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Article 5964 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <9571@scott.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 28 May 92 12:06:27 GMT
References: <1992May25.214006.29965@Princeton.EDU> <1992May26.022413.14151@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992May27.183408.4868@spss.com> <1992May27.193153.19128@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 87

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>In article <1992May27.183408.4868@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>In article <1992May26.022413.14151@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu 
>>(Neil Rickert) writes (quoting Stevan Harnad):

>>
>>I think it's part of Harnad's point that the transducers are not *attached*
>>to a thinking system, whose input is the transducers' output; they are 
>>*part* of the thinking system, whose input is physical (the transducers'
>>input).

>  Yes.  I believe that is what Harnad is saying.  And what I am saying is that
>this is obvious nonsense.

>  Picture a TTT system receiving virtual reality input.  As part of that
                                                             ^^^^
>virtual reality it is listening to music from a compact disk, and
>is connected to a computer via a modem.

>  The output of the computer is digital.  It is converted to analog
>by the modem, then converted back to digital by the connecting modem.

>  The data on the compact disk is digital.  It is converted to analog
>by the CD player, converted to air motion by the loadspeaker, then
>converted back to digital by the transducer.

>  What I am proposing is that we replace the two modems by a null modem
>cable, and replace the CD player/stereo system/loadspeaker/transducer
>with a digital CD-ROM reader.  Apparently we are to suppose that the
>thinking and intelligence suddenly disappears.

First of all as you just said yourself: this is _part_ of the system.
You cannot have an intelligent system whose only capability is
listening to music. You've fallen into the trap Harnad warns against,
believing that it is possible to get intelligence from scaling up
primitive systems.

The introduction of esthetics is interesting. (The sole
ability to take in the music, doesn't show any kind of intelligence on
behalf of the AI, it has to process it in 'an intelligent way', i.e.
(or e.g.) enjoy it!). Human esthetics is highly related to the 'way we
experience the world', that is the (unconscious) representations we
have in our head, and these representations are highly dependent on
the transduction happening in our head (see below). 

Secondly (I believe Harnad has said this himself) the transducer is
not just digitizing its input, but is (/is part of) a complex analogue
system. The intelligence is (at least partly) in the transducer. (I'm
not sure Harnad would say it this way). Take a look at how the brain
processes sound; not by constructing spectogram (~ digital
representation), but by a complex network of feature detectors:
rising-tone detectors, falling-tone detectors, harmony-detectors
(???).  The human transduction in the ear produces data with features
that is vastly different from the salient features of the
representation on the CD.

It might be that you are right; that it is theoretically possible to
construct an intelligent system, that can take in digital
representation of music directly from a CD, but it will be so much
easier to build than one that takes in analog sound waves. And this
system is not intelligent because it can enjoy the music, it can enjoy
the music because it is intelligent. It has to relate this esthetic
experience to something else, or in other words (are you ready.. ) it
has to be grounded.

>  Of course this is preposterous.  Where was the thinking and the
>intelligence?  Was it in the modem?  Was it in the stereo?  Was it in
>the loadspeaker?

Can *you* answer those questions yourself? I'll help you: you need
three NO's. If you can give us the fourth answer (and we deem it to be
sufficiently specific) you can use adjectives like 'preposterous', not before.

>  This reminds me of the nonsense that went on about classical music
>recordings in the early days of CDs.  Many music buffs claimed that

Should we keep this off comp.ai.philosophy :-)


Soren

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Soren Harder, (MSc student)
Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh
E-mail: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


