Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!dan-hankins
From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <16875@cup.portal.com>
Date: 8 Apr 89 20:12:23 GMT
References: <10992@bcsaic.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 67

In article <448@esosun.UUCP> jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson) writes:

>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?

     No, I can't.  However, the reason is not because the computer is
incapable of being in pain, but rather because it's running the wrong kind
of program.  The right kind of program will *not* have prolog rules saying
things like 'if damage signal, then make pain utterance'.  That's far too
high an abstraction level for this sort of behavior.

     What is pain?  Introspection tells me that it is an excess of
sensations of various types accompanied by involuntary contraction of
muscles in the vicinity of the sensation.

     From a biological point of view, it is a stronger than normal signal
on neural paths that lead to what is called the 'pain center' in the brain.
Two things happen as a result of this signal:

     1. Genetically built-in neural pathways from the pain-signal neurons
        to nearby motor neurons are stimulated by the signal, causing
        muscles to contract and pull the affected member away from the
        stimulus.

     2. The signal stimulates the pain center in the brain, causing it to
        release neuroinhibitors.  These chemicals decrease the conductivity
        of recently used neural pathways in the brain - essentially a
        "don't do that again" effect.

     This can be precisely emulated in connectionist programs.  When
presented with certain stimuli, the affected emulated neurons stimulate the
system's pain center and cause recently used pathways to decrease in
conductivity.  The automatic withdrawal reaction can also be programmed in.
The organism will then avoid painful stimuli and behavior leading to that
stimulus.

     If its complexity is on the same order as that of the human brain, one
would expect that it would respond to questions like, "Does it hurt when I
do _this_" with an emphatic "Yes, quit it!"

     If I were asked (for even the simpler connectionist system) if I can
honestly imagine it being in pain, I can answer, "Yes."


Dan Hankins
Primus Illuminatus
Sphere of Chaos