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Article 3709 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <6182@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Feb 92 20:43:48 GMT
References: <1992Feb11.042319.3356@psych.toronto.edu> <6171@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Feb13.014116.9941@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992Feb13.014116.9941@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <6171@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <1992Feb11.042319.3356@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>>>And I'm still waiting to find out *why* a lookup table *doesn't*
>>>have beliefs under a functionalist view (assuming that a lookup table
>>>can reproduce "belief-behaviour", which was the original assumption
>>>offered by Chalmers).
>>
>>Becuase it doesn't have the right functional organization.
>
>*Why* do you think that beliefs involve some sort of "special"
>functional organization?  Is it *only* to rule out lookup
>tables having them?  If so, this is simply ad hoc...

I think it prejudices the issue to use words like "special".
If the same behavior (more or less -- we're talking about
machines that are "like humans", not machines that are like
one particular person) can be brought about in different ways,
it can make sense to ask what particular means are used.

What you seem to be saying now is that you don't see how any
*functional* difference can be relevant.  So instead of asking
*why* I thought functional organization mattered, you should
have asked why I thought *functional organization* mattered.

Is that more or less right?  That's what you're asking?

And the answer is that functionalists don't have to think that
any functional organization whatsoever that manages to produce
the right behavior has to count as understanding.

Moreover, they don't have to be able to say exactly what 
functional organization is right in order to be able to
rule out extremes.  There's nothing in this to rule out
*only* table lookup.  The idea is: table lookup is wrong;
not: only table lookup is wrong.

>>Now, if you can accept that there can be a relevant difference
>>in functional organization, don't you think it's at least unlikely
>>that simple table lookup would do the trick?
>
>Again, why not?  Until we have a clear unpacking of what a potential
>relevant difference *is*, I have no reason to think that a table
>lookup *couldn't* have "beliefs" in the functional sense.  

There isn't anything in simple table lookup that corresponds
in a reasonable way to beliefs.  

There are a couple of positions you might have.  One is "no machine
can have beliefs".  And if so, then no difference in the functional
organization of the machine will help.  If this is the case, there
isn't much more to say, unless we want to rerun the entire "can
machines understabnd" debate.

Another is to say "well, there might be something that corresponds
to beliefs".  If you think so, can you tell me what it is, or might
be?  Then at least we'd know what we're disagreeing about.

>To lay out my cards more openly, I agree that simple table    
>lookup *doesn't* have beliefs.  This seems to be agreed upon by
>most of the functionalists on the net as well.  However, *I* see
>no *important*, *principled* difference between table lookup
>and other functionalist approaches.  Ergo, I see no reason to
>think that *other* approaches could generate beliefs. 

This seems pretty near to "machines can't have beliefs", as above.
That is, you think table lookup doesn't have beliefs, and neither
does any other way of organizing a machine/program.

>If someone
>could provide an account of the critical difference between non-believing
>table lookup and some other believing system, then we can discuss the
>criteria.  As it stands, all I see is empty assertion...

The critical difference would be that it works in a different
way (just as a Chess program that uses brute force search works
in a different way from one that has clever heuristics for
choosing moves and narrowing its focus).  But if you think no
possible way for a program to work could possibly produce
beliefs, then none of this matters.

-- jeff


