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Article 1484 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: redgers@sig.ee.ic.ac.uk (Adrian Redgers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Defs (Intelligence)
Summary: NN metric or Buddha Nature? (47 lines)
Message-ID: <1991Nov21.153122.15464@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 21 Nov 91 15:31:22 GMT
Lines: 41
Nntp-Posting-Host: elijah.ee

aiss@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Sven Suska) writes:
>As not one of you has responded to my comments to your definitions,
>perhaps someone else would like to express his/her views on some
>aspect, so here is a recap:
>
>> What is Intelligence?

Whoops, sorry Sven for not answering, but it takes me a day to write these.  

The anti-definition "if a machine can do it then it doesn't require 
intelligence" and the musings on Buddha Nature are qualitative - my 
interpretation of your question.  You pointed out that this wasn't much 
good for *measuring* the stuff. [ By the way Fred Buhl, in the Daniel Dennett 
thread, reports John Searle using the same anti-defn, but it seems Searle 
forgot to mention BN so he looked a bit lob-logical. ]

Your idea of 'amount of thinking' does indeed sidestep Kurt's (kurt@diku.dk) 
'problem solving ability' which suffers from Paul's (pv@dcs.ed.ac.uk) 
objection: "how do you choose the domain?"  

I once saw rat, cat and human compared in terms of connections per neuron 
but some Neural Network measures apply to conventional machines too.  Define 
an NN as an interconnected system of parameterized functions. Intelligence 
could be measured in terms of the number of functions (neurons), parameters 
(weights), connections (between function outputs and arguments), or else
*system functionality* (number of poss. behaviours) vs. *generalization 
ability* (learning from few examples - training algorithm comes into it).

Buddha Nature's good for a laugh.  I haven't the foggiest idea what it is,
I just use it as a working hypothesis to resolve that list of questions
(mind vs. body, free-will vs. determinism, meaning vs. syntax, perception
vs. sense, reality vs. models). It also allows a law of Conservation of Mind, 
a concept to which this particular mind is quite attached.     

BN could go out the way 'Life Force' did or it could catch on like Planck's
'working hypothesis'.  I suppose we research it by studying our navels. 

/*       And, as with Gods and men, the sheep remain inside their pen, 
               Though many times they've seen the way to leave...     
Adrian Redgers : redgers@sig.ee.ic.ac.uk : Neural Systems Lab, Elec. Eng.,
Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BT, UK : (071) 589 5111 x5212 */ 


