Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!edai!cam From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Mind is What Brains Do? Message-ID: <377@edai.ed.ac.uk> Date: 19 May 89 15:25:00 GMT References: <3244@tank.uchicago.edu> Reply-To: cam@edai (Chris Malcolm) Organization: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Lines: 83 In article <3244@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: > >Carl Jung once remarked of Freud that while he was a brilliant man, he was, >after all, only a medical doctor and suffered from the disadvantage of >'not knowing enough' about the philosophy of Mind. I think the same claim >can be made of a number of prominent figures in today's AI horizon. People in glass houses? >Take for example, Marvin Minsky's recent claim.... [Several paragraphs of Minsky bashing omitted] Ok, so you don't like Minsky. Now lets hear about the other prominent figures on the AI horizon you mentioned. >The fact is that Minsky succeeded [in killing perceptrons] >because the large majority of AI researchers >wanted Minsky to be right, not because he was. Really? But in any case he was right about perceptrons, wasn't he? >Similarly, most AI researchers >have a vested interest in the possibilities of "Strong AI", and are therefore >unwilling to question it. Most AI researchers find the categories of "strong" and "weak" AI to be too clumsy, neither describing their position. >I am sure, for instance, that many people are >quite happy with the propostion, "Mind is what brains do". Once >one understands it, it seems plausible enough. More importantly, it's very >convenient to a person who wants to go about his business of reproducing >Mind within the context of a machine. For if he were not to believe that >the brain, as a physical system, was a necessary and sufficient condition >for Mind, he might have second thoughts about devoting his life's work to >trying to reproduce (or simulate) Mind on a computer. Straw man. I'm not the only AI researcher who supposes it impossible to reproduce minds in computers; I think computers are going to come in very handy when putting the robot's brain together, however. >he problem arises when we realize >that we can also observe the actions of our brains in another way - from >the inside. Speak for yourself. I don't realize this, and experiments have shown that people can be consistently mistaken about the processes that go on in their minds, let alone their brains. >That my 'selfness' is real is, to me, beyond dispute. Quite. The problem is that other people do dispute it, and your personal conviction is not a persuasive argument. >It seems to me the absolute absurdity to claim that self is an illusion, >which is essentially what Minsky would have us believe. Yes, I'm getting the hang of what you believe, the problem is that you haven't given me any reasons for believing it too. >I realize that questions such as this don't matter much to the daily >activities >of AI researchers. There are planty of AI researchers who don't agree with that. >I have no doubt that AI will make substantial and >significant progress without ever have to broach the question, >"What is Mind?", - or that either. >but I also feel that, eventually, someone with a perspective in both AI >and epistemology is going to have to address it, Check out the titles published by Bradford Books, MIT press, for starters. You may even find that some of the posters to this group have that background, and have published papers addressing the problem! -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK