From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Sun Dec  1 13:06:16 EST 1991
Article 1712 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Arguments against Machine Intelligence
Message-ID: <288@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 91 20:22:57 GMT
References: <43772@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 32

In article <43772@mimsy.umd.edu> kohout@cs.umd.edu (Robert Kohout) writes:
|I understand that the digital nature of modern hardware makes it
|impossible to model _a particular, individual mind_. However, I see
|no reason why the digital representation of analogue information
|is insufficient to produce intelligence.

Add to this the fact that it is not at all certain that neural systems are
operationally analog.  The most common model for neural data encoding is
essentially a *unary* code, which is, in essence, digital.  That is the
small variations in size and duration of individual pulses is of no
significance to neural information processing - it is just noise.
[Of course this is just a model of a neuron, and not a univerally accepted
one at that].

|The most frequent response to this challenge is an appeal to semantics,
|which generally also implies an appeal to consciousness. These arguments
|most commonly involve an intuition that 'meanings' cannot be conveyed
|by formal digit flipping. Why not? and even if this is true, why are
|such representations required for intelligent behavior? Once again,
|since we see such representations in the brain, what properties of
|brain architecture are not present in digital machines, and why aren't
|discreet representations of analog information sufficient?

This also is my main problem with the 'anti-AI' crowd.  I have yet to see
any properly defined, verifiable definitions of some property possessed by
neurons that is not, or cannot, be programmed into a digital computer.

If every property of a neuron is programmable, then so is intelligence.
-- 
---------------
uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



