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Article 5874 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
Keywords: symbol, analog, Turing Test, robotics
Message-ID: <1992May24.045158.24520@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 24 May 92 04:51:58 GMT
References: <1992May21.145410.1055@psych.toronto.edu> <zlsiida.334@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> <1992May23.152941.12033@psych.toronto.edu>
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Cc: minsky

In article <1992May23.152941.12033@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <zlsiida.334@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd) writes:
>>
>>I'm prepared not only to argue that we never see the world, but further, 
>>that we never see retinal images either.  
>
>then you are at great pains to account for the astounding correspondence between
>what we see and what's out there. Just a lucky break?

It seems to me that there's a crucial point missed throughout this
thread -- unless, of course, I've missed seeing it.  It is that the --
let me call it "the illusion of grounding" -- does not arise from
the sensory interactions between the brain and the world!  Because if
the brain were constructed differently, it could very well come up
with badly "wrong" interpretations of that data.  Then, by the way, it
would almost certainly perish promptly, but that's another matter.

Then what does cause the illusion of grounding -- and all of its
beneficial effects?  Answer: the genetic construction of the brain,
which impels it to construct the useful representations that we all
take for granted, e.g., the perception of the world as composed of
objects, etc.  (In my opinion, this is not learned, but is provided by
a variety of not-yet-understood innate mechanisms.  That is, I don't
believe that human infant development of such abilities emerges from a
"general purpose schema construction mechanism", but that we have
special architectures for making (multi-sensory) representations of
those sorts.

The ideas about "grounding" I've observed in these discussions seem
too elementary and Hume-like (if I understand his position) to jibe
with what we know about comparative psychology -- in particular, as in
the case of those mammals that appear to demonstrate something like
object-perception so soon after birth.  I don'y know about guinea
pigs, but I recently was watching some day-old pig pigs, with wide
open eyes apparently tracking their mother.  I dodn;t do any
experiments, though.


