Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!charon!ariel.unm.edu!cn6gr8au
From: cn6gr8au@ariel.unm.edu (James D. Nicholson ChNE)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Summary: Reductionism Permeates The Previous Argument
Message-ID: <4553@charon.unm.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 89 04:11:40 GMT
References: <1901@tank.uchicago.edu>
Sender: root@charon.unm.edu
Reply-To: cn6gr8au@ariel.unm.edu.UUCP (James D. Nicholson ChNE)
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 56

>
>I suppose that it is technically true that everything done on a computer
>can be reduced to the level of abstract symbol processing. To point to
>this low level of computer processing and then to talk about the very
>high level capabilities of the human brain and ask 'How can one be the other?'
>is rhetoric of the very worst kind.

 But 'abstraction' is the creative conceptualization of perception on
all levels!  Computer processing is not abstract!  Computers don't
have concepts (yet); they don't get the general idea.  They don't have ideas.

>To begin with, it ignores the fact that
>we can reduce the operations of the brain to a very low level and then show,
>mathematically, that the computational capabilities of neurons and 
>computers are in fact equivalent.

  Can you reduce the functioning of water to the functioning of hydrogen and
oxygen and then arrive at polar clusters?...NO!  You wouldn't even get proper
dielectric behavior.  Enough reductionism.  You imply the ultimate equivalence
of the mind with a complicated pinball machine.  If you can actually do this 
reduction, do it and become rich.

>What Searle points to as evidence of
>man's difference from machines are direct consequences of the incredibly
>complex organization of these low level neurons, which has been achieved
>only after billions of years of evolution. There is as yet no theorectical
>reason why we cannot eventually learn to create similarly complex machines.
>If we understood how neurons can be organized in such a way as to produce
>cognitive functions such as 'understanding' or 'creativity', then we could
>say exactly how 'one can be the other'. 

  Producing such machines means recognizing that 'understanding' and
'creativity' are not UNIX utilities;--- they are not disjoint.  Just as 
we have height and width together, the human mind utilizes the entire set
of neural entities to continually recreate the instances of the central
law which forms the mind in which all mental faculties exist together.  
(A long sentence, I realize.  Summary: the mind exists as a single function.)
In animals, the central law is different, but real.  It learns things in 
terms of genetically encoded logics. Thus, the animal cannot discover its
origins in the framework of creative logics.  In either case, there exists
a central law with all of its conjugated laws which constitutes an intangeable
existence.  The connections of neurons create logical pathways, not laws.
'Law' implies operation (i.e. thinking), while, logic is static and non-living.
A law is intelligible and is discovered only through insight.  Logic is merely 
relativistic and may be directly appropriated by a LISP machine.

  We are abstract thinkers, and as such, will think about these neural machines
which will obey the laws of our individual existence in abstracto:--- can
we conceive of the abstract as a juxtaposition of low-level logical options?
And when we do, does that thought utilize old logic or create new logic?
Clearly, the reductionist viewpoint on the equivalence of neural connections
and mind cannot be truly conceived, since, it is itself progress towards a
counterposition of true logics in an unresolved form.  The conclusion is
that there exist things other than logics which generate the logic of neurons.

                                         J.D. Nicholson