From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Apr 16 11:34:18 EDT 1992
Article 5072 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Message-ID: <522@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 92 23:58:08 GMT
References: <1992Apr7.002306.9823@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Apr7.211654.7694@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Apr8.073244.29543@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992Apr8.155954.10355@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 21

In article <1992Apr8.155954.10355@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
|It seems you haven't been paying close attention. The question is not
|whether there are "small" anbd "big" minds. The question is whether
|an answers to that question has any bearing whatsoever on the
|question of whether something can be said to have a mind at all.
|I have argued that it does not. A small mind is just as much a mind
|as a big mind is.

But where do you draw the line?  When does a 'small mind' cease to be a mind
and become something else?

Remember, biological reality does not come in nice, predefined chunks,
there is a continuous range of variation from forms like shrews through
forms like fish through forms like insects to forms like hydra to things
like trees (and rocks).  Does a hydra have a mind at all?  A planarian?
How about an earthworm?  or an ant?  What about a hagfish?  a dogfish?
[In case you haven't noticed, the above list is in order of increasing
neurological complexity].
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


