From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!noao!amethyst!organpipe.uug.arizona.edu!NSMA.AriZonA.EdU!bill Thu Apr 16 11:34:20 EDT 1992
Article 5076 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire
Message-ID: <1992Apr13.003139.29881@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 13 Apr 92 00:31:39 GMT
References: <1992Apr9.140908.29033@oracorp.com>
Sender: news@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 21

In article <1992Apr9.140908.29033@oracorp.com> 
daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>
>This is an area where credentials don't seem to mean much, since the
>best scientists and philosophers (Searle, Penrose, Edelman) don't seem
>to have any more insight than the interested layman.
>
  Well, I agree that credentials don't mean very much, but you're
picking the wrong scientists and philosophers.  I would have listed
Dennett, Hofstadter, and Francis Crick -- all of them seem to
me to have a good bit more insight than the interested layman.

  I don't agree that detailed knowledge of the brain is useless
in this area.  (Of course, as a neuroscientist, you wouldn't
expect me to :-). )  One of the main reasons I am convinced
of the possibility of strong AI is that I have seen so many
ways to make the brain (and mind) act like a machine; and
if the brain acts like a machine, there is no reason why a
machine cannot act like a brain.

	-- Bill


