From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!ncar!uchinews!spssig!markrose Tue Nov 19 11:10:48 EST 1991
Article 1389 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Nov19.000813.26477@spss.com>
Date: 19 Nov 91 00:08:13 GMT
References: <37995@shamash.cdc.com> <1991Nov15.235744.25719@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <38039@shamash.cdc.com>
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In article <38039@shamash.cdc.com> map@svl.cdc.com writes:
>In the first few (x <= 3 ?) years of life, an infant is bombarded by a vast 
>number of sensations, and its brain "learns" to recognize entities from this.
>This "learning" happens without conscious intervention on the part of the
>infant, and yields awareness of entities, i.e., of distinct objects with
>definite shapes, sizes, and other attributes.

Oh, sure, just because there are no infants on Usenet, you think you can
denigrate their thinking processes.  What evidence do you have that an
infant's learning does not involve consciousness?  Infants learn by active
exploration of their environment.  Deprive an infant (or a baby animal) of
the opportunity to explore or experiment and it won't learn to function
properly.  I think it's also pretty clear that they form mental models of
things (the grammar of their parents' language, for instance).

Much as I admire SHRDLU and wish I had thought of it, its knowledge of 
blocks and their properties is nothing compared to that of a 1-year-old child.


