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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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Date: Thu, 5 Jan 95 17:10:36 GMT
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In <3eh62t$rjl@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <3eg1lr$oli@agate.berkeley.edu> <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
>>vlsi_lib@netcom.com (Gerard Malecki) wrote:

>>> Of course, any phenomenon is a simulation of itself, therefore can
>>> be considered as a computer (even though hard-wired for that particular
>>> phenomenon).

>>I have no problems with this.  However, I believe that the previous
>>poster's point was that there is something especially computerlike
>>about the brain, something that separated it from such things as
>>atomic explosions and wind-tunnel experiments.

>I think there is a lot of confusion out there about what exactly is
>computation.  Generally speaking, we think of computation as the
>manipulation of abstract symbols.  But if that is what computation
>amounts to, then clearly our computers do not do computation.  The
>computer manipulates magnetic alignments on disks, current flows in
>transistors, and electrical charges in capacitors.  What the computer
>does is very physical, and nothing like computation.

>The computation is in the way we interpret the physical actions of
>the computer.  Interpreting the computer as doing computation is a
>very useful thing to do.  The question about cognition, then, is not
>whether the brain is in fact doing computation, but whether it is
>useful to interpret the brain as doing computation.

I think it could be useful to distinguish between the terms "simulation"
and "embodiment" or "instantiation."  

Saying that a process is a simulation of itself is very strange to me,
but I think the idea that was being conveyed corresponds to what I would
word as "Every process is an embodiment of the underlying formal
description which describes it."  If we would use the term "computation"
as the sequence of formal interactions among formal tokens, rather than
necessarily representational, then one could say that both an artificially
intelligent computer and a person are embodiments or intentiations of
the same underlying "computation" or formal process.

But *this* gets down to the idea of whether formal systems exist and re
prior to instantiations.

Some people say that Pythagoras's rule "existed" long before Pythagoras.

I have a question: Would you say that human beings are merely an "embodiment"
of a pre-existing algorithm which defines them?  Or is it more accurate to
say that we can invent an algorithm to describe human beings (even assuming,
for the moment, there there is some algorithm which could be taken as
corresponding to human function).

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

