Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!seismo!esosun!jackson@freyja.css.gov From: jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists) Message-ID: <448@esosun.UUCP> Date: 30 Mar 89 21:10:22 GMT References: <2691@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <813@htsa.uucp> Sender: news@esosun.UUCP Reply-To: jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson) Organization: SAIC, San Diego Lines: 116 In-reply-to: fransvo@htsa.uucp (Frans van Otten) In article <813@htsa.uucp>, fransvo@htsa (Frans van Otten) writes: >Gilbert Cockton writes: >This discussion has degraded into a fight between two groups with different >viewpoints: > > 1. Humans have some mysterious powers that are responsible for their > having a mind. Animals might also have these powers, maybe even > martians. This property might be inherent to the building material; > carbon-hydrogen has it, Si doesn't. This is a seriously flawed statement of the position. It is not that carbon "has something" that silicon doesn't -- that would be *stupid*. What is claimed is that possibly it is not merely functional structure that determines the mind. The "silicon-based" computers we have are brain-like only in functional organization (if that :-). Perhaps consciousness is a *chemical* phenomenon and not a result of a particular functional structure. If a computer could be built based on carbon instead of silicon, the argument would be the same. > > 2. Understanding etc. are properties which arise from a certain way to > process information. The information theory is what matters, not > the way it is implemented. If we humans can do it using our hardware > (neurons etc), then computers are able to do this using theirs. > >I believe that those who support 1. are in an ideological grippe. This >is an unsupported way of looking at things. If these people might think >they could find support in religions, I have to dissapoint them. In no >religion known to me it is stated that the mind/spirit/... (the non-physical >thing) is dependent (in its being) on its body (the physical thing). This >includes religions ranging from Christianity to Bhuddism, Zen and Sufi. If anyone in this group were to appeal to religions for support they might as well put "Don't pay attention to this article!" in the subject line. Pointing out that no major religion supports a point of view is irrelevant. > >There is not either any support for this viewpoint from the technological >world. There is no apparent chemical reason why carbon-hydrogene molecular >groups can and Si-molecules can not give rise to something as high-level as >understanding and consciousness. > See above. >So I think these people are stuck somewhere between a "rational" and a >"not-rational" (emotional/...) viewpoint, but are too lazy to really think >about the issue. When they join a discussion, it becomes a mess. No comment. > >My personal opinion on this is as follows. In the evolutionary process, >with "survival of the fittest", you have to behave in such a way that you >will survive long enough to raise a new generation. As the level of >complexity of the organism increases, it will have to do more "information >processing": to find food, to protect against enemies, etc. My point: >intelligence etc. developed out of a need to determine how to behave in >order to survive. So the behaviourist approach is justified: "when the >system seems to act intelligently, it *is* intelligent". > I think most people involved in this argument assume that humans evolved to their present state. This, however, is beside the point. Yes, if one wishes to define intelligence "from the outside", it is perfectly ok to do so. Searle and others are simply arguing that something is left out when one does so. This may not make a practical difference in system performance at all. The main point of the CR thought experiment is that there is a subjective experience that is usually labeled "understanding" that would appear to be missing from the CR. This doesn't mean the room can't behave identically to a human speaker of chinese. In fact, the very argument presupposes that it *can*. Humans have a strange attribute known as subjectivity that doesn't immediately appear to be reducible to structure or functional organization. It may even be totally unnecessary for intelligent behavior. If so, though, it is hard to imagine why such a thing would evolve. Some people seem to misunderstand why "pain", for instance, is considered to be problematic for machine intelligence. A common point of view I have seen on the net goes something like this: The computer has sensors that determine when it is damaged or likely to be damaged. These send a signal to the central processor which takes appropriate action.. (like saying "Ouch!" :-). This hardly explains pain! The signal in question fulfills the same functional role as a signal in the human nervous system.. i.e. indicating a hazard to the body. The only thing missing is the *pain*! To use an example I have used before, ask yourself why you take aspirin for a headache. I claim it is not because you contemplate the fact that a signal is travelling through your body and you wish it would stop. You take the aspirin because your head *hurts*. The functionalist model would map a pain signal to some quantity stored in memory somewhere... Does it really make sense to imagine: X := 402; -- OW! OW! 402, ohmigod!... X := 120; WHEW!.. thanks! I can imagine a system outputting this text when the quantity X changes, but I can't honestly imagine it actually being in pain.. Can you? >Then we invented the computer. We start wondering: can we make this >machine intelligent ? Before we can write a program for this, we must >understand the algorithm humans use. This proves to be very difficult. >Research is hindered by people claiming that understanding requires very >mysterious causal powers which computers, due to their design, can never >have. Gilbert Cockton even claims that because human minds are not >artifacts, while computer systems always will be, there will always be >performance differences. Apart from the fact that this statement is >nonsense, it is not of any importance to AI-research. >-- > Frans van Otten > Algemene Hogeschool Amsterdam > Technische en Maritieme Faculteit > fransvo@htsa.uucp --Jerry Jackson