Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!labrea!sri-unix!teknowledge-vaxc!wlieberm
From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Biological relevance and AI (was Re: Who else isn't a science?)
Message-ID: <23201@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: 15 Jun 88 16:34:15 GMT
References: <3c671fbe.44e6@apollo.uucp> <10510@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <13100@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1988Jun14.140154.341@mntgfx.mentor.com>
Reply-To: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (William Lieberman)
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 26


Just to add slightly to Ben and Mike's discussion, Ben's naturally good
question about why  should it be that  anyone can assume that we humans on
earth uniquely possess capabilities in intellgence, etc. (i.e. the
biological system that makes us up), and Mike's reply that such an assumption
is not really made, reminds me of the question asked in a not-too-long
ago earlier age when scientists asked, 'How likely is
it that the chemistry of the world, as we know it, exists in the same
state outside the earth?'

	A reasonable question. Then when helium was demonstrated to exist
on the sun (through spectrographic analysis around the 1860's??) and around
the same time when the table of the elements was being built up empirically
and intuitively, the evidence favored the idea that our local chemical and
physical laws were probably universal. As a youngster I used to wonder
why chemists, etc. kept saying there are only around 100 or so elements
in the universe. Why couldn't there be millions?  But the data do suggest
the chemists are correct - with relatively few elements, such is the matter
of the universe existing. What I'm saying here is that it may be prudent
to expect not too many diverse 'forms' of intelligence around. Rough
analogy, I agree; but sometimes the history of science can provide useful
guideposts. Right now we have some sensible ideas about what it takes to
do certain kinds of analyses; but no one really knows what it takes to
enable a state of consciousness to exist, for example. One answer surely
lies in research in biophysics (and probably CS-AI).

Bill Lieberman