Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!unido!sinix!es
From: es@sinix.UUCP (Dr. Sanio)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Message-ID: <907@athen.sinix.UUCP>
Date: 6 Feb 90 11:13:35 GMT
References: <1037@ra.stsci.edu> <6902@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <1995@moscom.UUCP> <4050@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Reply-To: es@athen.UUCP (Dr. Sanio)
Organization: Siemens AG, K D ST SP4, Munich
Lines: 46

In article <4050@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> jwilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Jeff Wilkinson) writes:
>so why don't we make one that does "continiously aquire, test, and
>generalize"?  why don't we make one with reasoning imperfect and chaotic
>enough to simulate human behavior?  why not make a mammoth machine, a
>dynamic system so complex that it boggles the immagination, a self
>organizing system of such sclae that it no longer "computes", but instead
>manipulates fuzzy, vague, HUMAN-type thoughts symbolicly?  would this not be
>thought in a machine?
>
The problem is, IMHO, that we are still not sure what we are looking for.
As far as I know, nobody has given, up to now, a valid answer on the 
question "what is intelligence (thought)". We could identify some aspects
- such as pattern recognition, symbol creation and manipulation, some aspects
of logic, and vaguely try to combine them to a generalized model of thought.
In fact, we can simulate those isolated aspects more or less well in algorith-
mic machines. Even trying to combine the to a system with the capabilities
of a rodent exceeds our skills and the capabilities  of our machines.
Personally, I don't share the point that human mind is something mysterious
which cannot be modelled or reproduced at all for all times. But I doubt 
that we are much closer to that goal (which can be questioned for its useful-
ness, btw, but thats a different topic) than the medieval alchemists when 
they modeled a human body from clay and treated it by some substances, elec-
tricity (some experimented with static electricity!) etc in order to give
them the spirit of life.
If the human brain is comparable to our computers, it must be regarded (under
my opinion and state of knowledge) as a machine which recursively and steadi-
ly reprograms code, data and even hardware (to stay inside the metaphor).
(Even simple self-modifying code is not even appreciated in the area of 
programming, as you probably know, too - we're fairly unable to do it in a
sufficiently reliable way, so for us, it's a widely banned technique)
Recently, we have neither understood the hardware (the coercion of the neurons,
the way of storing information etc. - we have some basic knowledge and lots of
speculation about that) nor have we - beyond some initial steps - decoded the
firmware (the genetic information laid down in a single cell - that's why the
discussion about inheritance of intelligence is freguently breaking out again
in this group and sci.psychology). About the software, we're completely specula-
ting.
Like the alchemists, we have some intuition about what's going on won by
introspection and observation, but no valid knowledge about what "intelligence"
is nor how a brain works. IMHO, the goal to build an "intelligent" machine
is - at least recently - pure megalomania.

>				 -=jefsoph/jeff wilkinson/wilky=-
>				-=jwilkins@jarthur.claremont.edu=-

regards, es