Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!gatech!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!ap1i+ From: ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Andrew C. Plotkin) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: The limitations of logic Message-ID: Date: 14 Dec 88 05:43:09 GMT References: <9020@bcsaic.UUCP> <1628@buengc.BU.EDU> <42836@linus.UUCP> , <1667@buengc.BU.EDU> Organization: Carnegie Mellon Lines: 36 In-Reply-To: <1667@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) writes.... /In article ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Andrew C. Plotkin) /writes: />/ bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) />/ wonders what we would expect a topologically and neuromimetically />/ accurate model of a brain to think. /> />I assume this simbrain has been taught language in the same way our brains are. />(If it was created with already-existing patterns taken from a human, it's real />easy to figure out what it would think -- just ask the human it's simulating!) / / Our / brains are sufficiently similar as to be indistinguishable for the purposes / of survival, yet inescapably dissimilar for the purposes of comparison. / [...] / In response to your statement, therefore, the fact that SimBrain is in / a bakelite box will make it very different from the teacher, as will the / teacher-student relationship. We can't know what to expect it to think. I understand that, no problem. I meant something like: If it's a good simulation, and it's simulating a particular person, we can get a good idea of what it's thinking by asking that person "What would you think if you found yourself looking out of a camera lens? (and whatever other sensory effects the simbrain is receiving.)" You won't get a neuron-perfect answer, but it gets the idea across. In other words, your question sounded like "System X is a simulation of system Y. I wonder how will X behave?" Not a philosophically helpful question. On the other hand, if the simbrain *was* taught language and so forth the usual way, through years of experience, my answer becomes "It will think like a person who has grown up with these experiences." This is, of course, much harder to answer. (Read "impossible", given our current knowledge of psychology, although speculation is of course possible. (See Robert Heinlein, Jeffrey Carver, et al... :-) --Z