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Article 4356 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu (Franklin Boyle)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of Understanding
Message-ID: <8diu35K00WBNE3KbNS@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 92 17:30:45 GMT
Organization: Cntr for Design of Educational Computing, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 59

Andrzej Pindor writes (in response to my post):

>So humans are *non-physical* pattern matching systems? How do we do it?
>The existing experimental (as opposed to speculative) evidence seems to
suggest
>that the information the brain has is a combination of high and low voltages
>and perhaps arrangement of molecules (like parts of computer memory). Do you
>have any other suggestions?

No, I didn't say they were non-physical, just that the physical process
of pattern matching which occurs in digital computers, for example, is
not the physical way that humans recognize patterns.  *How* the voltage
combinations are causal is different.

>Very hard to say, in particular that we do not know how a mental image arises
>in our mind. Or perhaps you know and that is why you are so sure that
hamburger
>image can not come to the "computer's mind"  in a way analogouos to the way
>we experience it? Why don't you share with us this knowledge?

Let's just say that, in a computer, I can have any structures I want
for the pattern/matcher pairs, since their particular structures, because
they physically fit, have nothing to do with the I/O behavior. Moreover,
different algorithms will produce the same I/O behavior.  Therefore, you have
arbitrary physical structures as well as a large choice of process structures
that yield the same behavior.  However, insofar as there is structural
information about what a hamburger looks like, the actual physical structures
in a computer can be anything, implying that there is not necessarily
information about the appearance of hamburgers in the computer, or anything
else, for that matter.  Yet the computer can behave as if it "knows" about
hamburgers.

>Why are you sure that a computer could not have the same *sensation* when
>accessing a picture of hamburger in memory and when actually seeing one?
>I am really puzzled!

What does it mean for a computer to "actually see one"?  If the image from
a camera is encoded as arbitrary bit strings (arbitrary because as long
as there are matchers that physically fit it, it can be a bitmap, prop., etc.),
then what is the computer "seeing"? 

>Is there a reason that they could not have? (if I understand you
correctly, you
>mean computer-based 'pattern matching systems', right?)

Any pattern matching system, as long as the physical process is a structural
fit between pattern and matcher.

>Sorry, but I do not see these reasons. If this information is
physically >encoded
>then *in principle* we can give it to CR and CR can process it. Of course, you
>might escape into this 'non-physical' stuff, but unless you have any evidence
>that such thing exists, it is religion, not science. 
>BTW, I have nothing against religion (at least personal one, organized is a 
>different thing), but it is good not to confuse these two things. 

No religion here.

-Frank


