From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn.onet.on.ca!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips!cs.uoregon.edu!ogicse!reed!orpheus Mon Jun 15 16:04:53 EDT 1992
Article 6227 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn.onet.on.ca!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips!cs.uoregon.edu!ogicse!reed!orpheus
>From: orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Transducers
Message-ID: <1992Jun12.083040.14227@reed.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 92 08:30:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Jun12.083040.14227
References: <1992Jun10.203412.19158@news.Hawaii.Edu> <4138.708217481@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Jun11.055038.9628@Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 70


  rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
. To put this in perspective, consider an automobile.  This doesn't look
. like a set of peripherals and a computational core.  But it can still
. be described that way.

  harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
. It can be described, simulated, modelled, predicted and fully explained
. that way -- yet the pure computational model will not drive, because it
. is not a real car, just a virtual car, i.e., squiggles and squoggles
. that are systematically interpretable as if they were a car, driving.

  Is it that thinking that reminds you of programmers is inherently a
virtual model, therefore illusory, therefore fated to fail the TTT that you
tout as the one and only true test of life?
  Pets, beats of burden, flora and fauna alike would fail. The entire
animal kingdom with the exception of mankind would fail this test. Some
examples of mankind would, as well.
  Does that render them any less worth of mind, or to the point, of life?

  That the issue this test is ostensibly capable of determining is thought
and mind is rather like trying witches by drowning, the way I see it. Life
is what's really at issue here, not some nebulous distinction that breaks
down when you confront the idea of movie stars existing whether you can
physically touch them or not.


  harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) goes on to say:
. Precisely the same is true of the mind: The pure computational model can
. be used to predict and explain, but it does not think, there's nobody
. home in there, it's not a real mind, just a virtual mind: squiggles and
. squoggles that are systematically interpretable as if they were a mind,
. thinking (e.g., passing the TT).

  So you say. This strikes my "motherboard bred" mind as a form of bigotry
that denies that the being in question is in fact, worthy of the rights
that thinking beings deserve. The argument has always been the same,
whether the being in question has been the enemy, the scapegoat, the animal
in the laboratory, or as in this case: the synthetic form of life.


  harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) goes on to say:
. The physical embodiment of the thinking includes the noncomputational
. part, ESSENTIALLY. Remove that and keep only a computational core and all
. you have once again is ungrounded though systematically interpretable
. squiggles and squoggles.

  If being ungrounded and systematically interpretable is bad, then I want
to be bad. 
  Or have I been mislead by Wittgenstein?


  harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) goes on to say:
. Lose [the distinction between a real object and a symbolic description or
. simulation of it] (or fail to have grasped it in the first place) and you
. are hopelessly lost in the hermeneutic hall of mirrors created by
. projecting interpretations onto systematically interpretable squiggles
. and squoggles (or the video displays they drive) and forgetting where
. they originated from.

  I enjoy Maxfield Parrish paintings. I do not need to imagine his studio,
his brushes, or his paints in order to derive pleasure, assurance, hope,
or even envy from his representations.

  My understanding of you, one could say, is projecting interpretations
onto systematically interpretable squiggles and squoggles (or the video
displays you drive) and not even having a clue where they originated from.


  Theus (orpheus@reed.edu)


