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From: marty1@houem.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: More on Minsky on Mind(s)
Message-ID: <794@houem.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Feb-87 15:09:44 EST
Article-I.D.: houem.794
Posted: Tue Feb 10 15:09:44 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 20:24:48 EST
References: <460@mind.UUCP> <1032@cuuxb.UUCP> <465@mind.UUCP> <2556@well.UUCP> <490@mind.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 53
Keywords: Consciousness, command buffer, evolution, foresight
Summary: A conscious being can decide whether to think or act.
Xref: watmath comp.ai:224 comp.cog-eng:60

In article <490@mind.UUCP>, harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:
> wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin), Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
> writes:
> >	Rehearsing movements may be the key to appreciating the brain
> >	mechanisms [of consciousness and free will]
> 
> But WHY do the functional mechanisms of planning have to be conscious?
> What does experience, awareness, etc., have to do with the causal
> processes involved in the fanciest plan you may care to describe?...

I have the gall to answer an answer to an answer without having read
Minsky.  But then, my interest in AI is untutored and practical.
Here goes:

My notion is that a being that thinks is not necessarily conscious,
but a being that thinks about thinking, and knows when it is just
thinking and when it is actually doing, must be called conscious.

In UNIX(tm) there is a program called "make" that reads a script of
instructions, compares the ages of various files named in the
instructions, and follows the instructions by updating only the files
that need to be updated.  It can be said to be acting with some sort of
rudimentary intelligence.

If you invoke the "make" command with the "-n" flag, it doesn't do any
updating, it just tells you what it would do.  It is rehearsing a
potential future action.  In a sense, it's thinking about what it would
do.  But it doesn't have to know that it's only thinking and not
doing.  It could simply have its actuators cut off from its rudimentary
intelligence, so that it thinks it's acting but really isn't.

Now suppose the "make" command could, under its own internal program,
run through its instructions with a simulated "-n" flag, varying some
conditions until the result of the "thinking without doing" satisfied
some objective, and then could remove the "-n" flag and actually do
what it had just thought about.

This "make" would appear to know when it is thinking and when it is
acting, because it decided when to think and when to act.  In fact, in
its diagnostic output it could say first "I am thinking about the
following alternative," and then finally say, "The last run looked
good, so this time I'm really going to do it."  Not only would it
appear to be conscious, but it would be accomplishing a practical
purpose in a manner that requires it to distinguish internally between
introspection and action.

I think that version of "make" would be within the current state of the
art of programming, and I would call it conscious.  So we're not far
from artificial consciousness.

						Marty
M. B. Brilliant		(201)-949-1858
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	houem!marty1