Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cs.yale.edu!blenko-tom
From: blenko-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Blenko)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <25645@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 90 12:49:43 GMT
References: <25618@cs.yale.edu> <25621@cs.yale.edu> <1608@oravax.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.yale.edu
Organization: /usr/local/lib/news/rn/organization
Lines: 51
Nntp-Posting-Host: morphism.systemsz.cs.yale.edu

In article <1608@oravax.UUCP> daryl@oravax.UUCP (Steven Daryl McCullough) writes:
|Why would you say that no program has this property? It is true that a
|program can be "hooked up" to the environment in an infinite number of
|ways, so the relationship between program states and real-world states
|is not unique. But given a particular way of hooking up a program, it
|is certainly possible to create a program which has a causal
|relationship to the real world. The programs which control aircraft,
|for example, certainly do.

The latter "program" is something entirely different than the sorting
algorithm that I earlier used as an example of a program.  It is
presumably a description of (a subset of) the physical state of the
device in question and nothing more.

The sorting algorithm describes the information-transforming properties
of (some part of) a device that implements it.  But it is not a
sufficient description of the device, any more than the color of the
device, its properties as a heat-producer, and so forth, are.

If you think this issue (syntactic vs. semantic) is of less than
earthshaking importance, I think Searle agrees with you. In fact, he
expresses surprise in the Scientific American article that it has
generated such confusion.  I think it could be answered by saying,
"Well, we understood certain assumptions about the realization of the
algorithm to be implicit," or, "Yes, this is may become an issue at
some point, but for the purposes of our current research it is
sufficient to assume some simplified connection, and that has been
implicit in our discussion." I think this was just his opening skirmish
-- Searle's main issue concerns intentional properties of intelligence
and the problem of capturing these as part of some artifact.

|> There is no assumption that the human mind has a "unique" semantics,
|> only that it has a causual relationship to its environment.  If you
|> accept that programs have no such relationship, then their complexity
|> is irrelevant.  If you did have a candidate program, there are an infinite
|> variety of ways of "hooking it up" to its environment that would produce
|> insensible behavior.
|
|The same could be said for a human mind. If you stuck stimulating
|electrodes directly into a human brain, you could produce insensible
|behavior in humans, as well. Is your point simply that humans, unlike
|programs, have a natural notion of a correct hookup to the real world?

My intent is to try to convey Searle's point of view, as I understand
it. I think the point here is that specifying the algorithm is not
sufficient to describe any device, including one that is claimed to be
"intelligent". The reason is that the "hookup" plays an essential role,
as can be demonstrated by positing different ways of realizing that
"hookup".

	Tom