From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Tue May 12 15:49:30 EDT 1992
Article 5462 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,talk.phlisophy.misc
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>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Question: Minds and Machines
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <OZ.92May6132613@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <1992May7.153948.8766@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May7.175530.18595@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Message-ID: <1992May8.012916.8074@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 8 May 1992 01:29:16 GMT

My apologies for the nested quotes.  They seem necessary to establish the
context of the discussion.


In article <1992May7.175530.18595@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992May7.153948.8766@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>>In article <OZ.92May6132613@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>>>christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>>
>>>   bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>>>   
>>>   >  Regarding (1), the greatest resemblence is at a very abstract level:
>>>   >both computers and brains are essentially information processing
>>>   >devices.  
>>
>>... comments and counter comments deleted for brevity.
>>
>>Can I play? :-)  Although I will admit to both an academic and personal
>>bias, I don't see why you think Chris is out of line here.  The question
>>we are trying to answer is, at least in part, how similar brains and
>>computers are.
>
> I'm going to jump in too - probably a mistake :-(

Well, heck, that's never stopped me...

> I think the problem here is one of interpretation or mis-interpretation.
>
> The term "information processing" is ambiguous.  It is sometimes used as
>a synonym for "computing" as on a digital computer.  But it also carries
>is own meaning as taking some information and processing it, not necessarily
>in any specified way.

It is not clear to me what distinction you are drawing here.  How, if you are
a computationalist, do you "process information" except in a computational
sense?  In any event, I'm not sure that whatever difference you are drawing here
makes a difference to the argument.  Read below, then tell me what you think. 

> It's my impression that Bill was using the term in the second sense, while
>Michael and Chris are reading into it the first sense.
>
>>                To *assert* the above similarity is simply to beg the
>>question we are trying to answer.
>
>  How about giving Bill some benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he wasn't begging
>the question at all.  Perhaps he was trying to find a point of common
>agreement from which the discussion can then pick up. 

This is probably true, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that Bill was
being intentionally underhanded, but simply that the point he had chosen
is *not* one of common agreement, and indeed, assumes a whole host of issues
that are under contention.

> Saying that the
>brain processes information does not necessarily imply that it processes
>the information in the same manner as typical computer programs, nor does
>it imply that the type if information is similar to the type of information
>typically processed by computers.

How so?  I don't like to play the "definition game," but what the heck
do you mean then by "information"?  

>
>>                                   If someone want to offer *arguments*
>>about this *essential* nature of the brain, in constrast to weather
>>systems, the stock market, the movement of galaxies, etc., then we
>>*would* have some substance...
>
>  My interpretation of Bill's comment was that he was commenting on the fact
>that the brain is a product of biological evolution, and pointing out what
>seemed to be an essential property of the brain which would provide the
>survival benefits to allow it to evolve.

Well, then, under these considerations, why aren't the kidneys information
processors?  They are products of biological evolution, and, under some
not too far fetched interpretations, they could be seen as processing
information.  The same is true for any organ of the human body.

>  I do assume you are not claiming that weather systems and the movement of
>galaxies are the product of biological evolution.

Certainly you don't want to claim that *biological* evolution is necessary
for information processing to occur, or you rule out computers from
having such quality.  As for weather systems and galaxy movement (or     
practically any other stable dynamic system), these *can* be seen as being
a product of processes similar to evolution, unless you want to claim
teleology for evolution, which is simply *not* the accepted view.


The point I believe that Chris was trying to make, and that I would assert,
is that one shouldn't commit hubris and claim that what the brain does
is *essentially* information processing, simply because, well, it's
*our* brain.  Viewed objectively, there seems to me no sense in which
the brain is any way more legitimately an "information processor",
in the computational sense, than the liver, or a hurricane.  We may
attach meaning to the *kind* of information the brain processes, and
not to the kind that livers and hurricanes process, but this doesn't
mean that the one kind of information is any more (or less) information
than the other kinds.  For brains to claim that brains are special seems
to me to be cheating.  (Maybe if you asked a weather system, it would
think that *it* is essentially an information processor, and brains
*can't* be because they aren't the result of atmospheric processes.  I 
see no way to say that it would be wrong...)        


- michael
 



