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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: I concede confusion (Chinese Room, denotation)
Message-ID: <3530@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 89 19:58:25 GMT
References: <4532@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 40

From article <4532@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, by kck@g.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge):
" ...
" Regarding the Hawking analogy -- there are two (related) questions
" 1) What kinds of interaction with the world does it take to develop a mind
" in an obect capable of having one (feral children, while possessing fully
" human brains, generally never develop fully human cognitive abilities), and
" 2) What kinds of interaction with the world do we want to see in order to be
" convinced that an object has a mind.
" 
" On the output side, it seems to be the case (for instance, in children born
" with serious Cerebral Palsy) that someone who can make only a small,
" discrete (often binary) set of controlled movements can develop normal
" cognitive abilities, and can demonstrate that they have minds. Therefore, I
" don't see that the ability to perform the rich motor tasks a "normal" (I
" can't think of a more PC term right now, I apologize for any offense) person
" can engage in is relevent to developing/proving one has a mind.

Yes.  So while we're parsing questions, let's separate:

1) The evolutionary influence of motor and sense mechanisms on human
   thinking abilities, and

2) the current-day connection between motor and sense mechanisms
   and human thinking abilities.

When we stick to normal cases, it's easy to mistake 1) for 2).  Some
speculation about the evolution of human language connects it with the
development of a tongue and other articulatory facilities that can make
a rich variety of sounds in a controlled way.  That's as may be.  But
some people are born without tongues.  They learn to understand and
speak language.  They don't speak well, but they can do it.

I'm not sure just what Harnad's continual references to "transducer
and effector surfaces" mean, but if the general idea is that
human thought/understanding is somehow crucially dependent on
human sense and motor mechanisms, though this is a plausible
speculation, I think the evidence is against it as a synchronic
hypothesis.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu