Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "Emotion" vs. "Understanding" (was: Re: emergent properties)
Message-ID: <3707@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 15 Oct 90 01:49:53 GMT
References: <3129@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <15268@venera.isi.edu> <3679@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <3344@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT AI Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 23

>In article <3679@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) wrote:
>;Once we give up the single-self idea,
>;we see that there can be no such thing as "momentary mental time" --
>;and no such thing as the "here and now" of pre-scientific thinking.
...
>;Anyway, distrust arguments based on "here and now" experience, unless
>;they are accompanied by some sort of systems description of how
>;they're suppose to work.

In article <3344@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) replied,

>Why should I? ... One can, in other words, easily
>verify Minsky's "theories" (if these are what they are) by becoming
>Minsky's theories.  ...  And regarding "pre-scientific thinking," 
>I distrust invovations of scientific authority where none obtain...

I agree completely with Eliot's criticism.  It was careless of me to
flame about "pre-scientific thinking".  What I had in mind was
"pre-computational thinking" in the sense that the mind is what the
brain does, the brain is a large and complex machine, and thus
requires a lot of powerful new ideas to understand (or at least
describe) what such a machine might do.  It needs, in short, good
ideas, and it doesn't help to call them "scientific".