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From: ttoupin@diana.cair.du.edu (Tory Toupin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: My view of intelligence...
Keywords: AI and intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.231541.16615@mercury.cair.du.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 91 23:15:41 GMT
References: <13577@helios.TAMU.EDU>
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In article <13577@helios.TAMU.EDU> rpb0804@venus.tamu.edu writes:
>I dunno about this philosophy about intelligence being inbred or evolving.  I
>personally feel that the brain is a large, organic macrocomputer.  After all,
>it stores data in "chips" (cells) using electrical currents.  It constantly 
>takes in data, processes it, acts on it.  One can never really say that it is 
>idle in the real sense; it is always doing something.  

Definitely!  IMHO, the brain is always in a dream like state.  This is not to
say that nothing is real - this is all a dream.  No, I mean that, dreams
are a sort of cacophony of mental symbols trying to come together and form new
mental concepts - this is what the brain is always up to.  What appears to be
consciousness is a single thread of symbolic association, beginning with some
small group of initial symbols which form the seed for later associations
which are conscious thoughts.

>                                                       The meta-thought 
>mentioned earlier - it isn't spontaneous, I'd wager.  It was probably a result 
>of a stimulus, whether you consciously realized it or not.  

I don't know which meta-thought you refer to but, I'd guess that any concei-
vable meta-thought can be generated spontaneously, just by a bit of symbolic
juggling.

>I think that if a system were created with enough storage capacity to hold all 
>the data it could accumulate through its "senses" (visual, audio, tactile, 
>etc.) and a sufficient algorithm to process the data, reflexes could be 
>conditioned.  Independent actions could result from a "library" of reflexes
>(that's what WE do, after all!).  This would result in an organism as 
>intelligent as the technology supporting it.  It just so happens that we 
>haven't caught up with ourselves yet, hmm?
>
>Another stray thought (or is it really stray?) - Would you consider biological 
>nerve pulses (pulse, no pulse) a form of digital coding and data transfer?  
>That would be a great way to approach the input from the environment...

I think so...  But not so much as a discrete signal with a fixed number of
states, but as a continuous state (sorry if the terminology is incorrect or
weak here).  This would allow and even force symbols (by symbols I mean a
series of nerve impulses in various parts of the nervous system which stand
for some environmental stimulus) to mutate - perhaps a sort of nerual
compression algorithm :).

>Roberto
>RPB0804@TAMVENUS

I'll explain any of this further if anyone so desires...  I think I've left
quite a few gaps up there.  Flames anxiously welcome...
--
Tory S. Toupin                         |
ttoupin@diana.cair.du.edu              | Existence toward perfection...
Unversity of Denver                    |     Life of mediocrity. 
Undergraduate: Math & Computer Sciences| 
Denver, CO  80208                      |             -Tory Toupin

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