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Article 4766 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Rocks,pebbles,symbols,subsymbols (was Re: A rock implements every FSA )
Message-ID: <kt7aavINNl4b@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 27 Mar 92 23:01:51 GMT
References: <1992Mar27.145107.12415@oracorp.com>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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In article <1992Mar27.145107.12415@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
...
>Since the functional state part of this implementation is so
>completely trivial, it seems plausible to me that the "intelligence",
>or "understanding" (if there is any) is all in the input and output
>functions.
>
>If functionalism is correct, then maybe this says something striking
>about the way brains work. It is common to think of the brain as
>composed of conscious and unconscious parts.... ...
...
>... if you claim that all the pre- and
>post-processing of information is unconscious, then that might not
>leave anything at all for the *conscious* mind to do. Maybe the split
>between conscious and unconscious is less clear than one might at
>first think.

  Isn't this related to the Symbolic vs. SubSymbolic debate in
  connectionist theories ????  The various subnet-FSA's WHEN
  FUNCTIONALLY ORGANIZED into 'organs' operate as (conscious)agents
  ( or as though they were (conscious)agents ).  The functional groupings of
  the subnet-fsa's are selected "by chance and neccessity" in the
  evolution of the species of machine in question.


