From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Fri Jan 31 10:26:31 EST 1992
Article 3216 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism (was Re: Virtual Person?)
Message-ID: <1992Jan28.154712.645@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Jan23.183325.2773@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan26.172924.11173@psych.toronto.edu> <388@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1992 15:47:12 GMT

In article <388@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Jan26.172924.11173@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>|  Yes, it may be very unlikely
>|that collections of galaxies, bunches of air molecules in my room, or a network
>|of cash registers would ever form the appropriate causal network to, in the 
>|eyes of AI, form a mind.  However, it is the *potential* for this to happen
>|that I find theoretically repugnant.
>|
>|What I am trying to discover in this thread is how committed str. AI proponent
>|*really* are to the principles of strong AI.
>
>Well, I had no trouble with the ending to David Brin's "Earth" (except
>for thinking it was a bit too abrupt), so I think that answers the question.

Do you feel the same about the current overworn example, a roomful of air? 

>|However, I am not sure that such arrangements *are* so improbable, given that
>|all that is required is *some* appropriate functional arrangement.  To take
>|the cash registers example, we could look at the number of pennies *OR* the
>|number of nickels *OR* the number of dimes *OR* the number of quarters *OR*
>|the number of the various bills *OR* the difference between the number of 
>|pennies and nickels *OR* the difference between the number of nickels and
>|quarters *OR* the change between the number of quarters today and pennies
>|yesterday *OR* the rate of change of increase in pennies over the past three
>|days *OR* and so on ad infinitum.  If we take the number we generate from
>|these metrics as simple activation levels, who is to say that, under some
>|description, the combined world's cash registers don't have a rich mental
>|life?   
>
>Because those are not *functional* relationships, just momentary
>configurations.  Functional relationships (to me) imply sequential
>influence.

Well, that seems to rule out connectionism as well!

>  (I would say 'cause' but then I would start to sound
>like Searle).

It is not at all clear to me that demanding a causal relationship sends you
down Searle's path.  I thought that having a causal relationship was simply
what "implementation" meant.

Be that as it may, I don't see why there could not be some sort of causal
relationship among the amounts of money in various cash registers.  
The whole field of economics is predicated on the existence of functional
relationships.

- michael


