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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Robot Consciousness: PSYC Call for Book Reviewers
Cc: harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk 
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 12:21:06 GMT
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In article <36el11$15v@louis.ecs.soton.ac.uk>,
Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>		CALL FOR BOOK REVIEWERS
>
>Below is the Precis of WHAT ROBOTS CAN AND CAN'T BE by Selmer
>Bringsjord. This book has been selected for multiple review in
>PSYCOLOQUY. If you wish to submit a formal book review (see
>Instructions following Precis) please write to psyc@pucc.princeton.edu
>indicating what expertise you would bring to bear on reviewing the book
>if you were selected to review it. (If you have never reviewed for
>PSYCOLOQUY or Behavioral & Brain Sciences before, it would be helpful
>if you could also append a copy of your CV to your message.) If you are
>selected as one of the reviewers and do not have a copy of the book,
>you will be sent a copy of the book directly by the publisher (please
>let us know if you have a copy already). Reviews may also be submitted
>without invitation, but all reviews will be refereed. The author will
>reply to all accepted reviews.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>psycoloquy.94.5.59.robot-consciousness.1.bringsjord  Thurs 29 Sept 1994
>ISSN 1055-0143       (43 paragraphs, 2 notes, 27 references, 588 lines)
>PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
>                Copyright 1994 Selmer Bringsjord
>
>                Precis of:
>                WHAT ROBOTS CAN AND CAN'T BE
>		Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992
>                10 chapters, 380 pages
>
>                Selmer Bringsjord
>                Dept. of Philosophy, Psychology & Cognitive Science
>                Department of Computer Science
>                Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
>                Troy, NY 12180
>                selmer@rpi.edu
>
>    ABSTRACT: This book argues that (1) AI will continue to produce
>    machines with the capacity to pass stronger and stronger versions
>    of the Turing Test but that (2) the "Person Building Project" (the
>    attempt by AI and Cognitive Science to build a machine which is a
>    person) will inevitably fail. The defense of (2) rests in large
>    part on a refutation of the proposition that persons are automata
>    -- a refutation involving an array of issues, from free will to
>    Godel to introspection to Searle and beyond. The defense of (1)
---------------------------------------------------
This assertion is assinine: No thing such as "free-will" has ever been
demonstrated!!!! "Will" is not either free or determined, as opposites,
because they are NOT opposites! A being is "free" to have a will,
uncontrollable by others, only as long as he is not conditioned to abandon
that particular "will" and undertake another or other "will"'s. This does
not preclude electrochemical or surgical methods. The interaction of humans
changes all of the "will"'s of the humans involved over time. They are not
"self-controlled", merely self-maintained in their instantaneous state.
As for determinism, all one need say is that whatever was meant to have
occurred by now, and by simple induction, at any time in future, was
obviously what would have happened, or else something else would have
occurred and then IT would be what was always going to happen, in this
universe or any hypothetical parallel universes! This APA crap, by computer
illiterates who cannot accept human origin in this physical universe as
an obvious continuation of the things chemicals do in their spare time, 
constitutes just so much fluff from the no-nothing superstition ridden
fringe group of worshippers of "human specialness" who cannot abandon
idiocy and the religion of hubris, from which we derive such delights as
all the Frankensteinian bullshit which has so pervaded some versions of
fiction when it comes to "tampering" with "nature". These are the same
people who thought that going over 30 miles per hour would make someone
crazy, and that "if Gawd (sic) had meant us to (blank) then "He" (sic)
would have given us (blank). It reminds me of the oft told tale of the fool
who quit the patent office because he thought everything possible had
already been invented!!! To attempt to even guess whether a contrivance can
ever meet or in fact exceed humanness is a clearly both premature and
ignorant folly, bent only on self-congratulation of the most superstitious
of so-called "scientists" involved, as I know few such psychologists who
could qualify for the title of scientist!! With the advances of the last
few years in cognitive science, I cannot believe that it would so soon
simply stop advancing as it approaches humanness, as it doesn't slow at all
but seems to keep increasing in complexity and in cunning creativeness!
This is not a paper, but a bed-time story told to calm the fears of small
children afraid of their future!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

