Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What's the Chinese room problem?
Summary: Information Content of the brain.
Message-ID: <2322@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 5 Oct 89 16:37:44 GMT
References: <2281@uceng.UC.EDU> <2245@csadfa.oz>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 42

In article <2245@csadfa.oz>, rim@csadfa.oz (Bob McKay) writes:
> From article <2281@uceng.UC.EDU>, by dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny):
> > However, I think absolute translation *must* be possible in principle,
> > unless we believe that the human mind has an infinite information
> > content.
> 
> Is it clear that the human mind has any information content (in Shannon's 
> sense) at all? We don't yet understand how the human brain holds knowledge, 
> or even if there is any level at which it is discretised: if not, it's not 
> at all clear that information theoretic measures apply,

If we hold to the materialist assumption, then the function of the
brain (i.e., intelligent behavior) must follow directly from its
physical structure. We can describe this physical structure to any
arbitrary precision with some finite string of characters, right?
I mean, you've only got so much material in your head, and only
a finite number of structures, interconnections, cells, etc.

So, if we can in principle describe a brain in sufficient detail to
permit a sufficiently capable constructor to reconstruct an
arbitrarily exact copy, then all the information content of the brain
must be tagging along for the ride. To say otherwise is, I think, to
believe in Dualism (not that can prove that's wrong...).  So even if
we don't know the mechanism whereby the brain stores its information,
we must be able to conceptualize its information content indirectly
through the complexity of its physical structure.

Note that this is not likely to be a very efficient basis for
communication. It may be rather like reconstructing all of IBM
to copy a floppy disk. Obviously, you would like to save yourself
some trouble by piecing together the code whereby IBM puts
information on a disk. But even if you don't know how to do that,
you can see that some upper bound must exist on how hard that
job would be.

I do not know if the information content of the brain can be greater
than the information content of the shortest description of the
physical structure of the brain. However, I doubt that it can
be INFINITELY greater.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu