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Article 3396 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: langston@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb2.030815.1207@memstvx1.memst.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 92 03:08:15 -0600
References: <1992Jan28.004208.27238@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan28.153645.5237@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan28.164410.9509@psych.toronto.edu> <21879@life.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: Memphis State University
Lines: 51

In article <21879@life.ai.mit.edu>, minsky@transit.ai.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

> As for "consciousness" the situation is worse.  There are lots of
> mental phenomena sometimes called by that name, but so far as I can
> see, what they mostly share in common is
> _short_term_memories_about_recent_mental_states.  I don't believe that
> we are in any deep sense "self-aware"; we have virtually no sense of
> where our words come from, or how we walk, or how we see, etc.  We do
> remember that we recently smiled, etc., and this is very useful.  It
> keeps you, for example, from getting into wastefully repetitive loops.
> But "reflective" short term memories -- records of recent mental
> states that can be used as uinputs to other processes -- have many
> other uses, and (surely) many different mechanisms with different
> evolutionary histories and functions.  So as far as I'm concerned, it
> is the use of this word, as though it represents anything important,
> e.g., some irreducible attribute of mind -- that has kept philosophy,
> since the time of Kant, from contributing important insights to
> psychology.

  I agree somewhat with the idea that STM plays a major role in the
emergence of consciousness.  I will even go so far as to agree with the
notion that everything we are consciously aware of has already happened, and
is being remembered. (albeit the delay between event and remembrance may be
infintesimally small...)  Much of what the mind deals with is day to day
living, and most of that is unconscious reaction to the environment. (I may
have exaggerated this, but a good portion, nonetheless)
  My point is this:  How and/or why was the event remembered in the first
place?  We now have the players (memories), and the stage (STM), but where/what
is the director?  I don't mean to sound pushy about my ideas, but would it
not be sensible to say that these events are brought into STM through the
process of trying to satisfy some goal?  (if I'm beating a dead horse, please
tell me...)
  e.g., Why would I 'remember' (the term suggests a longer period of time than
we are dealing with here) that I smiled?  There must be some reason behind
my needing to remember I smiled.  To assess a reaction?  To assess an internal
state?  To revise my goal stack?  What brought the memory into play?  There
must be some agent somewhere that needed that information.  I would also 
say that this agent was acting at the conscious level, otherwise we would not
be aware of the smile (the agent could get the information subconsciously.)
  I see nothing wrong in the argument for consciousness re:short term memory,
except for the fact that there is nothing offered explaining how/why things
are brought into STM in the first place. 
-- 

Mark C. Langston                                  "What concerns me is not the
Psychology Department                              way things are, but rather
Memphis State University                           the way people think things
LANGSTON@MEMSTVX1.MEMST.EDU                        are."     -Epictetus

     "...a brighter tomorrow?!?  How about a better TODAY?"  -me



