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From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence (long)
Message-ID: <1969@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 7 Jan 89 23:38:12 GMT
References: <558@soleil.UUCP>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 48

In article <558@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes:
>
> Conway's "All Numbers, Great and Small" shows off the boundless potential
> of the null set, but also of the human mind.  Human creative energy, like
> nothing, isn't anything if it isn't potential.  It is also an indomitable
> part of being alive, as countless experiments have documented.  People
> who are deprived of their senses by being floated in silent, dark tanks
> of water warmed to body temperature will hallucinate.  It is as though
> the human mind will not be stilled of its propensity to make something
> of nothing even, or especially, when immersed in nothingness.
>
This comment is quite naive, and I am surprise to find someone trained
in physics can make it.  Even though all sensory input is extinguished,
the neural circuitry which is tuned to evaluate such input is still quite
active.  In the absence of input, it is the nature of such circuits to
increase their sensitivity until artifactual output is obtained.  The
situation is somewhat analogous to amplifier circuits which go into
oscillation when the gain is increased beyond a certain point.  All neural
tissues, including muscles do this.  If you denervate a living muscle, it will,
after a period of a few days, begin to twitch spontaneously.  There is nothing
mystical or infinite about such behavior.  It can be explained on a purely
mechanistic basis, and all neurologists are familiar with such behavior.

>PHYSICIST:
>
>In the book "The Turning Point" Fritjof Capra (Ph.D in high-energy physics
>from University of Vienna) writes (p.101):
>
>
>     We can assert definitely ... on the basis of strictly empirical investiga-
>     tions, that the sheer reversal of our prior analytic dissection of the
>     universe by putting the pieces together again, whether in reality of
>     just in our minds, can yield no complete explanation of the behavior
>     of even the most elementary living system.
>

All this says is that such systems, even the most elementary are very 
complex.  As far as the nervous system is concerned, we are about at
the level of snails (see the work of Eric Kandel, for example) in coming
up with a more or less "complete" understanding of what is going on, at
least on a macro level.  

Capra is definitely on the lunatic fringe on this subject.  He embraces
"holistic" medicine, chiropractic, and other even more bizarre medical
quack systems which I suppose only enhance his popularity among his new
age followers.  He certainly isn't considered a touchstone among the
physicists I know.  I find little in his work to lead me to believe he
knows anything substantial about the brain or biology.