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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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In <3ejf8r$krb@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <3eipvm$169@agate.berkeley.edu> <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
>>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) wrote:

[...discussion of by braking mechanisms can be considered computation...]

>Let me comment on why I take a broad interpretation of computation.

>...
>Worse still, when we look at a computer and see how it performs
>addition, we see that it can all be done with simple AND gates and
>similar circuits.  An AND gate is nothing more than a switch which
>selectively transmits one input under control of the other input.

Of course, calling something an "AND" gate is still imposing that
interpretation.  It's just electricity and physics, really.

>Thus at the level of the gate, there is nothing happening which
>matches out intuitive notion of computation.  All that is happening
>is information transmission and switching.  

One more time to point out the obvious (but I think I have a reason),
but the information transmission of an interpretation or description
of what is going on.  AND is a binary operator, and many people think
of computers as working in binary.  This is still only a description,
because there is no "binary" or 1 or 0 in the computer, it's still
just electricity and physics.  Computers are continuous, not discrete,
in their physical implementation.  We approximately describe and interpret
what goes on as discrete.

>Once we realize that we cannot distinguish between computation and
>information transmission, we realize that we have to take a broad
>view of what constitutes computation.

>Get back to the brakes. 

Naturally, brakes can be described as information transmission and
transformation.

Under this understanding, one easily can see how people get to the idea
that not only is mind computation, not only is "life" computation, but
everything in the universe is, because it all *can be* described in terms
of information transforms and transmission.  Gregory Bateson does well
describing the view of neural systems as information transforms in
_Steps to an Ecology of the Mind_. 

Are we capturing all of the relevant properties of a system this way?
A lot of people imbedded in the information-paradigm insist that EVERYTHING
is medium independent, and that therefore if you had the whole universe
doing the same information processing but in a different medium (i.e.
in a comuter simulation) then everything would feel EXACTLY the same within
that simulation -- the simulated people would feel the simulated forest fires
and would be just as conscious in their simulated world as we are in ours.

This is a point which I think may be worth questioning, though, seeing as
the idea of information processing IS just another overlayed interpretation.
Nothing "actually" "in-its-own-essence" is information-processing, any more
than anything is "actually" "in-its-own-essence" a wedding cake*.


Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

(* Of course, the essentialist would disagree with the latter claim, and
therefore might have strongest ability, within the essentialist paradigm,
to support strong belief that everything is information processing and
therefore medium independent.  However, I get the feeling that many people
who buy into the information-processing description of the world are
not essentialists)
 
