Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!pdxgate!eecs!erich From: erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Introspection Message-ID: <1574@pdxgate.UUCP> Date: 12 Feb 91 08:00:29 GMT References: <1991Feb4.224101.18846@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP Lines: 171 mpdevine@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Michel P. Devine) writes: >I should preface my comments on this important topic with a little background. >I once held with the AI clan with the fanaticism of the hardcore believer, >a "faith" born of despair at the failure of philosophy and religion to >enlighten me on the true nature of the universe. Viewing the world as a >Great Machine is comfortable for the cognoscenti and leads to a feeling >of vast power and (usually) superiority over less illuminated and gullible >masses. My fall from grace came about with my attempt to make music >intelligible to computers. After consulting scores of so-called music >experts, it became increasingly clear that, in contradiction with their claims, >they were most certainly *not* in the possession of clear-cut rules for music >appreciation. The resulting angst built over the span of years, a gnawing >suspicion, then a fear, finally terror, that I was WRONG in a basic way. >I should be careful to point out that I do not repudiate the machine >model in toto, but that I consider it incomplete. It is true that it is >possible to assign specialized functions to parts of the brain, but it is >pure speculation to conclude that we are purely mechanistic. The destruction >of my most dearly held beliefs has been cataclysmic but necessary (I should >note that the process is still ongoing). You seem quite bitter about the experience. Why must a mechanistic universe have no good explanation of emotions and intuition? Just because we don't understand the mechanisms does not mean that it does not exist. When I hear explanations that there must be "something more" to the universe than a mechanism in operation, many seem to also hold an undercurrent of revulsion to attributing all of the beauty of the world to "just a machine". Why must a mechanistic view be ugly? The term "machine" has long been synonymous with "unemotional" and "brittle", but it need not be that way. My view of the world is (like many other people's) deeply related to the aesthetics involved. It has been established that some of the most efficient dynamically adaptive algorithms for complex demands are quite simple. Even neural networks (extremely primitive compared to the real thing, mechanistic or not ;-) show some really interesting adaptive capabilities. My view of a mechanistic world is extremely *rich*, full of sensuality and imagery of incredible complexity, with feelings, life, and all the other amenities... It could even allow for a God if done right. The point of science is more to find consistent generalized models than to find some ephemeral "truth". It is always a danger to call a model, however accurate, the "truth" about the situation. *My* point is that, although you could be correct, of what value is it for science as a whole (or even a subdiscipline like Cognitive Science) to disregard its models totally... science's tenet is to discover empirical relationships. Now, admittedly, there is a strong debate about whether cognitive science fits the bill, so to speak, but can it hurt to try? > ...I think the major weakness of AI research is essentially an >optimistic and enthusiastic over-simplification of nature. I would agree, but some of us *are* trying to address the problem. Cognitive Science started changing the questions asked and the methods and knowledge used to address these questions... and the newly emerging field of Artificial Life asks different questions completely (I made a posting about 4-6 months back about the problem of assumptions and bad questions in the field of Artificial Intelligence). >The levels represent qualitative differences in thinking ability or >"intelligence". For example, the ability of plants to orient their >photoreceptors with the sun seems to be the action of some kind of >thought, although not necessarily consciousness. Some extremely simple algorithms for self-adaptive and self-configuring systems seem to be able to do this quite well. > ...Animals seem to be free >of most neuroses by virtue of their lack of self-consciousness, living >entirely in the present, but without the ability to forecast the effect >of their actions. This is still being worked on, I must admit ;-). > ...My point is that the only reality to which we have direct >access is our own, and even then from a very limited vantage point, namely >we may come to know ourselves, but we shall never truly know anyone else. Yeah? So what. Can you truly know what its like to be physically female (or even socially, that was wierd enough) ? Believe me, I've thought about this quite a bit... I'm told that many aspects of what I've discussed with some female friends of mine are quite close (one even gave me a very funny look ;-). >It is our predilection as scientists to search for all-encompassing >paradigms, explanations and simplifications. Assuming that we are nothing >more than ambulatory formal systems leads to logical contradiction as pointed >out in a previous posting. This is not necessarily the case. The current theory claims that our "logic" resides on a different level than the formal system. It may well be that the godel statement that will clog us is a set of patterns. (it is well known in medical circles that certain frequencies of strobing light can send epileptics into convulsions, and I think that you could engineer the right patterns or stimulus to knock a heathy person out too). The right kind of shock to one's system can even kill us. One could then think of a godel string as a "shock to the system", since how do we know what form they would take? >It seems therefore only rational to conclude that our basic assumption is >incorrect, or at least dubious. Dubious? Agreed... I think the current model has problems too, but that does not mean it has no use... > ...So, what is the truth? I don't know, but >I am not satisfied with the purely mechanical answer. It does not address >the most mysterious aspects of intelligence, namely intuition, creativity >and so on, and therefore it is naive, and in fact degrading. How does it not address intuition and creativity? There are some very interesting models of creativity being worked on right now (I heard of one being worked on by Hofstadter called a "slipnet"... most interesting). I don't know about this being automatically naive... there have been suggestions that questions about "intelligence" and "conciousness" being naive in themselves (I admit it, I am one of the suggesters ;-). Degrading? This sounds a bit like elitism... why are we better than the rocks and stars? We're more interesting to ourselves, I'll grant you, and we can do neat things, but they are beautiful too. > ...Who really >wants to believe that he is no more than a complex automaton? No AI >researcher truly applies such reasoning to himself, his family or co-workers >which thereby indicates a split between belief and action that is most telling. I'm not sure what I believe... but I fit in the model too... many people I know call me "intense" because I find everyone so fascinating, and am constantly curious about them. This is also the reason why I have a tremendous fear of death. I am going out on a limb here, but in trying to be what I feel as an honest scientist, I feel one should think critically about everything, and am therefore an agnostic. (Atheism in my view would be an assumption too) > ...On a related note, isn't it interesting that our medical >experts pursue the understanding of life solely from studying dead material? It is an unfortunate carryover from the past... >Perhaps that is why most hospitals are rotten places to go when one is sick... Personally I think that most human technology is very slapstick... with little elegance... and medicine is near the top of my list (make that barbaric). >I think that introspection provides subjective and crucial information about >a process most of us are almost studiously ignoring. Introspection is the >*only* way to know for certain what is really going on in your brain, >whether it agrees with any given theory or not. Yes, but so many people have fundamentally disagreed about how the human mind operates from introspection... can we rely on their interpretations for real information that is not just useable in a social context? I agree that introspection is useful, but one must be careful, it may well be that our internal states that we percieve don't well correspond to what's going on (assuming a mechanistic model, of course ;-), as it seems a dangerous assumption that we can... and look how far it got in the last 4000 years (and that's just the time during recorded history), and it would be naive to assume that they were stupid, or even that much less intelligent than ourselves. Erich "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is." / -- Erich Stefan Boleyn -- \ --=> *Mad Genius wanna-be* <=-- { Honorary Grad. Student (Math) }--> Internet E-mail: \ Portland State University / >%WARNING: INTERESTED AND EXCITABLE%<