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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 14:43:10 GMT
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In article <3brb1k$10c@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu>,
Marcus Daniels <marcus@ee.pdx.edu> wrote:
>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>The whole point is that there are different levels of description.
>>There is one level where the proper terminology is to discuss
>>molecular action.  At that level there is no consciousness and there
>>is no free will.  At another level there is consciousness which
>>allows the exercise of free will to make choices.  If you prefer to
>>talk at one level, that is fine.  Other people may prefer to discuss
>>things at a different level.  That everything has an explanation at
>>one level does not refute the possibility that everything has an
>>explanation at the other level.  These different levels need not be
>>seen as in conflict.
>
>The broken thing about this "levels-of-analysis" is that you said
>AI free will could be realized using technology not to far removed from
>what we have today.  This isn't a question of uncertainty over
>how the brain works, or the cosmology involved.  You are claiming
>that we can *define* atomic parts of a system,
>but not be able to assert things about its macroscopic behavior.
>Levels-of-analysis are fine for empirical matters, but not synthetic
>self-consistent mathematical constructs.  Higher levels are an interesting
>result, but a unavoidable function of more rigorously understood lower levels.
-----------------------
In defense of Neil, sort of, his speaking of the levels at which we talk is
quite correct. But as you say, the unrealized versus the empiricism of the
realized. And yet you would not declare, I should hope, that atoms do
anything different in people's bodies as they do in a rotting ham sandwich
or a stone! Therefore, I brought in the denial of free-will for us as well
as any potential robot, as we are physical as well. Free-will is an
experience of asserting ownership of events and choices, and it is an
equally good fiction on which to build artificial awareness as biological
human awareness.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

