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Article 5791 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Real vs. Virtual (formerly "on meaning")
Keywords: symbol, analog, Turing Test, robotics
Message-ID: <1992May20.221931.20652@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 20 May 92 22:19:31 GMT
References: <1992May20.030811.13711@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992May20.150243.25894@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May20.191738.18644@mp.cs.niu.edu>
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Cc: minsky

In article <1992May20.191738.18644@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992May20.150243.25894@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:


>>That is, it would never see a cat, but only the image of a cat. Thus, its
>>tokening of "cat" owuld not refer to cats.  It would never feel a scratch 
>>on its arm, but only the "image" of a scratch on its arm. 
>
>  It can be argued that you never see a cat now, either, but only the image
>of a cat.  In other words, what you perceive of vision is perhaps already
>better thought of as a virtual reality, created by the brain as a way of
>integrating input from the two eyes, perhaps from other sensory organs, and
>information from memory.

Right on.  And we can go a step further; the idea of the "brain" as a
unit is equally defective.  Each part of your brain is immersed in a
virtual reality, whose attribute are computer by another computer
called "the rest of the brain and the rest of the world".  Really
guys.  Are you ever going to question the fatal assumption that foulds
the history of philosophy: that idea of a Singel Central Self, which
"means" and "understands" and looks out through its eyes and "sees"
the world?  Gosh, I'm tired of complaining about this.


