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Article 3139 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: Building Artificial Animals (was Re: Cargo Cult Science)
References: <1992Jan22.053126.5720nagle@netcom.COM>
Message-ID: <1992Jan25.045451.7278@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 92 04:54:51 GMT

>From article <1992Jan22.053126.5720nagle@netcom.COM>, by nagle@netcom.COM (John Nagle):
> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>>  Ah but now what you have is something that looks like a mouse but
>>>may not be a mouse.  Until you know what a mouse is in its truest and
>>>purest ontological form, which would include access to its own 
>>>epistemology however rudimentary, I'm afraid all you have is something
>>>that resembles and isn't.
> 
>       If it has the vision and coordination of a mouse, we will have
> the technology to build some really good robots.  (*DELETED*) 
> 
>       When something goes into volume production, philosophical
> claims that it doesn't work tend to be muted.
> 
> 					John Nagle
  But what do you mean the intelligence of a mouse?  Just because the 
thing can see and move around a bit doesn't imply mouse-like intelligence.
Wouldn't mouse-like intelligence concern itself more with finding cheese
besides replacing people in "low-skill" fields?  A thing that moves
and sees like a mouse doesn't imply intelligence of any kind; it only
implies that you have replicated something that you have deemed "mouse
movement" and then changed a bit to work in the fast-food industry, for
example.  

  The problem that I am having is wordage of your statement.  I don't think
that the manufacture of hamburgers, or appariel is anything beyond the 
capabilities of modern robots not considered to have mouse-like intelligence.

  As for your statement on once something is produced it silences philosophy?
My problem is one of ontology not production; what you are prosing is something
quite unlike a mouse.  And philosophically speaking you can not call that
a mouse.  Furthermore, if you were to produce a simulated nerual-network
that was supposed to be like a mouse, I believe I have heard that to 
produce a cockroach neural model alone would require a computer billions
if not trillions of times more powerful than our standard PC's.  This is
quite easily beyond the scope of our technology.  It would require 
either abandoning silicon, which I think for philosophic reasons is the
best idea yet, or waiting around for another 500 years.  I can give you
the aprox. calculations on neural connections for a cockroach at some
other time if you need them.  Essentially, reproducing a cockroach in 
a neural-network fashion would require more connections that accurate
predictions of the weather.

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu

"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."
                                              -- Carl G. Jung
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