Xref: utzoo comp.ai:3134 talk.religion.misc:10265
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!dan-hankins
From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: elementary AI philosophy
Message-ID: <13708@cup.portal.com>
Date: 19 Jan 89 09:03:55 GMT
References: <18464@santra.UUCP> <1241@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <904@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 48

In article <904@ubu.warwick.UUCP> mirk@warwick.UUCP (Mike Taylor) writes:

>I assume that most of you are familiar with Chris Searle's intriguing
>"Chinese Room" objection to the claim of "Strong AI": In a nutshell, that
>a human could hand-simulate any putative AI program without gaining any
>*understanding* of the supposedly cognitive acts involved.  Searle
>concludes from this that we have no evidence to assume that the program
>itself, when running on a computer "understands" as such, (leaving aside
>for now the perrenial problem of exactly what we mean by "undestand").

     This is true, as far as it goes.  He has however missed the principle
of emergent properties of dynamic systems.  A computer program without a
cpu to execute on can do nothing.  A cpu without a program to run can do
nothing.  But combine the two and the system can do much.  The ability to
process information is an emergent property of the dynamic system
consisting of a cpu and program together.

     Of course, the man in the Chinese room does not understand Chinese. 
And of course, the room, pencil, paper, and rules do not understand
Chinese.  But the room, pencil, paper, rules and man *system* *DOES*
understand Chinese.  If one converses with the Chinese room system, one
gets intelligible results in Chinese - results which demonstrate that the
system understands the language, even though the man inside understands
nothing.  Does Searle adequately answer this argument?

>Whether or not you accept the existance of the Christian God, I think that
>it is unscientific to dismiss out of hand the idea that there is something
>"supernatural" (read: "operating by mechanisms as yet unknown to mankind")
>about the mind.

     Supernatural does not mean mechanisms *as yet* unknown to mankind. 
Supernatural means mechanisms *unknowable* by mankind - mechanisms which
are not natural and not governed by physical laws.  It is completely
scientific to dismiss out of hand such mechanisms.
     If the soul is in principle (though not yet in practice)
understandable, as you imply above, then rules can be set down describing
its operation.  Such rules can be embodied in a computer program and made
alive by running the program.  There is then nothing supernatural about
this definition of soul.  It is completely natural in every way.
     If one wishes to adopt the notion of an uncaused causal agent, one
must abandon scientific investigation of the causes.  This leads the
scientist to dismiss such a notion out of hand, simply in order to have
something to do.


Dan Hankins
Seen on Usenet:
"God is real, unless declared as integer."