Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 26 Apr 88 11:41:52 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert\ Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 39

In article <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> yamauchi@SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>I agree that AI researchers should not ignore the questions of free will,
>consciousness, etc, but I think it is rather unreasonable to criticise AI
>people for not coming up with definitive answers (in a few decades) to
>questions that have stymied philosophers for millenia.

It is not the lack of answers that is criticised - it ia the ignorance
of candidate answers and their problems which leads to the charge of
self-perpetuating incompetence.  There are philosophers who would
provide arguments in defence of AI, so the 'free-will' issue is not
one where the materialists, logicians and mechanical/biological
determinists will find themselves isolated without an intellectual tradition.
>
>I don't see any reason why this could not be incorporated into an AI program
So what? This is standard silly AI, and implies that what is true has
anything to do with the quality of your imagination.  If people make
personal statements like this, unfortunately the rebuttals can only be
personal too, however much the rebutter would like to avoid this position.
>
>By the way, I would highly recommend the book "Vehicles: Experiments
>in Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenburg to anyone who doesn't
>believe that machines could ever behave like living organisms.

There are few idealists or romantics who believe that NO part of an organism
can be modelled as a mechanical process.  Such a position would require that a
heart-lung machine be at one with the patient's geist, soul or psyche!  The 
logical fallacy beloved in AI is that if SOME aspects of an organism can be 
modelled mechanically, than ALL can.  This extension is utterly flawed.  It may
be the case, but the case must be proven, and there are substantial arguments 
as to why this cannot be the case.

For AI workers (not AI developers/exploiters who are just raiding the
programming abstractions), the main problem they should recognise is
that a rule-based or other mechanical account of cognition and decision
making is at odds with the doctrine of free will which underpins most Western
morality.  It is in no way virtuous to ignore such a social force in
the name of Science.  Scientists who seek moral, ethical, epistemological
or methodological vacuums are only marginalising themselves into
positions where social forces will rightly constrain their work.