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Article 7306 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: paul@colosus.convergent.com (Paul Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Message-ID: <11735@risky.Convergent.COM>
Date: 15 Oct 92 21:26:54 GMT
References: <1992Oct2.202342.16039@spss.com> <1992Oct5.022907.6131@meteor.wisc.edu> <BvpMGo.KLy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Oct6.204155.13168@meteor.wisc.edu> <1222@tdat.teradata.COM> <11609@risky.Convergent.COM> <1258@tdat.teradata.COM>
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In article <1258@tdat.teradata.COM>, swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:

| In article <11609@risky.Convergent.COM> paul@colosus.convergent.com writes:

|> The only way in which it can be shown that the execution of an algorithm
|> of some particular sort cannot _fly_like_a_bird_ is to show that some
|> critical portion of the process used by _birds_in_flight_ is not
|> representable as some algorithm.
|>
|> I expect to have my PC flying around my living room any day now, as soon as I
|> come up with the right algorithm. ;^)
|
| This has been gone over before.  That argument is only equivalent to mine
| *if* thought is primarily a physical, rather than a cybernetic, process.
|
| Since this is cerainly not obvious - it requires demonstration.

Well, I think it is only prudent to assume that consciousness is a physical
process that occurs in brains, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
To argue that it is some property that arises out of the computation of an
algorithm smacks of mysticism to me.

My point was that the mere fact that some phenomenon is computable does not
mean that the phenomenon _is_ a computation, which is what you seem to be
saying.

| At the current state of technology it is more *useful* to continue to do
| research on the tentative assumption that thining is primarily cybernetic.
| If, in the future, evidence to the contrary shows up, we will have lost
| little.  If the assumtion is true, then we will have made major progress
| towards AI.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that AI reasearch is not useful -
just that it is unlikely to result in the creation of a conscious entity.

| -- 
| sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
|   or
| Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com

-- 
Paul Zimmerman                   |     "I toast, therefore I am."
paul@colosus.convergent.com      |       - AI toaster from _Red Dwarf_


