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From: David E. Weldon, Ph.D. <David.E.Weldon@DaytonOH.ATTGIS.COM>
Subject: Re: Are you all wasting your time?
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Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 22:04:37 GMT
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}==========Gary Forbis, 8/3/95==========
}
}In article <3vp029$jrt@nnews.netvision.net.il>, 
}rbresler@netvision.net.il (Ron Bresler) writes:
}|> >Can computers develop AI?
}|> >

[deleted some strange stream of consciousness chatter...]

} I think AI is possible, I don't 
}think
}algorithms are the right kind of entities to have AI even though we 
}will
}use algorithms to build entities that have AI and entities that have 
}AI will
}use algorithms (and maybe use other methods algorithmically, I 
}don't know.)
}
}|> it is however problematic, because what it means that there is 
}no Life
}|> Force, no spirits, nothing mystic behind us.
}
}There very much is a "Life Force," it's just that there is nothing 
}mystical
}about it beyond that of physics (which is very mystical indeed.)  
}How is it
}that the physical world produces the senses you feel?  I don't 
}know, but I
}know that it does.
}
The physical world does not produce our perceptions.  It drives them, but it
does not produce them.  The brain is a mechanism that does all sorts of work
on the incoming stream of digital data from the remote senses.  Consider the
following:  the image you currently have on your retina is blurred by passing
through a layer of tissue and blood vessels.  I is also smeared by the
constant and involuntary saccadic eye movements you make at the rate of about
3 to 10 times a second.  Yet your perception of this message is clear, sharp,
and there are no blank spots.  Your brain is doing a truely incredible job of
integrating head position, eye movements, binocular copies, body position,
etc. to produce what you perceive.

That is why we have such fundamentally different words like sensation and
perception.  That is why it is possible to see and not perceive and hear and
not understand.  Or to totally miss something in our environment (as if we
never saw it) which does not match our internal understanding of the world.
}-- 
}--gary forbis@u.washington.edu
}

