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Article 3664 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: Searle Agrees with Strong AI?
Message-ID: <1992Feb12.053245.9403@nuscc.nus.sg>
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Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
References: <TODD.92Jan29143005@ai07.elcom.nitech.ac.jp> <1992Feb4.010409.9415@nuscc.nus.sg> <TODD.92Feb7172519@ai07.elcom.nitech.ac.jp>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1992 05:32:45 GMT

In article <TODD.92Feb7172519@ai07.elcom.nitech.ac.jp>
todd@juno.elcom.nitech.ac.jp writes:
>
>More clearly, what I wanted to say was that defining life in terms of an
>ecosystem would lead to an even more discriminatory definition since
>we would probably (as in the case of intelligence) arrive at a definition
>that says life must be as complicated (approximately) as our own ecosystem.
>This is similar to what has happened to intelligence. As we have been
>able to mimic many of the human brain's functions on machines, we
>keep imposing tighter and tighter restrictions on what intelligence is.
>The current definition would even appear to be:  Whatever machines CAN'T
>do.  Similarily, we will probably eventually define life as whatever
>man CAN'T mimic.  This is fine, since it pushes us to understand what
>life and intelligence really are.
>
I guess I am neither as sanguine nor as idealistic as you are.  I belong to
that camp which is not particularly interested in spending all its time
spinning wheels in the mire of definitions of words which do not really
reify to things.  (Thanks here are due to Vance Maverick who showed me
Stephen J. Gould's discussion of the reification fallacy in THE MISMEASURE
OF MAN, where the topic is our understanding of intelligence.)  I think it
is more important to harness our efforts to the construction of MODELS.  I
use this word in the sense that Minsky defined it in "Matter, Mind, and
Models."  Given an observer O and an artifact A, A' is a MODEL of A to
the extent that O can use A' to answer questions he has about A.  As far
as Minsky is concerned, it is very important to recognize that this
relationship is TERNARY.  You cannot have a model of A without first
having an observer who is trying to get some questions about A answered.
This frees us of staring at our navels while trying to figure out "what
life and intelligence really are" and obliges us to ask some better-formed
questions!
>
>Perhaps we discover that when we don't know _precisely_ what we are
>talking about (specifically with regard to life and intelligence),
>that it is possible to come up with all manner of circular arguements,
>apparent contradictions, etc.  Hence, the pointlessness of much of
>what goes on in comp.ai.philosophy.
>
It almost seems as if you are saying that when we are confused, we retreat into
further obfuscation rather than retreat to clarity.  Perhaps this is true.
Perhaps our human response to our own confusion is to conceal it by confusing
those around us even more.

>Can you enlighten me about the "qualia crowd"?
>
Not without revealing my own confusion!  I have been trying to keep a judicious
distance from this debate.  However, I shall express the personal opinion that
the greatest satisfaction I have found to date on the topic was expressed by
Drew McDermott in article <1992Feb4.035646.11687@cs.yale.edu>.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


