From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn.onet.on.ca!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert Tue Jun  9 10:07:34 EDT 1992
Article 6129 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Transducers: The Retina is Part of the Brain
Message-ID: <1992Jun6.202404.6251@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Keywords: mind/body problem, other-minds problem, dualism, solipsism
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <1992Jun6.153132.25456@Princeton.EDU>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1992 20:24:04 GMT
Lines: 64

In article <1992Jun6.153132.25456@Princeton.EDU> harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>             For those who keep replying to me about transducers AND
>the brain, may I inform you that the retina IS the brain -- not a
>conduit to the brain, not a tack-on peripheral to a computational core,
>but literally a part of the brain.

  I think you are seriously misinterpreting what others are saying here.

  The problem of understanding the mind has puzzled mankind for millenia.
It will easily solved by applying just the ideas of psychology, or just
the ideas of philosophy, or just the ideas of computer science.  It will
take contributions from all of these area, and from other areas too (did
I forget to mention biology).

 People from different areas look at things differently.  Indeed it is
because they look at things differently that they can sometimes
contribute new ideas.

 The idea of peripheral transducers feeding in to a computational core
is essentially the computer science metaphor.  We are bound to think of
things in these terms.  Your attempt to tell us otherwise is about the
equivalent of us telling you how to do psychology.

 Let me explain it this way.  Suppose you design a TTT according to the
way you believe it should work, and suppose it meets all the requirements.
The computer scientists will look at the blueprints, and will point out
exactly which components are the peripherals, and what constitutes the
computational core.  They may very well count as computation things that
it would not occur to you to call computation, for our view of what
constitutes computation is very broad.  They may point to some of your
analog components and tell you that they are really digital components
performing digital functions.  They may point to other analog components,
and tell you that you can build this better by digitizing that part of
the system.

 In some of the early TRS80 microcomputers, the keyboard reading was
done directly by the CPU.  That is, the CPU would enable a voltage on
a scan line, and then sample the intersecting scan lines to see if a
key was active.  There were even instruction sequences to "debounce" the
keyboard, so that dirty switch contacts would not appear as multiple
keystrokes.  The keyboard, or at least the scan lines, were very much
literally a part of the computer, and not just an attached peripheral.
We still spoke of the keyboard as if a separate peripheral though.

 The point was that treating the keyboard as a separate peripheral was
a more useful way of looking at it.  And in much the same way, treating
the retina as a peripheral is a more useful way (to computer scientists)
of looking at things than considering it part of the brain.  The details
of the physical organization are very much of concern to biologists.  But
to computer scientists it is the functional organization, not the
physical organization that matters.

>                                               But it is my opinion
>that the imaginations of today's motherboard-bred generation,
>over-accustomed to the fantasy world of video games, cyberspace, and
>other virtual wonders, are actually much LESS capable of understanding
>the profound problems raised by these forms of skepticism about
>reality, even as they convince themselves that they actually understand
>it all better!

  I don't know if you intended it that way, but this comes across as
a quite offensive insult.  It is totally uncalled for and smells of
guilt by association.



