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Article 3863 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb19.135322.12283@oracorp.com>
Date: 19 Feb 92 13:53:22 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation
Lines: 42

Stanley Friesen writes: (In response to Michael Gemar)

>> But *why* is table lookup an "extreme"?   This is the problem that I have.

> I would say the reason we think table look-up is insufficient is
> that it is too *simple*.  It is clear from psychology and neuroanatomy
> that the human mind is an incredibly complex entity composed of a
> bewildering array of interacting subcomponents that often behaves in
> unexpected ways.

> This is *not* true of a table look-up system.

Nobody is claiming that the table look-up system is a model of the way
the human mind works. It obviously computes its outputs in a very
different way. However, the question is why should such non-human
processing be considered unintelligent (or not conscious)?

I disagree, by the way, that there is anything "simple" about the
table look-up program. The data, the humongous table, is *enormously*
complex; it is only the control structure that is simple. The
complexity of a system must, in my opinion, include the complexity of
the data as well as the complexity of the processor.

> Also, at present, it seems likely that the human mind does not
> always precompute its responses, it generates them on the spot.  Again
> this is something that a table look-up system does not do, ever.

Why is this difference important? What is unintelligent about
precomputing responses? It seems to me that it is an efficiency
question.

> So, as a first approximation I would say that an intelligent system
> has to be a complex system that computes at least some of its
> responses on the fly.

I disagree. It may be true that *humans* are complex systems that
compute their responses on the fly, but why are these properties
essential for intelligence?

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


