Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.consciousness,sci.psychology,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.bio,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books,
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!crash!snodgras.cts.com!snodgras
From: snodgras@cts.com (John E. Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: Roger Penrose's New Book (in HTML) 1.0
Organization: Thot-Speed
Distribution: inet
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 19:25:44 GMT
Message-ID: <snodgras.26.2ED63A38@cts.com>
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B]
References: <3a39hi$rsp@decaxp.harvard.edu> <3a7p5v$nao@longwood.cs.ucf.edu> <CzHs2u.8L1@beaux.atwc.teradyne.com> <3ar848$o5q@galaxy.ucr.edu> <3au8gn$fja@decaxp.harvard.edu> <snodgras.21.2ED2EEA2@cts.com>
Sender: news@crash.cts.com (news subsystem)
Nntp-Posting-Host: snodgras.cts.com
Lines: 44
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.physics:101503 sci.skeptic:96345 sci.psychology:30366 comp.ai.philosophy:22649 sci.bio:23369 sci.philosophy.meta:15029

In article <snodgras.21.2ED2EEA2@cts.com> snodgras@cts.com (John E. Snodgrass) writes:


>      Deep. What is simple is not the physiology of the brain, but your 
>concept of it. The neural net analogy is the lamest thing yet to come out of 
>the Your Brain Used to Be A Switching Circuit, Now It's a Neural Net school of 
>Let's Rip Off Computer Science for ideas in "scientific" psychology. 

       Someone pointed out that neural nets is a rip off by computer 
science of biology. True, though the rip offs have gone through several 
iterations back and forth now. Let's just say the exchange assumes 
underlying commonality which IMO does not exist, and which leads to 
unjustified conclusions on both sides. The notion of strong AI is itself an 
analogy: to make a machine like a natural mind (in particular, human mind), 
and the possibility of this cannot be strengthened by referring to existing 
analogies  in the same vein. To say computers learn, or human minds can be 
programmed, it to purposely gloss over the obvious and fundamental 
differences. In fact, alot of AI gets it credibility just from the vocabulary 
it selects. A "learning program" is in fact just a program, a neural net too 
-- but by calling it a neural net or saying it "learns" we create the 
impression that little difference exists between it and a living brain. Stuff 
and nonsense.

       Back to biology and neural nets, no one, to my knowledge, has yet 
created anything remotely intelligent in tissue culture, for example, and even 
if they did, that would still be a long way from conclusively demonstrating 
the neurone to be trivially mechanistic (what I assume is meant by 
"classical"). There is no evidence only predisposition to assume that our 
neurones are not organized just as other societies are organized, with leaders 
and followers, decisionmakers at all levels. We do not know that our 
concsiousness (our "I") does not reside in a single master neurone. To dispute 
this, you must make  a religious appeal to QM (so often heard here on the net, 
i.e. "that is against the precepts of QM!" as though that concludes the 
discussion) -- so I guess for those who imagine QM a sort of modern day God's 
Holy Word, there is no dispute. The mind is a machine. (In the mechanistic and 
more recently grafted mathemagical tradition, everything is either a machine 
or a reifed mathematical construct.)

      JES

      P.S. Since this thread is about Penrose, IMO Penrose is a pot calling 
the kettle black. He's so feeble in his argument against AI he's practically a 
reason for it. With enemies like Penrose (a self-avowed "Platonist"), AI 
proponents don't need friends.
