oh, it is even worse than that!  Higher level, total object recognition
can condition, or even determine, lower level feature recogniton.
[Ever try to correct your hearing of the words of a song that you
learned wrong? - your brain keeps insisting on hearing it they way it
has always heard it - I am going to have to listen to "Cam ye o'er frae
France" a few more times with the printed words before I can hear it right].

|Basically,
|the single-processor/multi-processor distinction breaks down and
|becomes meaningless within "Connectionist" systems such as chordate
|nervous systems (I put "connectionist" in scare quotes to indicate
|that I do not claim that chordate brains are fully describable, even 
|at a hardware level, by any finitely and discretely striated
|connectionist model.  Indeed, nature generally tends to be much too
|"indiscrete" for such artificial cognitive models)
|
Ah, now what is the significance of this to AI research?
Is this good or bad news?
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
 Sorry, the last line should have been
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 22:40:08 GMT

 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?

.
From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Human intelligence vs. Machine intelligence
Date: 8 Oct 92 13:37:38 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation

In article <burt.718398109@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>,
burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees) writes:

>Actually, Penrose gives much better arguments against machine
>intelligence than this.  The Godel argument, for example...  He is
>very clear that he is suggesting the quantum principle only as a
>possible way of explaining how human cognition might work.  Emphasis
>on the might; and that it does not alter his arguments against machine
>intelligence if this explanation turns out to be wrong.

Penrose' Godel argument against machine intelligence is ridiculous.
When I first heard a second-hand account of Penrose' arguments, I felt
that something must have been left out; there was no way a man with
the reputation of Penrose could have made such a fallacious argument.
So I bought the book, _The Emperor's New Mind_ to see for myself what
exactly Penrose' arguments were. Yep, they were every bit as silly as
I thought they were.

The arguments Penrose gives are not even original, they are
essentially the same as the arguments that Lucas gave much earlier
(although for some reason, Penrose denies this). And they are the same
arguments that almost any reasonable bright person might come up with
on first reading of Godel's theorem. (Except on further reflection,
they usually come to the realization that the arguments are wrong.)

If you like, I can give you a detailed explanation of what is wrong
with Penrose' arguments.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 22:08:03 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.185533.6092@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.170930.9523@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu 
>(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>>In article <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>>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>>
>>That a mere machine could think?  I don't remember any such statement
>>by Searle.
>
>How about this, from the first paragraph of said article (I keep a copy
>handy for use in comp.ai.philo polemics):
>
>  "Can a machine think?  Can a machine have conscious thoughts in exactly
>   the same sense that you and I have?  If by 'machine' one means a physical
>   system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one
>   mean?), then humans are machines of a special biological kind, and humans
>   can think, and so of course machines can think.  And, for all we know, it
>   might be possible to produce a thinking machine out of different materials
>   altogether-- say, out of silicon chips or vacuum tubes.  Maybe it will
>   turn out to be impossible, but we certainly do not know that yet."

>In _Minds, Brains, and Science_ he adds green slime to the array of
> potentially mind-causing materials.

Well, I don't want to nit-pick, but this doesn't distinguish between
'machine' and anything else -- nor does it suggest what might be
special about 'biological' ones.  Generally, I think most people reserve
the term machine for a collection of objects assembled in an
especially "insulationist" manner -- that is, in such a way that those
'functions' are realized in a particularly reductionist way, in accord
with the how the functions of the parts interact in accord with how
they are assembled.  But what the heck, he had to leave room for the
green slime.


Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 18:36:47 GMT

In article <7724@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
jd>nr = rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
jd>jd = jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)

jd> I can agree that thoughts happen in the (physical) brain.  But I
jd> don't agree that the decision event happens in thoughts.  Instead,
jd> the decision is _given to_ your consciousness in thoughts.  The actual
jd> decision is determined by some unconscious process.

nr> I disagree, but perhaps this is a quibble about words.  I would say that
nr> the decision is made in your thoughts, but the unconscious processes
nr> have constrained the choices available in that decision.

jd>If the decision is made in thoughts, it looks to me like you
jd>must be taking "thoughts" as including at least some of the
jd>unconscious processes I've been talking about.

Well, thoughts involve chemical reactions in the brain (and elsewhere)
that we are not usually conscious about.  I realize this was not quite
your meaning.  But I don't see how you can make a separation and treat
thoughts as only conscious, without adopting some type of dualist view.

jd>                                                And so my point
jd>is that it's far from clear that all of this, taken together,
jd>amounts to freedom.  Moreover, with a fairly small shift in
jd>perspective in introspection it can seem that decisions are
jd>given to us (presumably by unconscious processes we know little
jd>about and not by space aliens) rather than made.

But then you must ask yourself why we have consciousness.  What purpose
does it serve the organism that would cause consciousness to evolve, if
it is really all just a sham?  If freedom of choice is a complete
illusion, then consciousness would seem to serve no purpose.

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick Cassimatis)
Subject: "Mama"
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 02:56:36 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.175921.28043@gallant.apple.com> enea1@applelink.apple.com (Horace Enea) writes:
>Here's a thought, maybe the child say "MA" just because its easy and the mother
>responds.  That is to say, the child is "teaching" the mother.
>
>Horace

Has anyone ever heard the following theory of why "mama" seems to
universally be the infant "word for" mother:

The motor process pronouncing "mama" and the motor process of sucking
are very similar.  Thus, saying "mama" feels like sucking to the
infant and is thus associated with the mother.  (Is it first
associated with the nurse if the breast feeding is done by one?  What
about infants who are not breast fed -- do they associate "mama" to
the bottle?)

I think I read this in Play, Dream's and Imitiation in Childhood where
Piaget construes "mama" as being an circular reaction which is an
imitation of sucking.

Is there any evidence for or against a theory like this?

-Nick

PS I generally haven't been following this thread, so I appologize if
this post is somehow redundent.
From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 7 Oct 1992 16:31:22 GMT
Organization: x
NNTP-Posting-Host: change

daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) quotes:
>"If the program behaves like an intelligent person
>in all possible circumstances, then it is intelligent".

I suppose; but most people don't pass this test, so
something weaker might be in order.

Dave
-- 
	  Only resort to the Rules when absolutely necessary.
From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 15 Oct 92 09:52:11 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <26893@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1992Oct13.085347.13831@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
>>I'm open to the possibility that a machine
>>(conceived of in the reductionist way you suggest) could think, but does
>>this automatically mean that its mind would be imbued with the same
>>conscious experiences that accompany our thoughts, in all their wondrous
>>splendour?  What I'm saying is that maybe machines could one day think,
>>but they still wouldn't be conscious in the way we are.
>
>Dennett's ingenious and interesting answer to this question is to
>suggest that neither these thinking machines nor we ourselves are
>conscious in the way we think we are, but that there are good reasons
>why we, and they, could both be subject to the same kind of illusion:
>not an illusion in the sense of a folly, but a useful illusion, a user
>illusion, a virtual machine, which simplifies the operation of the
>brain.

Some illusion!  The point I was making is that an artificial brain, say
a computer built according to recursion theory, no matter how complex,
is still based on a certain model of what a mind is.  There is no
guarantee that this model captures _all_ features of a real mind.  A
real mind may have capacities that far outstrip such a machine.  Or
again, it may not.  Who knows?  But it is not prima facie obvious to me
that a machine would have the same capacity for eg. imagination and
creativity that we have.  The Computer is only the latest model of
Man; we have rejected so many earlier models in the past that it might
be wiser to maintain a healthy skepticism about the latest paradigm.
Perhaps there really is something unique about Carbon-based life.
I note that there is no real AI yet, so there is no evidence on either
side of the issue, there are only 'techno-romantics' and 'humanistic-
romantics' as a French philosopher once put it.  Which side is right
remains to be seen.  Personally, I'm trying to keep an open mind on
the subject.

-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy
From: enea1@applelink.apple.com (Horace Enea)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Word Mechanics (was: parts of "Brain and Mind")
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:59:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: gallant.1992Oct8.175921.28043
Organization: Apple Computer

Here's a thought, maybe the child say "MA" just because its easy and the mother
responds.  That is to say, the child is "teaching" the mother.

Horace