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Article 3008 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.192721.16777@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 22 Jan 92 19:27:21 GMT
References: <1992Jan20.152751.6143@oracorp.com>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 41

In article <1992Jan20.152751.6143@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:

>Marvin Minsky's assumption that there would have to be a node for each
>brain state follows from the following hypothesis: Given two different
>brain states, if the difference is important, then there is some
>conversation that will uncover the difference. That is, the assumption
>is that differences in our brain *can* (not must) show up as differences
>in what we say.

This certainly isn't a valid argument, as presumably most brain-states
will be never reachable through conversation alone -- e.g. a 
post-orgasmic state (though you never know), a tasting-strawberries
state, and so on.

Nevertheless I agree that there will be a vast number of nodes.  The
point is that vastness alone doesn't count for much.

>I don't think that there is anything trivial about a system with
>10^(6 million) states. (That's the figure I came up with for the
>number of possible conversations, as well). If the triviality is
>simply due to the fact that there is a single transition between every
>input and output, then consider the following thought experiment:
>Augment the human brain with an electronic signalling device that
>announces each brain transition (say, with a loud "beep"). For the
>augmented brain, it is true that there is exactly one transition for
>each output (although most of the outputs are "beeps"). Is the brain
>less capable of understanding because of this?

This is cute but silly.  The point is that when I'm e.g. considering
my response to a given statement, there's a lot of conscious awareness
going along with it, and it seems extremely implausible that a single
state-transition should be accompanied by this degree of awareness.

I have no doubt that consciousness, understanding, etc, arise from
certain kinds of complex processing.  A single state-transition,
however, seems far too trivial.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


