Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <jqbD3pCI6.Cu4@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3g673d$7pl@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3h83sb$7gp@agate.berkeley.edu> <3h86l7$94r@agate.berkeley.edu> <D3nJ8n.5rv@spss.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 22:15:42 GMT
Lines: 53

In article <D3nJ8n.5rv@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <3h86l7$94r@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>><jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>> Perhaps this reply is overly facile, but a simple look at the
>>> difference in structure between brains and computers should suffice,
>>> if not to explain the particular differences in capacities, at
>>                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>> least to make it seem hardly surprising that there would be vast
>>> differences.  I don't think Chomsky would agree that such an
>>> obvious inference from the differences would fit even the spirit of
>>> his theory.
>
>He wouldn't agree with *which* obvious inferences?  I think we'd have to
>see exactly how you characterize the difference between brains and computers
>before we can see how happy Chomsky would be.
>
>>I want to make clear that I don't think the brain and today's computer
>>have merely a slightly different range of capacities, but that
>>they are vastly different.  It is true that both the brain and the
>>computer can add 342 and 561 to give 903, but (in comparison with the
>>computer), the brain can do this sort of calculation only with
>>the greatest difficulty, expending a huge amount of energy, and
>>using a staggering number of neurons.  Meanwhile, human language does
>>not seem to be the sort of thing that a computer can really
>>learn, until the day when it becomes far more powerful than it is
>>today.  For this reason I find the comparisons recently made
>>between language and arithmetic and algebra to be completely without
>>consequence.  (I'm not sure what Mark meant about "math", but I
>>think he had in mind those operations that even tiny computers do
>>thousands of times faster than humans.)
>
>No problems here, except that the statement that "human language does not
>seem to be the sort of thing that a computer can really learn [now]"
>would presumably surprise AI supporters, since it's basically a denial
>of "strong AI".

I don't understand.  "strong AI" is a matter of principle; how can a matter
of practice (whether computers are powerful enough today) be relevant to it?











-- 
<J Q B>

