Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!amsctg!root
From: root@amsctg.UUCP (Admin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: am-ness, awareness, thinking
Keywords: ai, brain, mind
Message-ID: <301@amsctg.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 89 05:28:17 GMT
Organization: AMS,Inc.,ARL.,VA
Lines: 35

Existence (being or am-ness) precedes awareness which precedes
thinking. Physical and chemical reactions have a lot of am-ness
and no identifiable awareness or thinking. Even simple organisms
show reaction to environmental events, which could be considered
as awareness. More complicated animals have definite self-awareness
(if they did not they could not communicate territorial messages).
Thinking can be broken into two catagories: a) symbolic which can be
transferred into other computational systems b) semantic which cannot
be transferred into systems that are unaware.

As food for thought in support of my last statement, think about the easy
paradox 'the next statement is TRUE; the last statement is FALSE'. This
paradox is nonsense to unaware systems (i.e. no self-awareness). 
To an aware system (such as you!) this paradox provides a clue that 
symbolic reality (your thoughts) and physical reality (your existence)
are not identical.

When we communicate about human semantic events (e.g. being in love)
we construct symbolic messages about events that are meaningless at a
purely symbolic level yet convey important information to another
person who has experienced similar events.

Purely symbolic systems can perform phenomenal feats. Yet they don't
even have the simpliest instinct for self-preservation. Would you 
rather trust your life (paycheck, wife, children, etc.) to systems
that cannot relate to your desire for a happy continued existence, or
to your fellow man who might share some of your same ideals.

While it's wonderful to explore the limits of symbolic computation,
unless we are willing to discuss building self-aware systems the term 
artificial intelligence will reamin a misnomer.

Robert Lindsay (uunet!amsctg!root)

My own opinions! - not that of my employer!