Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!sn13+ From: sn13+@andrew.cmu.edu (S. Narasimhan) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: am-ness, awareness, thinking Message-ID: Date: 12 Dec 89 20:50:04 GMT References: <301@amsctg.UUCP> Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 64 In-Reply-To: <301@amsctg.UUCP> > 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. > --> If this is so consider : A liquid boils on heating. We can say > the liquid reacts to its surroundings.Does this mean the liquid has > awareness? The problem is awareness cannot be measured thru physical > activity or inactivity. Neither can "one" awareness realise another. > This is to say one can never be 100% sure whether another physical > object has awareness or not. We can only speculate about it. <-- > More complicated animals have definite self-awareness > (if they did not they could not communicate territorial messages). > --> I don't think this is because of awareness. It could be > due to the instinct of survival. Imagine a computer with a program > running. Suppose this program is such that it kills anyother program > which is running in a computer beside this computer. Can we say this > "killer" program has "awareness"? <-- > 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! > --> The problem is , even if ,by some freaky chance, we built a > system that is aware of itself we won't know about it. THis is so > because we don't yet have a test for "awareness" like Turing's test. > First of all, we don't even have a test to tell whether our fellow human > beings are aware of themselves are not, apart from reasoning that since > they look like us and behave somewhat like us they have awareness. > But,if this reasoning is accepted , then the Turing's test itself is a > test for awareness of artificial systems. <-- S.Narasimhan sn13+@andrew.cmu.edu