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From: andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head       )
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Summary: no way, jose
Message-ID: <431@berlioz.nsc.com>
Date: 27 Dec 89 21:47:58 GMT
References: <31821@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <ebfl02Ef76Hs01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <1037@ra.stsci.edu>
Organization: National Semiconductor, Santa Clara
Lines: 55



. 1) All physical objects are not machines. 
. 2) Not all machines are computers. 

   What is a machine? It could be said that:
	A stone is a machine; slow crystallisation processes within.
	The internal elementary particle dynamics too.
	This is machinery.
   What is a computer? It could be said that:
	Lamps could be computers if composed of Finite State Automata
	on the molecular level. The program ensures that output
	intensity remains approximately constant, and that the
	structural form remains relatively invariant during illumination.
	This is computing.

. 3) There are some activities which can be performed by physical objects
. and machines which cannot be peformed by computers.  
. The distinction is that all computers, as computers, are
. equivalent to Turing machines.  

	What if the physical environment were used to compute with,
	instead of electrical energy? - think abacus. Flying then, for
	example, might be an emergent and NECESSARY property of such
	a computer.

. 4) The simulation of a physical activity by a computer cannot be
. identified with the physical activity.

	Irrelevant in light of rebuttal of 3)

. 5) Hence, while it may be possible to build a machine that thinks, it
. does not follow that it will be possible to build a computer that
. thinks, as not all physical activities can be performed by computers.

	There is no known constraint on the physical activities which
	can be performed by computers, including those of the brain
	(I naturally exclude violations of the known physical laws).

. 6) While there are good reasons to believe that thinking is a physical
. activity, there are no good reasons for believing that thinking is the
. execution of a computer program. Nothing revealed either through
. introspection or the examination of the anatomy of the brain leads to
. the conclusion that the brain is operating as a computer. If someone
. claims that it is, the burden of proof is on that person to justify that
. claim. Such proof must be base on analysis of the brain's structure and
. not on logical, mathematical, or philosophical grounds. Since even the
. physical basis of memory is poorly understood at present, any claim that
. the brain is a computer is at best an unproven hypothesis.

	Repeat - what is a computer?
-- 
...........................................................................
Andrew Palfreyman	a wet bird never flies at night		time sucks
andrew@dtg.nsc.com	there are always two sides to a broken window