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Article 2232 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cbarber@bbn.com (Chris Barber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: How does one model anesthesia in AI?
Message-ID: <3988@papaya.bbn.com>
Date: 18 Dec 91 15:46:43 GMT
References: <59809@netnews.upenn.edu> <12665@pitt.UUCP> <60022@netnews.upenn.edu> <12686@pitt.UUCP> <60318@netnews.upenn.edu>
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In article <60318@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu 
        (Matthew P Wiener) writes:

>My unstated point is that there's certainly something strange going on
>with anesthesia.  Just saying "the neurons are affected" doesn't tell
>us very much.  Other higher brain functions are possible under anesthesia,
>like memory and learning.

I think it is a mistake to speak of memory and learning as if there
was just one kind supported by a single mechanism in the brain. There
have been a lot of research into types of memory and there are many
examples of people who lack some various types of limited memory and
learning impairments that suggest there is more than one mechanism. What
kinds of learning and memory are you talking about here?

>Thus a model of neural nets for memory/learning combined with a pumped
>phonon condensation for consciousness itself deals with this aspect of
>anesthesia in a simpler manner than a neural net model for memory and
>learning and consciousness. 

Perhaps too simple.

>In contrast, an all neural net model has to make some pretty subtle
>distinctions.

Perhaps subtle distinctions are worth making.



-- 
Christopher Barber
(cbarber@bbn.com)


