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: <16877@cup.portal.com>
Date: 8 Apr 89 20:14:12 GMT
References: <10992@bcsaic.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 51

In article <10992@bcsaic.UUCP> ray@bcsaic.UUCP (Ray Allis) writes:

>Such a deal I have for you!
>
>Your dinner entree for tonight is digital computer simulation of filet
>mignon!  It includes simulated baked potato, simulated tossed salad...

     Clearly you did not pay attention to the gedanken experiment you
lampoon.

     The above mentioned post is clearly meant to demonstrate that I can't
eat a simulated meal.  This is true - with today's technology - _but
irrelevant_.

     A computer+program cannot _be_ a meal.  It is limited to being a meal
in a box - an box which cannot be opened but into and out of which energy
and information can pass.

     If human were ever to invent the transporter, then I could in fact eat
your simulated meal.  Here's one scenario:

     The computer has a 'materialization screen'.  Using transporter
technology, it can build or destroy matter on the surface of the screen.
So it now simulates the meal.  As light rays strike the screen, they are
analyzed and converted into simulated light rays for the meal.  The same
goes for air molecules.  As simulated light rays, air and scent molecules
reach the boundary of the simulation box, the transporter assembles real
ones on the screen and releases them.
     To an observer, it looks just like a real meal in a recessed cupboard.
So the observer reaches in (the molecules of his hand being
analyzed/destroyed as they touch the screen), grabs the plate (the hand
being fully simulated and in communication via the screen with the rest of
the body), and draws out the meal (converted into real molecules on the
screen as the simulated ones reach the edge of the simulated box).

     Then he eats it.  Yum.

     Obviously the above is extreme fantasizing, but it does illustrate an
important point:  there is in some sense another (smaller) universe inside
the computer, and we are separated from it only by the computer's
limitations in getting it and the real world to interact.

     For intelligence, all the interface that is needed is an electrical
one; enough for a simulated brain+glands to receive neural input from
sensory devices and to send neural output to motor neurons driving output
devices.


Dan Hankins

"A new mysticism," Simon cried.  "The left-foot path!"