NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/philosop/tech/4014

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-10 | 5.1 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 10 Nov 92 16:45:52 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 106

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>Jeff Dalton [please see the previous articles in this thread to get
>a better idea of what Jeff is trying to say]:
>
>   Then why didn't people take notice when Minsky came into it?
>
>When? I have checked through my archives, and I can't find a posting
>by Minsky regarding Putnam rocks in comp.ai.philosophy.

Minsky's posting was on the table lookup machine.  My point was
(roughly) that people didn't respond to McCullough and Minksy
on TLMs the way the responded to Putnam on rocks.

>           ...  Another factor, which I think is significant,
>   though not sufficient, is that it was important to some people
>   that Putnam be wrong and not so important that you (and Minsky)
>   be wrong.
>
>Here is a list of people who have posted something on the subject "A
>rock implements every FSA", in case it helps you to be somewhat more
>specific than the usual "some people" generalizations.

I take it that you'd prefer if I named names.  But why should
I make it more of a personal dispute than it already is?

Anyway, since you obviously have access to all the postings, why
don't you tell us how many of these people agreed with Putnam?
Now, how many posted disagreements with Daryl's claims about the
complexity of, and mappings involving, the data in the TLM?

Also, I'd still be interested on how many attacked the TT in
the "TT is a scientific criterion" thread (or any other recent
TT thread).

In any case, I will save you the trouble of finding the Minsky
article.  Here it is:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: [e-mail] (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Jan 92 19:59:06 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Lines: 53
Cc: minsky

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>David Chalmers writes:
>
(Discussion of lookup table, etc. omitted)

>> I personally think that the case against 1 and 2 is made compellingly
>> by the example of the giant lookup table -- a ridiculous example,
>> impossible in practice but not in principle, but enough to make the
>> case.  I think that it's like that any reasonable-in-practice
>> mechanisms that has the right behaviour will have mentality, however.
>
>I agree that the giant lookup table is ridiculous as a way to
>implement AI, but I don't understand why it is so obvious that such an
>implementation would lack mentality. Your answer might be that it
>would lack the internal states that real minds have, but I don't even
>grant that: in the case of the lookup table, the internal state would
>be coded as a location in the lookup table. It is certainly true that
>this interpretation of internal state would not obey the same
>transition rules as our own internal states, but what makes the one
>"conscious processing" and the other not?
>
>Daryl McCullough
>ORA Corp.
>Ithaca, NY

Umm, I agree with the conclusion, that the anti-conscious theses gets
no support.  But I don't see any reason to admit :it is certainly true
that this .. would not obey the same transition rules as our own
internal states.  To be sure, it might not.  However, a reasonable
guess might be that the state-transition table for the internal
location states must be -- what's the mathematical word for this -- a
structure of which the simulated brain's transition semi-group is a
homomorphism.  Of course this isn't rigorous because each human will
have lots of inaccessible states -- that is, one's which never affect
behavior -- hence the super-table could be simplified in those
respects.

My point is that some skeptics could miss Darryl's point because of
not realizing that an adequate such table-machine must indeed be so
large that, as he says, the internal state-transition mechan ism must
indeed be of the order of graph-complexity as the wiring of the brain!
After all, the table itself has as many entries as the brain has
states.  It would be rash indeed for a skeptic to feel confident that
a machine of this magnitude -- it has perhaps 2**10**10 nodes, which
is quite a few googols - could "obviously" not be conscious, whatever
that might (or might not) mean.  To insist on that would simply
clarify the weakness of (Searle's?) thesis which, so far as I can see
says something like:
  Let's assume that no machine can be conscious (or understand
anything, or have intentionality).
  Therefore the Chinese room machine cannot be conscious, etc.

A fine bit of logic, for sure, but a faulty bit of reasoning.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- jd