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Article 2280 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Waking up is hard to do, but somebody's got to do it
Message-ID: <60759@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 91 17:28:43 GMT
References: <60551@netnews.upenn.edu> <334@tdatirv.UUCP>
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In-reply-to: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)

In article <334@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>If Edelman's digital models of his group selection processes *behave*
>differently then an exactly congruent biological system would, then, and
>only then, is the difference between the digital and the biological
>version of the system 'functionally relevant'.

I can imagine a lot of functional relevance, right down to digital minds
being conscious and intelligent _in a digital world_, yet breaking down
if dealing with the real world.  What to call this?  I don't know--to
me it's so much word games at some point.

Edelman's models are still quite minimal, so the issue doesn't exist yet.

>Then all mammals and birds are conscious, they almost all sleep.

I'm open to many possibilities.  I don't reject Jaynes out-of-hand, but
I reject Gaia.  I predict that at some point a certain theoretical version
will become so dominant, and so clearly successful from the experimental
view, that this will become the scientific meaning of "consciousness"
with all others being variants.  Consider how "heat" went from being
a vague term to a precise one.  You can't really say that physicists
settled on the universally right term, but that they settled on a pretty
good definitely unambiguous meaning.

>I guess I have a hard time seeing such an *expensive*, *dangerous* (in the
>wild) activity being a mere byproduct of some other, rather generalized
>process.  Especially if it is a process that is present in most mammals,
>even ones we consider 'stupid'.  Such a process would not give enough
>survival advantage to outweigh the danger of being eaten while sleeping.

It's easy, if you think of the whole picture.  Predators have always been
one step ahead in the evolutionary game.  They have to be.  So guess who
develops sleeping first?  The beastie that isn't at risk.  Its prey are
*not* going to figure out that they can gang up on it while its asleep.
They are still preconscious, and avoid the predator automatically.  They
don't even know that it's "asleep".  Now as prey mutate to get smarter,
they too can get away with sleeping.  And then standard Lotke-Volterra
checks and balances will apply.

Truce can evolve quite naturally in the middle of war.  See Robert Axelrod
THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION for detailed examples.  I see no conceptual
difficulty in translating his sociological perspective into an ethological
one.

>Thus, as an evolutionary biologist, I tend to think that sleep must have
>a specific function, in and of itself.  Preventative Maintenance certainly
>sounds like a reasonable specific function.  This is, for now, only a
>hypothesis.  I just throw it out to show that the phenomenon of sleep is
>not really a problem for 'classical' neurological models.

Try again.  As an evolutionary biologist, you've responded too quickly.
The above prey/predator order of development makes it quite reasonable
that sleep was the most minor of costs to pay for consciousness/intel-
ligence.  Indeed, obviously sleep was a cost to pay for *some* need.
I don't know why you are certain it was a non-neurological need.

I repeat: no evidence exists for the PM hypothesis.  A physiological
function is unknown despite decades of research.  Contrast this with
what is known about hibernation and estivation.

>|You can assume this, but call it number 4 and say you assume 1-2-3-4.
>|No experiment supports the above scenario.

>And it is not really an assumption or even a conclusion so much as a
>hypothesis.  But I consider it a reasonable one, and it removes the *need*
>for a seperate, purely neurological, explanation for sleep.

Here you go again, focussing on mind and not mind_and_sleep.  The latter
is just as apriori likely as the former to be the correct domain to study.

>I have considered buying it on one or two occasions, but my budget never
>reached that far.  [I read books voraciously, so I will eventually get to it].

Edelman's books are apparently OOP.  I'd snap them up and go hungry for a
few days.

>|How about a reason why a program needs stimulus when awake?

>[nice evolutionary explanation omitted]

>One thing I think is *very* important in considering living brains is the
>issue of the *evolutionary* origin of the various subsystems and behaviors.

Yes!  That, in fact, is one of the reasons I so like Edelman's work.

>|Edelman might (someday) say it's the *second* time.
>
>Hmm, when has cybernetics actually helped neurologists in the past?

The first time would be Edelman's own work.  I said "someday" since he
ignores the connectionist part to his work.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


