From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!psinntp!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Jun  9 10:05:56 EDT 1992
Article 6003 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Hypothesis: I am a Transducer (Formerly "Virtual Grounding")
Message-ID: <1992Jun1.073459.20376@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 07:34:59 GMT

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

I don't have any problem with your hypothesis so far; however, your
later statements don't seem consistent with that hypothesis:

>Because we have more than one sense modality (and because most of our
>brain just consists of analog extensions of the sensory and motor
>projections), we know that we are still "us" if we are blind, or deaf
>or paralyzed.

If I am understanding correctly what you mean by "transducer", a
person who becomes blind, deaf or paralyzed person is *not* the same
transducer that he was before. How are we then still "us" after such
an accident? It seems to me that in order to maintain personal
identity, one must posit some kind of "core" which remains constant.

The other problem that I have with your hypothesis is why you think it
is important for the transducers to be analog. That seems to be the
core difference between your position and that of computationalists,
not the issue of "homunculi". I pretty much agree with your hypothesis
that humans are essentially transducers, but I don't see what is
special about analog processing.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY



