From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Wed Feb 26 12:53:40 EST 1992
Article 3931 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl
>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Feb22.171652.5827@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 17:16:52 GMT

Jeff Dalton writes:

>>I can imagine ways that a table lookup program differs from a brain,
>>but I don't see why they should be considered relevant.

>You're not trying very hard. Indeed, you're devoting all your
>effort to the other side.

Jeff, I wish you would take me at my word. I'm generally quite honest.
I have not heard a convincing argument why the table lookup program
should not be considered conscious, and I can't think of an argument
on my own. Okay?

> But if you want to call it "consciousness" when no non-trivial
> thoughts (if we're willing to call such matching thought) are even
> possible, go ahead.  I can only hope that such bizarre usage doesn't
> catch on.

Why do you say "no non-trivial thoughts are possible"? It is
ridiculous to identify the matching algorithm with "thoughts", just as
it is ridiculous to identify "store, add, jump" (machine language
instructions) with thoughts, or to identify chemical reactions in
neurons with thoughts. If thoughts occur in any of these systems
(table-lookup, computer, human brain), they occur at a higher level.

When I say that I believe the table-lookup program is conscious, I
mean that I believe that it has thoughts, thoughts as complex as you
or I have.

>>The complexity of the table lookup must include that of the algorithm
>>(which is obviously trivial) and that of the data (obviously
>>enormously complex). 

>The structure is not complex. It's a table, remember.

I said the *data* is enormously complex! To get a measure, take some
measure of complexity and estimate the complexity of a single sentence
of English. For example, you might consider how many bits it takes to
code it using the best known compression algorithms. Now multiply this
number by the number of sentences in the table (estimated at
10^(10,000,000)). That gives a rough idea of the complexity of the
table.

> So far, no one in this group (except Zeleny) has seriously attempted
> to answer Putnam's argument about cats and cherries (see his _Reason,
> Truth, and History_), and the related arguments that causal connections
> can't fix reference.  Correlations have even less hope of doing so.

To the extent that causal connections and correlations can't fix
reference, it doesn't get fixed, either in humans or in table-lookup
programs.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY









