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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Summary: recalling some observations by Minsky
Message-ID: <7244@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 89 17:28:38 GMT
References: <1380@tank.uchicago.edu>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
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In article <1380@tank.uchicago.edu> staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
>
>One often hears the assertion that no matter what, we will never create
>a machine that is truly conscious, as we are. Certainly, we will never
>have to admit that one is. To date, there is no general concensus that
>any animal is consciously aware, and this is because that we cannot
>observe consciousness, except directly. DesCartes once 'proved' that
>animals were not conscious because they could not speak. What would
>he say now, that we have taught chimps to use sign language? I have
>observed my dogs making logical deductions, and yet I could not prove
>this to anyone, let alone to a skeptical philosoper. We shall never
>be able to demonstrate consciousness in a machine, the best we will
>be able to do is the best we've ever done. We can ask it, 'Are you
>conscious?'
>
I think this might be a good point to recall some remarks by Marvin Minsky in
THE SOCIETY OF MIND.  (I tend to find Minsky a more credible writer than
Jaynes.  Perhaps this is because he can come up with better evidence than
hallucinogenic introspection.)  If we look up "consciouness" in the Glossary,
we find the following passage:

	In this book, the word is used mainly for the myth that human minds are
	"self-aware" in the sense of perceiving what happens inside themselves.
	I maintain that human consciousness can never represent what is
	occurring at the present moment, but only a little of the recent
	past--partly because each agency has a limited capacity to represent
	what happened recently and partly because it takes time for agencies to
	communicate with one another.  Consciousness is peculiarly hard to
	describe because each attempt to examine temporary memories distorts
	the very records it is trying to inspect.

This entry has a "pointer" to Section 6.1, the first Section of the Chapter
entitled "Insight and Introspection."  In Section 6.8 of that Chapter, we
find the following passage:

		Many people seem absolutely certain that no computer could ever
	be sentient, conscious, self-willed, or in any other way "aware" of
	itself.  But what makeseveryone so sure that they themselves possess
	those admirable qualities?  It's true that if we're sure of anything at
	all, it is that "I'M AWARE--HENCE I'M AWARE."  Yet what do such
	convictions really mean?  If self-awareness means to know what's
	happening inside one's mind, no realist could maintain for long that
	people have much insight, in the literal sense of seeing-in.  Indeed,
	the evidence that we are self-aware--that is, that we have any special
	aptitude for finding out what's happening inside ourselves--is very
	weak indeed.  It is true that certain people have a special excellence
	at assessing the attitudes and motivations of other persons (and, more
	rarely, of themselves).  But this does not justify the belief that how
	we learn things about people, including ourselves, is fundamentally
	different from how we learn about other things.  Most of the
	understandings we call "insights" are merely variants of our other ways
	to "figure out" what's happening.