From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!utcsri!rpi!gatech!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!wolfgang Thu Oct  8 10:10:17 EDT 1992
Article 7029 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: wolfgang@cats.ucsc.edu (Robert F Dougherty)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Date: 24 Sep 1992 16:03:30 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
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Message-ID: <19sosiINNc3j@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
References: <20522@plains.NoDak.edu> <1992Sep23.185020.2693@spss.com> <1992Sep24.011517.22127@Princeton.EDU>
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In article <1992Sep24.011517.22127@Princeton.EDU> harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>......... A grounded robot (i.e., a robot with the capacity to pass
>the Total Turing Test in the real world) would still be grounded even
>if its sensors and effectors were connected to the peripherals of a
>virtual world (generated by, say, a Unix system), just as WE (with our
>TTT capacity) would still be grounded if our senses and effectors were
>connected only to the I/O of a virtual world simulator. The distinction
>is critical. It is TTT-CAPACITY that the robot must have in order to be
>grounded. It makes no difference whatsoever how it acquired that
>capacity, as long as it has it. If it has it, it has it, regardless of
>what its sensors and actuators are connected to. What cannot be
>grounded, no matter what it's connected to, is a computer, which, by
>definition, cannot have TTT (robotic) capacity.

(I have not read you article yet, so excuse me if you already addressed
this.)
   It seems that your distinction between computer and robot is very cut and
dry.  Any computational machine that has no transducers is utterly usesless
to we humans and I would argue that no such thing exists.  This keyboard is
a transducer (pressure->electrical), as is a mouse, a monitor, etc.
  
   Further, we use a Macintosh in our lab to control a visual stimulus and to
collect photometer readings for calibration.  This set-up seems even 
closer to your robot's transducers (the computer can adjust the stimulus to
match a desired luminance- it reacts to the real world in real time!)  Is
this a robot or a computer?

   To address your human-hooked-up-to-virtural-world-simulator example- 
what if we managed to bypass the transducers (strictly speaking, the 
transducers are only one part of the very first input neurons- eg. just
the photochemically-lined membranes of the receptors.  The rest of the 
receptor is not a transducer.)  If the human were hooked up to the VR
simulator in this way, would she loose grounding?

   As an aside, every level of the human nervous system utilizes transduction-
electrical->chemical and the reverse. 

-Robert Dougherty   
University of California at Santa Cruz
Vision Research
 


