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Article 3316 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: smoliar@maclane.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: Two Materialisms (Was: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism)
Message-ID: <1992Jan31.015109.19877@nuscc.nus.sg>
Keywords: ethics,functionalism,materialism
Sender: usenet@nuscc.nus.sg
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
References: <1992Jan29.170943.4706@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan29.210141.26133@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan30.023713.11333@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1992 01:51:09 GMT

In article <1992Jan30.023713.11333@cis.ohio-state.edu>
chandra@boa.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
>
>It appears that there are three realms: the realm of matter, the realm
>of representations, and the realm of qualia/intentions/consciousness,
>not just two: matter and consciousness.  Searle and Penrose are pure
>materialists, who think the third realm will reduce to the first realm
>(Searle by appeal to some unknown causl powers of the brain, and
>Penrose by appeal to some unknown quantum effects) and they see no
>significant causal role for the second realm.  Functionalists think
>the third realm will reduce to the second one, and the first realm
>provides innumerable possibilities for realization of the essential
>factors in the second realm.  Then there are people (Popper/Eccles,
>I think) who feel that the third realm is irreducible to the first
>or the second realms.  
>
>In my paper on connectionism in AI Magazine a few years ago, I argued 
>that part of the excitement surrounding connectionism in its early
>stages was the claim of skipping the second realm, i.e., it was more 
>directly physical and not representational.   Most connectionists
>quickly abandoned this notion, since they came to see that it was
>every bit as representational as the symbolic systems, only different.
>Edelman seems to think he is offering a purely physicalist account,
>without any representational intervention, but I think there is
>representation there nevertheless.
>
There certainly IS representation there, but there is also his attempt to
reduce it to the physical level.  This comes out of his argument that both
symbols and relations among symbols (what he calls "presyntax") arise from
higher-level recursive invocations of his basic mechanism for perceptual
categorization.  (My version of this is finally in print!  My review of
THE REMEMBERED PRESENT appeared in Volume 52, Number 3 of ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE!)  This capacity for representation, along with FURTHER
recursive invocations of perceptual categorization and a few more re-entrant
connections thrown in for good measure, leads to his model for "primary
consciousness.  So Edelman reduces the third realm to the second, after
having reduced the second to the first.  At the same time, he has chosen
to set himself apart from the functionalists, even though they are following
the same path of reduction.  Instead, he claims to ally himself with Searle.
Ironically, if Searle sees to causal role for the second role, then Edelman
is really arguing to the contrary;  since the story of THE REMEMBERED PRESENT
requires "presyntax" (i.e. representations) as a necessary ingredient for
building the model of primary consciousness.  I suspect that Edelman has
really not taken as much trouble as Chandra to get all these ducks in a
row, making his comments on Putnam and Searle (not to mention other comments
on such approaches as that of the Churchlands) far weaker than the work he has
put into building his model.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


