From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu Wed Dec 18 16:02:21 EST 1991
Article 2207 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu
>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: X-cell-ent minds are not the issue
Message-ID: <60552@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 91 19:37:35 GMT
References: <1991Dec14.110633.28844@oracorp.com> <60317@netnews.upenn.edu> <321@tdatirv.UUCP>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
Lines: 57
Nntp-Posting-Host: libra.wistar.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)

In article <321@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <60317@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>I have never claimed 'Turing computable', only 'operationally computable'.
>I do not conclude that it 'is digital computation',

Your statement along these lines has been quoted often.  I think
Victor is requoting it for the umpteenth time.

>						     just that it is
>computation, and that digital computation can capture all of the
>relevant aspects of the biological computation.

This last is the physical Church-Turing thesis.  Why assume *this* if
you believe in KISS?

>|>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.

I like it.  You're know pushing science, not philosophy.

>|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.

Uh oh, here we go again.  Self-deception is a very complicated meta-
phenomenon.  Jon Elster is a philosopher who has made a career out of
analyzing it (among other things) including numerous books.  Look them
up before telling me that NNs model all the intricacies here.

(Not that I have a clue how pumped phonons or neuronal group selection
could explain self-deception either.)

>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.

Yup.  This is what I want to see.  Not assumptions that lead to
conclusions, but experiment, whether proposed or done.

Idiot savants are quite often hypermnesiac, btw.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


