From: heitkoet@lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle's World and Computers
Date: 19 Dec 1992 18:13:19 GMT
Organization: CS Department, Dortmund University, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Keywords: Searle Realism Computers

--

			"A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough
			to make one believe in God."
							-- Anonymous

Sorry folks, I havn't followed the whole thread on Searle, but as
his recent book "The rediscovery of the mind" is my current evening
reading, I'd like to bite in:

In article <724658698@sheol.UUCP>, throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:
|> For another problem, Searle's focuses on "simulating" intelligence, and
|> says that "simulated" things aren't "real" things.  The problem I see is
|> that AI workers aren't trying to simulate intelligence, but to emulate
|> it, and emulated things ARE real things.  This is related to the above,
|> in that Searle seems to suppose (falsely it seems to me) that "symbolic"
|> implies "simulated" to the exclusion of "emulated". 
Wow! My ATARI ST, while emulating a Macintosh, isn't an ATARI anymore,
but a REAL Mac? Well I havn't seen the chassis transform into a shoe box ;-)

I think that simulation and emulation are principally the same. But both
words are used in a slightly different context:

    (i)  It is a simulation, if you model an abstract system
         E.g. a "world model" would be called a simulation,
         because nobody would deny the fact that this is just
         a model, nothing REAL in the sense that every world
         model must lose compared to the REAL thing, due to it's
         mere complexity: you play an almost infinite game.

    (ii) It is an emulation, if you model a concrete system
         E.g. a Macintosh emulator for the ATARI ST (Sun, etc.)
         That is, you have a finite set of system calls, that have
         to be mapped onto the new hardware, etc.,: you play
         an almost finite game.

Symbolic AI folks tend to confuse (i) & (ii) as they believe that
"mind" is the output of a symbol manipulating automaton, and from
their (WRONG!) view, the brain and a turing machine are the same:
both are symbol manipulating machines.

Unfortunately (?!) the brain is NOT ONLY a symbol manipulating machinery
but IS ABLE to just run in this strikingly stupid mode...

Connectionist know the difference, but rely on the idea that an
emulation of the brain's hardware, e.g. by using modern perceptrons --
artificial neural nets-- will circumvent the "symbolic" problems.
They will find out (10 years approx.) that they are also WRONG...

There might be an artificial intelligence, but NEVER an artificial
human intelligence...

Finally, please let me state that I certainly DO NOT think that symbolic
AI, Connectionism, etc. is a useless waste of time and effort, I think
that exploring the dead end streets in the search process of life
is pretty useful, but sometimes it's even more useful to take a
look at the street signs (of life).

I thus would recommend all those who study AI shall take courses
in biology, psychology, philosophy and other "weired" sciences
to get a broader view, and a glimpse of other promising roads to take...


	-joke

--
Joerg Heitkoetter			|	*
Systems Analysis Group			|      ***      Merry Xmas and
University of Dortmund, Germany		|     *%*%*     a happy new year '93
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy