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Article 5980 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <1992May29.152559.226@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <1992May27.183408.4868@spss.com> <1992May27.193153.19128@mp.cs.niu.edu> <9571@scott.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 15:25:59 GMT
Lines: 107

In article <9571@scott.ed.ac.uk> sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder) writes:
>rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>  Picture a TTT system receiving virtual reality input.  As part of that
>                                                             ^^^^
>>virtual reality it is listening to music from a compact disk, and
>>is connected to a computer via a modem.
>...
>>  What I am proposing is that we replace the two modems by a null modem
>>cable, and replace the CD player/stereo system/loadspeaker/transducer
>>with a digital CD-ROM reader.  Apparently we are to suppose that the
>>thinking and intelligence suddenly disappears.
>
>First of all as you just said yourself: this is _part_ of the system.

  Did you really want me to expand my article to several hundred thousand
pages, by listing all kinds of devices to deal with different types of
input?

>You cannot have an intelligent system whose only capability is
>listening to music. You've fallen into the trap Harnad warns against,
>believing that it is possible to get intelligence from scaling up
>primitive systems.

  You have just made a brilliant discovery.  You have learned that by
taking a statement completely out of context, you can make it seem to
say something quite different from what is intended.

  Let me restore the context.

  If I understood him correctly, Harnad said that, under the hypothesis that
a TTT is possible, you could have a computer create a virtual reality as input
to the TTT, and that TTT would act intelligently.  But once you remove the
transducers, and replace them with a direct digital connection from the
virtual reality generator to the core computer of the TTT, the intelligence
disappears.

  I was analyzing that claim.

  I nowhere claimed that intelligence was possible only with listening to
music.  I nowhere claimed that it was possible to scale up primitive
systems, but nor did I claim it was impossible.  I was discussing only
the claim that there is intelligence with transducers and that the
intelligence disappears - even though behaviour remains identical - once
the transducers are replaced by a direct digital input.

>Secondly (I believe Harnad has said this himself) the transducer is
>not just digitizing its input, but is (/is part of) a complex analogue
>system. The intelligence is (at least partly) in the transducer.

  Yes, that is my interpretation of Harnad's statement.  And that is
exactly what I am questioning.

>                                        Take a look at how the brain
>processes sound; not by constructing spectogram (~ digital
>representation),

  Excuse me, but are you under the impression that a CD contains a
spectrogram of the music?  If so, you are badly misinformed.

  Incidently, the inner ear contains a bunch of structures which resonate
at different frequencies, and would seem ideal for developing a
spectrogram.  Are you proposing that these are mere adornments and have
nothing to do with how a human hears, and that human hearing does not
use spectral analysis?

>                 but by a complex network of feature detectors:
>rising-tone detectors, falling-tone detectors, harmony-detectors
>(???).  The human transduction in the ear produces data with features
>that is vastly different from the salient features of the
>representation on the CD.

  Perhaps you can explain what you meant by that comment.  Are you
perhaps claiming that there is information (rising tone, falling tone, etc)
which is not present in the data on the CD?  If this is your claim, would
you please explain how this missing information is magically reinserted
into the music when the CD player is connected to an audio system, and how
this information magically disappears when music is digitized?  Or are you
perhaps claiming that it although all the information is on the CD, it
is theoretically impossible to extract it with digital means?

>>  Of course this is preposterous.  Where was the thinking and the
>>intelligence?  Was it in the modem?  Was it in the stereo?  Was it in
>>the loadspeaker?
>
>Can *you* answer those questions yourself? I'll help you: you need
>three NO's. If you can give us the fourth answer (and we deem it to be
>sufficiently specific) you can use adjectives like 'preposterous', not before.

  Well thank you for answering my rhetorical questions.  I am glad to see
you agree with me that there is no intelligence in the transducers, and
that you are thereby (perhaps unintentionally) supporting my claim that
the transducer argument is bogus.

>>  This reminds me of the nonsense that went on about classical music
>>recordings in the early days of CDs.  Many music buffs claimed that
>
>Should we keep this off comp.ai.philosophy :-)

  Once again you excell.  By taking this statement completely out of context
you have made it appear to be unrelated to the issues.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


