Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!corton!inria!seti!nuri!ziane From: ziane@nuri.inria.fr (ziane mikal @) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Conciousness Message-ID: <2124@seti.inria.fr> Date: 29 Apr 91 13:26:46 GMT References: <1991Apr16.061532.10775@panix.uucp> <2102@seti.inria.fr> Sender: news@seti.inria.fr Organization: INRIA Rocquencourt,Le Chesnay, France. Lines: 125 In article Peter J. Angeline replies to my <2102@seti.inria.fr> message: >> In reply to the article cited above, I agree that conciousness >> may be a more interesting problem, since intelligence has >> kind of lost SOME of its mystery. > Whoops! I disagree completely. While we have identified some interesting > phenomina, intelligence is still a very dark and deep problem. But we can > still talk about your other thoughts regardless. First, thank you for your interesting answer. Of course I agree that intelligence is still a very interesting problem. What I meant is that an intelligent machine does not seem impossible any more, at least to many people. When I said it has lost SOME of its mystery I meant that intelligence is not any more something specifically HUMAN. Some people believe that human beings have a soul. I personnaly do not believe that (because I don't even understand what it means) but that's not the point. The point is that intelligence, consciouness, feelings, etc, are often related to that mysterious part of us that is called soul, or something else. It seems that some animals should be considered as having also a kind of a soul, but the point is more here to oppose computers and human beings. As it has of course been already pointed out (e.g. by M. Boden in "Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man") A.I. may have a de-humanizing impact on people. If machines become intelligent, are we only machines. Aren't we also, spirits etc ? I can easily immagine an intelligent computer and I can also immagine a computer with a conciousness. However I have some difficulty to immagine a computer having pain. I have some difficulty to understand what it means. >> If a computer can simulate pain or pleasure, does it really mean >> that it really suffers or feels pleasure. >This is the same question as "If a computer simulates a mind then does it have >a mind?" If you believe Strong AI people (Haugeland, Newell and Simon, Fodor, >Pylyshyn), then yes, computer simulation of a physical procees is tantamount to >any interpretation which can be placed on the simulation consistently. Thus a >computer would "feel" pain if a simulation of pain was consistently >interpretable as the physical process of "pain". (See Newell's papers on >Physical Symbol Systems.) >However, If you believe people such as Searle, Steven Harnad or the Dreyfus >brothers, simulation is not sufficient to posess the characteristic >simulated. For instance, simulating a hurricane by computer doesn't get the >chips wet. Searle's chinese room experiment is one attempt to philosophically >address this question and has direct import to yours. >As usual, it all comes down to who you WANT to believe. Personally, I choose >to believe I do not think that the problem is the same for pain and for intelligence. I think that it is difficult to simulate intelligence whithout being actually intelligent. Of course one may be temporarily misleaded in a limited context (cf Eliza etc) but the point is a definition of intelligence will relate it to the outer world why a definition of pain will not necessarily. To be intelligent means that you can solve problems related to the outer world. Even abstract problems are "abstracted" from some initial, although sometimes remote, reality. Feeling pain does not imply such a relationship, it is personnal. Since pain often comes with some behavior, that behavior is usualy a hint of some pain. I just wanted to stress that pain must not be confused with an external behavior. Now the question is what is pain if it is not an external behavior ? I am not aware (although I should) of the opposition you mention about simulation, but it seems obvious to me that the point is what you consider a simulation. The word is much too fuzzy, this is why I tried to be more explicit with intelligence and pain. About the simulaton of a hurricane, I think that people IN the simulation of your hurricane may become wet. Such a simulation may be considered quite satisfactory, depending of course on which charateristics of a hurricane are important to you. I do not know Searle's chinese room experiment, but since Searle is giving a talk in Paris May 21 I would like to be aware of his work. I remember a paper in the french edition of the Scientific American, about a year ago, but I lost it. Has anybody interesting references to suggest ? I would also welcome references about Steven Harnad, Haugeland, and Pylyshyn since I do not know them. Thank you in advance also for the reference of Newell's papers on Physical Symbol Systems. >I suppose the best answer is that pain is unpleasent to an organism as a signal >to that organism that whatever it did to lead to the pain is not healthy for it >to repeat. It's evolution's method of feedback to an individual organism, >which could be interpreted as "an absolute measure of bad" with the end of the >scale being "death". Well, it is not very convincing. I think that pain may be a MEANS to make an organism avoid doing something or on the contrary to force it solve a problem. However it is different from pain itself. If I am wrong I would be glad to hear a refutation because I would have learned something surprising. Don't you think that pain/pleasure is a convenient way "found by nature" to control organisms behavior somehow, but that one can immagine different kinds of control mechanisms ? Maybe pain would be quite a poor system to control computers, because programming is more effective. However if programs become more and more complex, maybe pain could become interesting as a heuristic. Is it however necessary ? Anyway I still do not understand what it means to have a computer suffer. >> I mean that one may not care about somebody else's pain >> but that guy cannot deny that this is really a problem for the >> suffering being. >I can deny it since I can't experience it except by that person either telling >me or me infering that a person is in pain from their actions. Either way I am >removed from the phenomina because I can't experience what the other person is >experienceing within his own body. This is the classic "other minds" problem >from philosophy and is fairly hopeless. Maybe I was not clear enough. Of course pain can be faked and you may not trust someone else. However, if you have experienced pain yourself, and once you have notice interesting common points between you and other human beings, you can hardly deny that they suffer pain. I think that you need strong reasons to deny that, unless you pretend to be quite unique. You may also adopt some classical scepticism, or solipsism but I consider that it is not very useful. Any reference about the classic "other minds" problem ? Mikal Ziane (Mikal.Ziane@nuri.inria.fr).