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From: harnad@mind.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: More on Minsky on Mind(s)
Message-ID: <465@mind.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Jan-87 10:34:27 EST
Article-I.D.: mind.465
Posted: Sat Jan 24 10:34:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 19:46:40 EST
References: <460@mind.UUCP> <1032@cuuxb.UUCP>
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 21
Keywords: mind-modeling, 1st-order awareness, higher-order awareness
Summary: In modeling mind, don't count your interpretative chickens till your explanatory ones are hatched.
Xref: watmath comp.ai:175 comp.cog-eng:40



mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel) of AT&T-IS, Software Support, Lisle IL
writes:

>	It seems to me that the human conciousness is actually more
>	of a C-n;  C-1 being "capable of experiencing sensation",
>	C-2 being "capable of reasoning about being C-1", and C-n
>	being "capable of reasoning about C-1..C-(n-1)" for some
>	arbitrarily large n...  Or was that really the intent of
>	the Minsky C-2?

It's precisely this sort of overhasty overinterpretation that my critique
of the excerpts from Minsky's forthcoming book was meant to counteract. You
can't help yourself to higher-order C's until you've handled 1st-order C
-- unless you're satisfied with hanging them on a hermeneutic sky-hook.
-- 

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