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Article 2142 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: How does one model anesthesia in AI?
Message-ID: <60318@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 91 20:47:12 GMT
References: <59809@netnews.upenn.edu> <12665@pitt.UUCP> <60022@netnews.upenn.edu> <12686@pitt.UUCP>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
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In-reply-to: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)

In article <12686@pitt.UUCP>, geb@dsl (gordon e. banks) writes:
>>But let's make a claim anyway: consciousness is not just the result
>>of some connectionist style paradigm of neurons wired up.

>>Is that specific enough?  Note that consciousness can be lost, with
>>little else affected, by chemical means.

>But the chemicals act by influencing the way the neurons interact.
>It is true that there are general anesthetics for which we do not
>know the mechanism of action, but all of the ones that we do
>(such as barbiturates) affect neuronal firing.  Remember that
>there are not direct electrical connections between the neurons
>(except in some bizarre animals) and that the electricity in
>neurons is generated chemically.  Neurons really communicate through
>chemical release across a narrow junction.

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.

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.  The anesthesia blocks enough dipoles, and
the phonon condensation disappears.  Neural firing is affected, but not
enough to disrupt learning and memory.

In contrast, an all neural net model has to make some pretty subtle
distinctions.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


