From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!gatech!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu Sun Dec  1 13:05:31 EST 1991
Article 1637 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!gatech!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu
>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Dennett on Edelman--what a total loss
Message-ID: <57569@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 91 19:14:18 GMT
References: <1991Nov15.003438.11323@grebyn.com> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu> <JMC.91Nov20144012@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov21.145350.5725@husc3.harvard.edu> <JMC.91Nov24203029@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
Lines: 59
Nntp-Posting-Host: libra.wistar.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)

In article <JMC.91Nov24203029@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, jmc@SAIL (John McCarthy) writes:
>[Zeleney] has apparently read rather little in AI, especially in the
>area of formalizing common sense and nonmonotonic reasoning, but this
>little is enormously more than Hubert Dreyfuss, [etc.] judging from
>the bibliographies associated with their pronouncements.

Snort.  The same charge came be made against pro-AI philosophers.

A priori, you would expect anyone writing about how the mind works
would read and comment extensively on the neurological sciences.
Yet this is rare.  Consider, for example, Dennett on Edelman.  He
has a few index references--few enough that I could grasp Dennett
on Edelman without wasting much time on Dennett's latest.

Dennett dismisses Edelman completely, with the claim that Edelman's
work shows the folly of someone working in the cognitive sciences
without knowing everything.  And Dennett has a cutsey pie footnote
here saying no doubt his work could possibly be viewed similarly.
So if Dennett considers this as a valid form of dismissal, it's
like "OK by me, I will not read your book, Mr Charlatan".  And he
also professes a very scientific wait-and-see attitude--after the
Edelman based-models get implemented and tested, he'll only then
condescend to evaluate them.  As if digital computation hasn't had
decades of coming up short?

At another point, Dennett mocks Edelman's discussion of the continuity
of consciousness.  What would it be like, if each morning, we woke up
with third person memories of our previous existence?  Who knows?  And
why don't we normally perceive space and time as fragmented?  Again, who
knows?  But we don't, and as Edelman puts it, and Dennett quotes him,
"one of the most striking features of consciousness is its continuity."
Dennett's response is to say, no, this is a "crashing mistake" and is
"utterly wrong", and that what's really striking is discontinuity, and
then enumerates an example or two, like blindsight.
 
I suppose it would be hopeless to explain to a Dennett, even in words
of few syllables, the meaning of the six blind men and the elephant.
Edelman is neither asserting nor denying discontinuity--but he feels
obligated to explain certain striking continuities.  This is obvious,
but not to Dennett.  Indeed, Dennett goes on to assert that "the dis-
continuity of consciousness is striking because of the apparent conti-
nuity of consciousness".  A true Maroney Award winning Mr Ignoramus
here: that "apparent continuity" is part of the puzzle of our minds.
And what is discontinuous in Dennett's examples here are the persons'
perceptual systems--not their consciousness.

Who else does Dennett leave out?  I looked through the index, and found
a few of the following, but what was there on them was marginal: Estler,
Sperry, Luria, Caplan, etc.

Perhaps Dennett is less moronic elsewhere, but I'm willing to take my
chances on just possibly missing out on the genius of the century.

>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)
Smoking in public is a form of self-righteousness.


