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Article 1382 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the pos
Message-ID: <1991Nov18.145812.5577@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 91 19:58:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1991Nov18.145812.5577
References: <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu> <11749@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <11749@star.cs.vu.nl> 
peter@cs.vu.nl (Grunwald PD) writes:

>In article <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu>, 
>zeleny@walsh.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>> In article <1991Nov15.003438.11323@grebyn.com> 
>> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Oceanstar) writes:

FO:
>> >I asked Mikhail Zeleny to elaborate on his labeling of Dennett "a
>> >charlatan," but he wrote me back that he will only do so if I make
>> >it a "public" request.  I puzzled over this one for a couple of
>> >days, and decided, finally, not to pursue the reasons behind his need
>> >for me to go public.  Instead I will just comply, and ask again:
>> >What did you mean, Mikhail?  I read enough mind-brain books, that
>> >I'd like to hear other people's guidelines for telling the wheat
>> >from the chaff.

MZ:
>> My guideline is very simple: if you see someone offer a reductive argument
>> purporting to explain the properties of mind, such as consciousness,
>> cognition, and intentionality, in terms of the alleged computational
>> properties of the brain, you may conclude that he is a charlatan or an
>> ignoramus.  This conclusion might be justified historically, by observing

GPD:
>So Alan Turing in his 1950 paper 'Can Machines Think' was  charlatan or
>ignoramus? 

Both.  An imitation, however good, is still an imitation.

GPD:
>Come on...

Appeals to eminent authority fail to impress me. Defend the Turing Thesis.

MZ:
>> the earlier attempts to explain the functioning of human mind by reference
>> to the capabilities of the dominant contemporary technology (e.g. clockwork
>> mechanisms, chemistry, steam engines, etc.), or its behaviorally manifested
>> properties -- by reference to observable physical properties of human
>> organs (remember phrenology?).  If the brain can be seen as the seat of
>> consciousness, why not the liver or the kidneys?  Moreover, there also
>> exist sound theoretical reasons for rejecting any theory that purports to
>> reduce human intelligence to the rank of properties of Turing machines.
>> For those unconvinced by the arguments of Penrose, I have a challenge of my
>> own making: develop an adequate semantical theory that would characterize
>> the relevant relations of expressing and denoting, and could be implemented
>> by a finite state automaton.  So far, John McCarthy has failed to come up
>> with an answer; anyone who feels that he can do better, is hereby invited
>> to try.

GPD:
>'dominant contemporary technology': your claim might hold for the world until
>1936, when the Church-Turing thesis was developed. In their respective articles,
q>Church and mainly Turing give a framework for everything that can be computed
>at all. As computers are (approximations to) Turing Machines and the machine to
>implement intelligence would be a computer, this is not just 'contemporary
>technology' but the most general technology thinkable by us human beings.

You are manifesting the limitations of your imagination.  A quick perusal
of an elementary textbook (I recommend Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman) will
quickly disabuse you of the notion that the Turing machine represents
either "the most general technology thinkable by us human beings", or even
the most powerful such technology.  More importantly, you are demonstrating
the common millenial fallacy of taking the boundaries of present scientific
inquiry for absolute limits of human accomplishment.

GPD:
>Whether you find Penrose's et al. arguments convincing or not (I do find
>them a little convincing myself, I must say) you must not be blind to the fact
>that the reductionist claim has at least the Turing machine behind itself and
>that is definitely more than current technology and therefore certainly 
>not charlatanesque or ignoramusque.

Please return to Church's thesis, and think about the difference between
calculability and effective calculability; then reconsider the reductionist
claims.

GPD:
>In effect (I don't know if they would agree on this, these are my own
>conclusions)
>Dennett says: 'What we call Consciousness is an automatic by-product of certain,
>		very complicated, (Turing-) machines'
>Searle says: 'Machines can never be conscious (or even intelligent (!?)) because
>		they inherently lack 'semantics', which is necessary for
>		consciousness and inherently only available to human beings '
>
>I would not dare to say who is the charlatan...both, neither or one of them?

Searle's argument seems a bit mystical to me in its last ("inherently")
part, due, no doubt, to my lack of insight into the inherent nature of
human beings; however its semantical part is perfectly good, and can be
strenghthened as follows.  Consider a sentence S expressing a meaning M(S).
Suppose that the semantical relation M is recursive, as would be required
under Church's thesis for it to be effectively computable.  Then, using
G\"odel's trick... (continuation and conclusion of this argument is left as
an exercise for the reader)

>Ciao,
>Peter

regards,
mz

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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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