From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!tulane!ukma!memstvx1!langston Tue Jun  9 10:05:56 EDT 1992
Article 6002 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: langston@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a Transducer (Formerly "Virtual Grounding")
Message-ID: <1992Jun1.024820.2303@memstvx1.memst.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 92 02:48:20 -0600
References: <1992May31.145204.16357@Princeton.EDU>
Distribution: world
Organization: Memphis State University
Lines: 61

In article <1992May31.145204.16357@Princeton.EDU>, harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>          COMPUTATIONALISM = HOMUNCULARISM
>              (Or, I AM A TRANSDUCER)
> 
> Many readers still do not seem to have understood my point about
> transduction, so I will try yet another intuition pump: Although it is
> an over-simplification, consider my hypothesis to be that you ARE a
> transducer. If that hypothesis is correct, then there may be many
> different ways to implement you -- namely, all the different ways of
> implementing a transducer with your capabilities (TTT) -- but among
> those ways is definitely NOT one in which instead of a transducer there
> is a computer simulation of a transducer (a "virtual" transducer). I

See message immediately preceeding this one.

> repeat, my hypthesis is that you ARE a transducer. If that is true,
> anything that is not really a transducer is not really you.

So, conversely, anything that is really a transducer has the possibility
of being me?

Or, on another tack, if something in the environment plays a role in the
system of transduction (e.g., a phone, a CRT, sunglasses), do I suddenly
have an extended 'self' due to the transducting system as a whole?

> 
> I might add that there is some real homuncular thinking involved in the
> persistent misunderstanding of my hypothesis. People keep reverting to
> the rival computational hypothesis (which I have tried to show is
> false, Harnad 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992) in which you are a computational
> core, with the transducers simply carrying information TO it ("you"),
> as our senses do to "us."
> 


Assuming I am a transducer (which I will not), and the one-to-one and
many-to-one dilemma is ignored for the moment (which it should not be),
What about allowing for a one-to-many mapping?  Or is this theory simply
a jazzed up behaviourist approach?
  As I interpret it, your "I am transducer" stance incorporates the brain
as part of the transduction system.  If this is the case, and assuming a
one-to-one mapping, as you seem to desire, does this imply that each
stimulus received from the sensory system will elicit one response from the
various effectors?  Or, must this be broken down, treating each _neuron_ as
a transducer in itself.  And, if this _is_ the case, doesn't the number of
transducers in the human system under this hypothesis increase to the point
of being irrelevant, in the sense that you are simply giving a name to each
element in the total information processing system?
   How does this shed new light on anything?

Confused,

-- 

Mark C. Langston                                  "What concerns me is not the
Psychology Department                              way things are, but rather
Memphis State University                           the way people think things
LANGSTON@MEMSTVX1.MEMST.EDU                        are."     -Epictetus

     "...a brighter tomorrow?!?  How about a better TODAY?"  -me



