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Article 4946 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: ai
Keywords: ai,realism,Goedel,platonism
Message-ID: <516@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 92 18:54:01 GMT
References: <atten.702298596@groucho.phil.ruu.nl> <ktp7d0INNgna@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1992Apr3.200218.26197@guinness.idbsu.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 35

In article <1992Apr3.200218.26197@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
|This is an argument which is frequently used.  The problem with it is
|that there is absolutely nothing to indicate that mathematics or logic
|has anything to do with "the anatomy of a class of minds".  There is
|no neurological basis for 17 being prime!  The "inherited common
|architecture of the human brain" is irrelevant to the issue.  There
|are excellent reasons to believe that the sensory capabilities of
|other intelligent beings (if any) would be profoundly different from
|ours, and so would their emotional make-up or "temperament" (emotions
|they might lack entirely).

Whoa there!  If you are talking about biological, rather than constructed,
intelligences, then you are going too far.  There are only a few possible
sensory modalities, and we have most of them.  Our vision is tuned to the
composition of the atmosphere, with sensitivity centered on one of the
transparency windows. Smell & taste are just specializations of the a basic
chemo-receptor system.  Pressure and temperature sensation are necessary
to basic survival in a complex world, and will be universal.  The only
attested senses we do not have are rather esoteric: the electrical sense
by which some fish (for instance the electric eel) detect other living things
in the water, and the infra-red sense of some snakes are the only two I
can think of.  (And both of these are of limited distribution, sight, 'touch',
smell/taste, and even hearing are widespread amoung various animal groups,
and all have evolved more than once, independently (hearing in insects is
independent of hearing in land verterbrates).

And I seriously doubt that the basic 'feelings' would be much different;
most of our basic feelings are survival oriented, and will thus have direct
analogs in any comparably complex organism.


[Now the rest of what you have to say I tend to agree with though].
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


