HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:58:31 GMT

In article <1993Jan24.213358.10067@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <1juactINN4ph@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>>>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]

I'm glad to see that there is strong support for this view.  It seems
obvious to me.

>	I agree: dogs, perhaps even spiders, feel pain.  But the situation
>is not so clear to me with other aspects of mental life.  Do they have
>desires?  Do they have beliefs?  Do they recall the distant past?
>Do they have streams of consciousness?

Some of these are questions of definition.  In particular, that might be
the case for desires, and perhaps for streams of consciousness.

Do they have beliefs?  Not in the sense in which we use the term.  We use
it in such a way that some form of language is a requirement.

Do they recall the distant past?  I don't believe so.  They certainly
retain memories, in the sense that tricks they learned earlier may stay
learned, and they may recognize old friends.  But this is quite different
from being able to recall the past.  I made a point last summer of
arguing that memory (including human memory) is not a store/recall
device.  What we perceive as memory recall is really an inference
procedure, and it requires language to perform any but the simplest of
such inferences.
From: mini@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Padmini Srivathsa)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: [TEST] <<--ignore this!
Date: 21 Jan 1993 17:54:22 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4
Originator: mini@csd4.csd.uwm.edu


 Do u actually read this stuff ??


-- 


 ______  o ____  o
/ / / <_<_/ / <_<_
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Abductive Reasoning
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 03:44:03 GMT

In article <1k29p5INN4eo@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU> theodore-michael@yale.edu (Dr. Disorder) writes:
>
>Could some kind soul out there in net-land email a definition of abductive
>reasoning, as well as a sentence or two that describes its application?
>	Thanks very much,
>        	Michael
>
>
Abduction is half of induction, the other half being confirmation.
One abduces hypotheses on the basis of observations (e.g., these
seven emeralds are green; perhaps *all* emeralds are green). Then
one goes on to attempt to confirm this hypothesis with additional 
observations. 

See C.S. Peirce's "Abduction and induction" in _Philosophical writings_,
and then Nelson Goodman's "The new riddle of induction" in _Fact, fiction,
and forecast_.  Then stop thinking about or you'll go crazy. :-)


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
From: theodore-michael@yale.edu (Dr. Disorder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Abductive Reasoning
Date: 25 Jan 1993 22:05:09 -0500
Organization: Yale University Science & Engineering UNIX(tm), New Haven, CT 06520-2158
NNTP-Posting-Host: minerva.cis.yale.edu


Could some kind soul out there in net-land email a definition of abductive
reasoning, as well as a sentence or two that describes its application?
	Thanks very much,
        	Michael


-- 
Practice random acts of randomness.........
		theodore-michael@cs.yale.edu
From: diwadkva@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu (Vaibhav A. Diwadkar)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Vanderbilt University
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 23:17:00 GMT

In article <dpn2.232.727891709@po.CWRU.Edu>, dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes...
>In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
>>I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
>>be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
>>the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?
> 
>I very much doubt it. My freshman philosophy teacher maintained that humans 
>are the only self-aware creatures on the planet, and that we perceive 
>conciousness in animals because we tend to judge all things by ourselves.
> 
	- Your freshman phil. teacher is the worse off for his/her ignorance
	of emperical research on animal behavior, and also for his/her 
	anthropocentric hubris. Certain classes of
	primate species do exhibit behavior indicating that they do
	possess some form of awareness of themselves.  A typical 
	experiment would involve the animal's reaction to seeing itself
	in a mirror.  Different primates have been shown to demonstrate
	different behavior in such instances.  I have seen films on this
	and they make for enthralling viewing.

	- On an added note, if evolution is indeed a continuous process,
	I wonder why it would give rise to discontinuous phenomenon like
	consciousness etc.  By discontinuous I mean a case where only
	one species has it and noone else on the evolutionary continuum
	does.

			Just curious,

						 - Vaibhav.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: jampel@cs.city.ac.uk (Michael Jampel)
Subject: Re: Teleology. HELP!!!
Organization: City University, London
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 16:01:43 GMT

In article <ssrzakar.728147353@reading> ssrzakar@csres.cs.reading.ac.uk
(M. S. Zakaria) writes:

>I would appreciate if somebody out there would be kind enough to explain
>to me what teleology really is. 


This may not be what you meant at all...

<flameproof clothes on>

The teleological argument for the existence of God is also known
as 'The argument from design' (see below). A teleological explanation
is one which assumes someone has a REASON for doing something, not
just random chance. People often (wrongly) talk in a teleological way
about Darwinism -- the zebra has stripes BECAUSE they keep it camouflaged.

No. The zebra has stripes because of a random genetic mutation. The
environment then affected zebras in good or bad ways because of the
stripes.  So the reason striped horses exists is because a random
event turned out to have good side effects, not because someone
(some horse or some God) thought in advance that it would be a good thing.

The argument from design says this: isn't the world wonderful in
various complicated ways. How did it get to be so complicated (and
yet with a place for every animal, a prey for every predator)? It
must have been DESIGNED by something very clever and very powerful.
Let us call this thing God.  Therefore God exists.

("A stopwatch is very complicated and yet everything fits together.
This is because someone intelligent designed the watch, and not
that just a random collection of cogs and springs happened to bump
into each other in the right way." This example is true, but does not
prove that the previous paragraph is true.)

This argument for God's existence is flawed in a number of ways. But if
you are presented with it by any monotheist (Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc)
it suffices to point out that the argument can also be used to justify
the existence of _multiple_ gods, each designing their own bit of the 
universe. Also, it does not prove that the designer is _morally_ perfect
which is an essential attribute of God, in most people's view.

None of this is meant to cause offence: one can believe in God and yet
recognise that this proof of God's existence doesn't work.

--
=====================================================================
 Michael Jampel         Dept of Computer Science, City University, 
 jampel@cs.city.ac.uk   Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, England
                        Tel +44 71 477 8449, Fax +44 71 477 8587 
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7366 sci.philosophy.tech:4930
From: chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 24 Jan 1993 09:51:09 -0500
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu

In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
>I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
>be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
>the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?

Well, do you think dogs feel pain when you, say, cut them with a razor
blade without anesthetics?  It seems that they generally give lots of
incontrovertible evidence of being in pain when something like this
happens.  By the same standards of evidence by which we decide that
other human beings are conscious, we also decide that dogs are
conscious, it seems to me.  The notion of "cruelty" to animals is
vacuous if we don't generally believe that dogs and other higher
animals (at least) are conscious.
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 27 Jan 93 19:06:06 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA

I've been oblivious to this discussion up to now, but I'm not sure that
the data are as presented here.

Central nervous systems of the chordate type are known from chordates,
and tunicate larvae and are strongly suspected in primitive hemichordates
(Pikaia).

Plants and unicellular eucaryotes have the power of movement to some
degree.

Taxonomy has to do with reproductive isolation, which can be behavioral
and locational in addition to genetic.

Apes are known to be conscious.

So where is the evidence that evolution is discontinuous?


-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Searle on syntax mirroring semantics
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 12:11:55 GMT

Can anyone explain this sentence to me?  It is on p.203 of "The
Rediscovery of the Mind" by John Searle.

	The development of proof theory showed that within certain
	well-known limits the semantic relations between propositions
	can be entirely mirrored by the syntactic relations between
	the sentences that express those propositions.
From: ucacgcj@ucl.ac.uk (Gordon C Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is a computer therapist conscious?
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:08:53 GMT
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium

In article <1993Jan21.004409.1999@cs.ucla.edu> colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Kenneth Colby) writes:
>
>[...]
>Bohm in quantum
>mechanics has said mind and matter are in a participatory
>relation with no real division between them.   A subtle idea.
>
>Ken Colby
>colby@cs.ucla.edu

But is it true? ;-)

Gordon.

Gordon Joly      Phone  +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703      FAX  +44 71 387 1397
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT


--
Gordon Joly      Phone  +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703      FAX  +44 71 387 1397
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 00:58:14 GMT

In article <24JAN199317172344@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu> diwadkva@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu (Vaibhav A. Diwadkar) writes:
>
>	- On an added note, if evolution is indeed a continuous process,
>	I wonder why it would give rise to discontinuous phenomenon like
>	consciousness etc.  By discontinuous I mean a case where only
>	one species has it and noone else on the evolutionary continuum
>	does.
>
I agree with your beliefs abount animal consciousness, but I think this
(common) line of evolutionary "reasoning" is spurious. What about the
"discontinuity" of cordates having central nervous systems? What about the
"discontinuity" of animals having the power of movement? What about the 
eucaryotic "revolution". Evolution is full of "discontinuities" of this sort. 
If it weren't, it would be damn hard to develop a taxonomy of life forms.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 01:56:55 GMT

In article <dpn2.232.727891709@po.CWRU.Edu>, dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:
|> In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
|> >Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
|> >that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
|> >I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
|> >be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
|> >the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?
|> 
|> I very much doubt it. My freshman philosophy teacher maintained that humans 
|> are the only self-aware creatures on the planet, and that we perceive 
|> conciousness in animals because we tend to judge all things by ourselves.

I believe that chimps have been found to be self-aware in some sense. If I
remember correctly, the way this was tested was to put a spot of paint on a
chimps face and let him look at a mirror and see how frequently he touched that
part of his face. The control was to put the same spot on the chimp and not
give him a mirror. The theory being that if the chimp touches the spot more
frequently with the mirror present than without then he must recognize himself
in the mirror and therefore must have a concept of self ... I believe the same
test has been done with babies (human) too, and that until a certain age babies
do not seem to be self-aware.

|> Personally, I considered this to be utter nonsense. Personally, I feel that 
|> the argument that my cat is concious is as sound as the argument that my 
|> roommate is concious. (Actually, he isn't right now. He's sleeping. :-)

Larry Edwards
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7426 sci.philosophy.tech:4999 sci.logic:2648
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Searle on syntax mirroring semantics
Date: 27 Jan 93 01:39:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan26.203945.19833
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <auerbach.728056438@news.ncsu.edu> 
auerbach@ncsu.edu (David D Auerbach) writes:

>orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

JO'R:
>>Can anyone explain this sentence to me?  It is on p.203 of "The
>>Rediscovery of the Mind" by John Searle.
>
>>	The development of proof theory showed that within certain
>>	well-known limits the semantic relations between propositions
>>	can be entirely mirrored by the syntactic relations between
>>	the sentences that express those propositions.

DDA:
>Well, without the context it just seems like an unnecessarily vague way of
>pointing at the completeness theorem for first-order logic; roughly, that
>the semantic relation of first-order consequence (taken as adequately
>captured by a Frege-Tarski formal semantics) is co-extensive with <name
>your favorite first-order logic derviation system>.  

I have to agree with this interpretation, although I have no idea why
it is attributed to the development of proof theory, rather than model
theory.

DDA:
>More vague is the "well-known" limits.  He could mean a) that first-order
>logical theoremhood is "only" r.e. and not recursive or b) that full
>second-order logic is not so nice proof theoretically  or c) if all of
>arithmetic is somehow "semantic" then (cashing in syntactic as
>axiomatizable) the truths of arithmetic outstrip any correct axiomatization.
>These are mere sketches, and c) is the least plausible reading of Searle's
>remark. 

Looking at the passage in question, I find that Searle is setting up a
dialectical opponent espousing the pro-"Strong AI" position, so as to
allow himself an easy thrill of kicking a dead horse.  In this context,
the "well-known" limits may also be dictated by the formal pragmatic
component contributed by deixis, as analyzed by Bar-Hillel and Montague.
However, a combination of (a) and (b) seems most plausible here.

DDA:
>A more general way of looking at it is that the notion of logical form is
>unexpectedly successful in tracking semantic relations; this restores all
>of Searle's vagueness (in the out of context quote, he said carefully) but
>sounds nicer.

Given that the reference to expectations is purely gratuitous, the
dead pathfinding metaphor is pleasantly inappropriate, and, most
importantly, the notion of logical form is at least as plausibly
relegated to the purview of semantics, as to that of syntax, I find
this formulation to be, commendably, even more obscure than the
original.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky comp.ai:5103 rec.arts.books:26625 misc.writing:4359 rec.arts.int-fiction:1320
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,rec.arts.books,misc.writing,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The language of music
Date: 27 Jan 93 22:16:25 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
NNTP-Posting-Host: cyclops.eece.unm.edu


	Those interested in the topic, even casually, might
	wish to look for a wonderfully entertaining series
	of lectures on vinyl records by Leonard Bernstein,
	entitled The Norton Lectures, given in '72 at Harvard.

	He talks about (and demonstrates on the piano) musical
	syntax and semantics, referring to Chomsky, using for
	examples Mozart's 40th and that famous piece by Ives
	who's name I forget that has competing melodic and chaotic
	themes, and asking the question "whither now music?"

	It's about 12-14 records, and if you are really, really
	lucky, your library may have a copy.

	Not that any of this has squat to do with rec.arts.books.

rms
From: christen@astro.ocis.temple.edu (Carl Christensen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: CMU LISP Tutor
Date: 24 Jan 93 13:06:17 GMT
Organization: Temple University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]

(This may be a FAQ but I can't find the FAQ list for comp.ai.)

Does anyone know how to get a copy of CMU's famous LISP tutoring
program?  I have tried 'archie' to no avail.  Replies via E-mail
or posting.  Thanks.

--

Carl Christensen                      christen@astro.ocis.temple.edu
Department of Computer Science
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA  19122   USA         (215) 735-6787
From: berlandi@papageno.inria.fr (Pierre Berlandier)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: CFP - KB planning, scheduling and control
Date: 21 Jan 93 15:19:37 GMT
Organization: INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis (Fr)

> Maybe this is a silly question, but in what sense can these be considered
> "knowledge-based" methods?  I suppose I can imagine what a knowledge-based
> Tabu search would be like, but for the others I'm stumped.

For sure, it is a silly question, but what is Tabu search ?
Can anyone give me a (some) basic reference on this technique...
Thanks in advance,

-- 
Pierre BERLANDIER 

email: berlandi@sophia.inria.fr
smail: SECOIA Project, INRIA, B.P. 93, F-06902 Sophia Antipolis

Newsgroups: comp.ai,rec.arts.books,misc.writing,rec.arts.int-fiction
From: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred Welden)
Subject: Re: Computer writes a book?
Originator: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 15:29:58 GMT
Organization: Dobonia


In article <1993Jan28.061706.21192@nuscc.nus.sg>, tim@iss.nus.sg (Tim Poston) writes:
|sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred Welden) writes:
|
|: Based on this I propose the Welden Test of natural intelligence: put a
|: person in a booth where he can communicate only by teletype.  Have him
|: communicate with two respondents, one a human, one a machine.  If he
|: can't tell which is the machine, he is behaving without natural
|: intelligence.
|:
|: Congratulations to your instructor--he has failed the Welden Test!
|
|Be fair on the poor guy; he was grading a _Modern_Poetry_Class_.
|None of the usual tests like coherence, levels of organization, etc.
|would allow more than half the class a natural intelligence certificate.
|
|Besides, the A+ submission was written by the poster's husband,
|using BASIC to mechanize some selection from words and phrases _he_
|installed --- not just a full dictionary and a set of language rules ---
|and he and she selected the most successful poem, in their view,
|from the output.  He was facing mostly natural intelligence.
|
|Finally, he was not able (even by teletype) to interrogate the machine,
|which was thus not a `respondent' in the Turing/Welden sense.
|So he was not even _subjected_ to the test, let alone failing it.

All points well taken.  Having seen an opportunity to toss in the
Welden Test I wasn't going to let a few nit-picky little details like
this stop me--who knows when another occasion would arise?



-- 
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |
From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Natural Language newsgroup
Date: 25 Jan 1993 04:24:19 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity von Uniland, College Park
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: periodic.eng.umd.edu
Originator: clin@periodic.eng.umd.edu


    I'll have to go back and reread the requirements for making a newsgroup,
but for the time being, I am posting this up so that I can get a rough idea
of how many people would be willing to support a natural language newsgroup.
I am hoping that everyone has returned back from the holidays.

   Here's an outline of a charter.   Suggest improvements, and pretty soon
we can make a formal call for discussion.

***
Charter for Natural Language Newsgroup

     Name: comp.ai.natural-lang
     Moderated?:  Unmoderated
     Purpose:   To discuss issues related to natural language, especially
                but not solely the kind of issues that researchers in
                AI would consider important to natural language.   This
                would include issues such as:

                    * Natural Language Understanding
                    * Natural Language Generation
                    * Machine Translation

                Issues related to specific research being done in the
                field may also be considered.

***

    If anyone else has any additions, please contact me at clin@eng.umd.edu.
Jaime Cisneros has expressed interest in helping out, but to make it 
easier, I'll use my e-mail address.   If this bounces, you can try
him at cisneros@eola.cs.ucf.edu.   Send mail concerning whether you
would vote for such a group or not.  If neither, then you do not need
to send mail.   If you have suggestions, or would like to help, please
send either of us or both, e-mail.

    Despite my interest in setting up this newsgroup, I should warn
you that I consider myseld only a novice in the area.  So, any questions
concerning anything related to natural language issues should wait
about half a year or so.  If the vote is successful, we can set up
some anonymous ftp site to hold FAQ information.

--
Charles Lin
clin@eng.umd.edu
Xref: sparky comp.ai:5029 rec.arts.books:26374 misc.writing:4280 rec.arts.int-fiction:1286