From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!37.1!avl0 Mon Nov  9 09:36:31 EST 1992
Article 7488 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: avl0@cine88.cineca.it
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Human vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Nov2.171938.604@cine88.cineca.it>
Date: 2 Nov 92 17:19:38 +0100
Organization: CINECA, Italian Interuniversity comp. centre
Lines: 106

In article <1992Oct19.210541.21740@news.media.mit.edu>
minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
> [...]
>Your statement suggests that nothing in the world can be usefully
>modelled, e.g., a computer, or an automobile, or a DNA polymerase --
>yet each of those operates for millions of cycles without serious
>unpredictabilities.
>
>Why do you assume that the brain is singularly unpredictable, or that
>there is an fundamental problem is assessing the properties of all the
>synapses in, say, your brain?  Consider the location of anything so large as a
>neurotransmitter vesicle.  (In some theories of synaptic thresholds,
>the number of these is a critical parameter.)  The heisenberg
>uncertainty of that location is many orders of magnitude smaller than
>its thermodynamic variance; in effect, Heisenberg uncertainty probably
>is irrelevant to neurological performance.
>
>The thermodynamic chaotic aspect is somewhat more relevant, but there
>is no reason to assume that it is anywhere nearly so important as the
>computational complexity aspect of a machine as large as the brain.
>
>As a counter to your doctrinaire view, consider the following
>anthropic hypothesis about why synapses are as huge as they are: in
>the course of evolution, there were many variations that involved
>making smaller, less reliable neural circuits that were more affected
>by quantum, thermal, and chemical chaos.  Those variants were weeded
>out by non-survival.  What remains is a very stable brain, equipped
>with huge synapses, micron-diameter small fibers, and very effective
>blood-brain barriers.  Yes, there have been brains afficted with
>uncertainty, but evolution disposed of them as they deserved!
>
>Incidentally, did anyone ever point out to you that it is only in
>Quantum physics that things can be made certain?  For example, a
>nucleotide of DNA at room temperature retains its (precise)
>configuration for (I don't know how many) billions of years.  However,
>a Newtonian "molecule", held together by inverse-square dynamical
>constraints would vanish in only the briefest moment.  It is the
>existence of covalent bonds, and similar quantum configurations, that
>make the universe reliably inhabitable.

First of all I agree about uselessness of Quantum physics and Chaos
theory in order to introduce an unpredictability that leaves us
Free Will, also an omniscient God gives us some problem about that.

I wont to point out a subconscious vice of scientists making science,
and I'm conviced that prof. Minsky did not wont state wath I'll
confute. But, I repeat, it's something of subconscious.

It's wrong that "only in Quantum physics [...] DNA [...]  retains its
(precise) configuration". It's in the Reality of the world that
molecules are stable! Scienze describe that reality following a
mathematical analogy, but can not pretend that Math, which describe,
is the basis of described things.
It must be stressed that it's a ridicolous and unfair presumption to
state that "if we suppress the subject [...] all the natur, all the
relations between objects, in space and time,and even space and time
them selves would disappear, and as phenomena, can not exist in them
selves bu just in us. [...] We do not know but our way of perceiving
them, which is our peculiar way, and it is not necessary that is
shared by every being, even if it is shared by every human beings"
(I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, II, 8. I hope that Mr Kant
pardons me for the translation).

There's not so much difference between this position and the
creationist one which states that the world was created some
thousands of years ago, fossils included, with the first man: no men,
no world! But fossils are there and, as how was yet pointed out,
they witness the existence of world millions of years ago.
The Reality does exist, existed and, probably, will exist with and
without Man.

Summarizing I wont state that: we know by modeling, bu we do know
some aspects of the Reality, even if by analogy; the Reality does
exist but exceeds our knowledge.

In this way, facing a not well understood phenomenum, we can have
the broad-mindedness for searching an explication inside an yet
known theroy as well as for trying a new one.
Otherwise we would still be at the Ptolemy age: "it is possible, in
principle, to explain planetary motions by a number of epicycle big
enough".... doesn't it sound like to the statement repeated many
time in this debate: "it is possible, in principle, to explain the
man and its mind by Physical laws"?
"No scienze is possible if one does not keep the category of
Possibility" (A. Eistein too pardons me my translation).

The man and its mind are then made by physical laws? NO! Man is
Intelligent, Conscious, originally Free and therefore Responsible,
and so on. The Man IS! (ME I AM!) Physical laws allow us to 
understand by analogy some aspects of its state. Good work to all
of them who search in this field. But they can not pretend to state
that this is all, denying, on this groundless presumption, (e.g.)
personal Freedom and Responsibility. These aspect of the Reality
are auto-evident to everybody and is ridicolous to judge them
illusory just because one can not explain them.

Do you remember the graspes of Fedro's fox?
Non dum matura est, nolo acerbam sumere.

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