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From: harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Searle, Turing, Symbols, Categories
Message-ID: <110@mind.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Nov-86 13:21:12 EST
Article-I.D.: mind.110
Posted: Sat Nov  1 13:21:12 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Nov-86 23:55:47 EST
References: <158@mind.UUCP> <150@cwrudg.UUCP> <160@mind.UUCP> <2495@utai.UUCP> <612@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM>
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 95
Summary: Anthropomorphism is not critical, "Anthropopraxis" is: Robots must be human do-alikes, not human look-alikes.
Xref: mnetor net.ai:1270 net.cog-eng:323


Jay Freeman (freeman@spar.UUCP) had, I thought, joined the 
ongoing discussion about the robotic version of the Total Turing Test
to address the questions that were raised in the papers under
discussion, namely: (1) Do we have any basis for contending with the
"other minds problem" -- whether in other people, animals or machines
-- other than turing-indistinguishable performance capacity? (2) Is
the teletype version of the turing test -- which allows only
linguistic (i.e., symbolic) interactions -- a strong enough test? (3)
Could even the linguistic version alone be successfully passed by
any device whose symbolic functions were not "grounded" in
nonsymbolic (i.e., robotic) function? (4) Are transduction, analog
representations, A/D conversion, and effectors really trivial in this
context, or is there a nontrivial hybrid function, grounding symbolic
representation in nonsymbolic representation, that no one has yet
worked out?

When Freeman made his original sugestion that the symbolic processor
could have access to the robotic transducer's bit-map, I thought he
was making the sophisticated (but familiar) point that once the
transducer representation is digitized, it's symbolic all the way.
(This is a variant of the "transduction-is-trivial" argument.) My
prior reply to Freeman (about simulated models of the world, modularity,
etc.) was addressed to this construal of his point. But now I see that
he was not making this point at all, for he replies:

>	... let's equip the robot with an active RF emitter so
>	it can jam the camera's electronics and impose whatever bit map it
>	wishes...  design a robot in the shape of a back projector, and let it
>	create internally whatever representation of a human being it wishes
>	the camera to see, and project it on its screen for the camera to
>	pick up.  Such a robot might do a tolerable job of interacting with
>	other parts of the "objective" world, using robot arms and whatnot
>	of more conventional design, so long as it kept them out of the
>	way of the camera... let's create a vaguely anthropomorphic robot and
>	equip its external surfaces with a complete covering of smaller video
>	displays, so that it can achieve the minor details of human appearance
>	by projection rather than by mechanical motion. Well, maybe our model
>	shop is good enough to do most of the details of the robot convincingly,
>	so we'll only have to project subtle details of facial expression.
>	Maybe just the eyes.

>	... if you are going to admit the presence of electronic or mechanical
>	devices between the subject under test and the human to be fooled,
>	you must accept the possibility that the test subject will be smart
>	enough to detect their presence and exploit their weaknesses...
>	consider a robot that looks no more anthropomorphic than your vacuum
>	cleaner, but that is possessed of moderate manipulative abilities and
>	a good visual perceptive apparatus.

>	Before the test commences, the robot sneakily rolls up to the
>	camera and removes the cover.  It locates the connections for the
>	external video output, and splices in a substitute connection to 
>	an external video source which it generates.  Then it replaces the
>	camera cover, so that everything looks normal.  And at test time,
>	the robot provides whatever image it wants the testers to see.
>	A dumb robot might have no choice but to look like a human being
>	in order to pass the test.  Why should a smart one be so constrained?


From this reply I infer that Freeman is largely concerned with the
question of appearance: Can a robot that doesn't really look like a
person SIMULATE looking like a person by essentially symbolic means,
plus add-on modular peripherals? In the papers under discussion (and in some
other iterations of this discussion on the net) I explicitly rejected appearance
as a criterion. (The reasons are given elsewhere.) What is important in
the robotic version is that it should be a human DO-alike, not a human
LOOK-alike. I am claiming that the (Total) object-manipulative (etc.)
performance of humans cannot be generated by a basically symbolic
module that is merely connected with peripheral modules. I am
hypothesizing (a) that symbolic representations must be NONMODULARLY
(i.e., not independently) grounded in nonsymbolic representations, (b)
that the Total Turing Test requires the candidate to display all of
our robotic capacities as well as our linguistic ones, and (c) that
even the linguistic ones could not be accomplished unless grounded in
the robotic ones. In none of this do the particulars of what the robot
(or its grey matter!) LOOK like matter.

Two last observations. First, what the "proximal stimulus" -- i.e.,
the physical energy pattern on the transducer surface -- PRESERVES
whereas the next (A/D) step -- the digital representation -- LOSES, is
everything about the full PHYSICAL configuration of the energy pattern
that cannot be recovered by inversion (D/A). (That's what the ongoing
concurrent discussion about the A/D distinction is in part concerned
with.) Second, I think there is a tendency to overcomplicate the
issues involved in the turing test by adding various arbitrary
elaborations to it. The basic questions are fairly simply stated
(though not so simple to answer). Focusing instead on ornamented
variants often seems to lead to begging the question or changing the
subject.

Stevan Harnad
{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard}  !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet
(609)-921-7771