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Article 2184 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: X-cell-ent minds are not the issue
Message-ID: <321@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 16 Dec 91 20:05:13 GMT
References: <1991Dec14.110633.28844@oracorp.com> <60317@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 55

In article <60317@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
|I don't quite think this is a fair analogy.  The point is: do we know
|enough to conclude that when we eventually tie together all that is
|right for neuropsychological explanation, we will get a result that
|is Turing computable?

I have never claimed 'Turing computable', only 'operationally computable'.

|To summarize: I'm definitely willing to agree that there is no fifth
|force, and that there is no third immune system, and the like.  I still
|see no reason to accept a "conclusion" that mind is digital computation.

I do not conclude that it 'is digital computation', just that it is computation,
and that digital computation can capture all of the relevant aspects of
the biological computation.

|Meanwhile, my point is that Occam's razor is useless for selecting
|between approaches or pretheories.

Not when the different approaches require different operating assumptions.
Then Occam's Razor does apply to the operating assumptions.

|>> Until one theory dominates and clearly explains giant chunks of how mind
|>> works, there's no strength to appealing to any philosophical principles.
|>> Experiment, not enthusiasm, not expectation, will decide.
|
|>I don't see how the issue under discussion will be resolved by
|>experiment.
|
|Build a digital mind.  Or build a quantum mind.

Or develop a biological model of mind function based on neurological research.
Actual building of a mind is unnecessary, as long as the model predicts all
of the observables.

|If the digital school makes a digital mind that explains so much that
|is still so mysterious--sleep, schizophrenia, hypnotic trances, self
|deception; if the digital school takes this digital mind and starts
|making working predictions--predicted cures for schizophrenia, aging
|memory loss, and so on; if the digital school wins over all other
|attempts to deal with real live minds, then I'd say they have passed
|the experimental test.

Well, it is already making headway.  Self-deception seems to be mainly a
matter of incorrect pattern association - a feature of even the simplist
neural networks.

And aging memory loss almost certainly due to either cell death or synapse
destruction.  Again modeled quite well by neural networks - delete random
nodes in a trained NN and it will begin to lose access to patterns as the
number of nodes drops below the various critical levels.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



