From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!darwin.sura.net!Sirius.dfn.de!chx400!ugun2b!ugun2a!delavier Thu Dec 26 23:58:12 EST 1991
Article 2372 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Abstract question.
Message-ID: <1991Dec23.105004.1190@uni2a.unige.ch>
>From: delavier@uni2a.unige.ch
Date: 23 Dec 91 10:50:04 +0200
References: <1991Dec09.183012.5748@ecst.csuchico.edu> <12638@pitt.UUCP>
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Lines: 46

In article <12638@pitt.UUCP>, geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:
> In article <1991Dec09.183012.5748@ecst.csuchico.edu> tvangod@ecst.csuchico.edu (Tyler Van Gorder) writes:
>>
>>   I have a simple question to ask you people out in AI land.
>>
>>Do you think computers will ever have the capacity to feel love, hate,
>>happiness, etc?
>>
>>Yes or no and why?
> 
> I have a graduate student who has written a program that "becomes
> depressed" in that it exhibits behavior similar to depressed patients.
> I think that if we simulate the brain well enough, we will have programs
> that do all of these things.  In fact, I suspect, that building a
> true artificial intelligence will almost require such.  

Being new to this newsgroup - and amazed at the intellectual content of it - 
I just wonder if your answer is one to the question above. IMHO, there is a
difference, and not a small one, between *do* and *be*. Any program wh(o)(ich)
"do all of these things" seems like an *actor* to me, in the way any actor
would *do* the happiness, hate, depressive, etc... gig. Now, I also believe
that we will have programs that *do* "all of these things", but I don't think
we will ever see programs that *are* all of these things. And again, if it
comes, why call these "programs"? That'd be *life*.

Ludovic

Hey! Don't flame me is this has already bben answered, and better, in the
500-odd postings between yours and mine! I'm only human!


"He was an ugly man, with an ugly face;
 An also-ran in the human race."
Laurie Anderson
"Hey! That's *me*!"
Ludovic Delaviere


> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
> geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


