X-Message-Number: 7943
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet digest
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 13:12:34 -0800 (PST)

Well!

Lots of things to answer and little time to do it.

To Mr. Lynch: It really would help if you would read a bit more about this
consciousness question. It would also help if you were not quite so full of
yourself, but that's much harder to cure.

First of all, you don't really answer the point of Bob and my own comment
about attribution of awareness. Yes, we think women are close enough to us
to have awareness too (though quite seriously there have been past societies
which may have doubted this, and a few present societies may still doubt it).
The comment about a twin brother suffering from a clot in his arteries is
just plain off the mark. When I make a decision that someone is aware, I
do make a judgement, but I hardly ignore obvious signs of illness etc.

As for the issue of the Turing Test, you have only been dogmatic, you have
not justified a thing. Did you do this because you wished to convince me
or because you wished to state a quasi-religious premise? For a start,
analyze the Chinese room situation I described.

Finally we come to the chaos issue. Here I should have explained myself a 
bit better. If we set up a (slightly faulty) copy of you, not only will it
simply not behave like you, but it will go very badly awry, breaking down
after a short time. I do not believe that you are going to break down in
the same way or in a short time. It's true that even if it does not break
down (I think that unlikely) then it will behave SIMILARLY to you --- but
if you were present and able to judge, you would not say it emulated you
at all. Years ago I read a science fiction story with a similar theme:
a man finds a build-a-man set, and builds a copy of himself. The set had
somehow gone back in time, and along came time police to fix that problem.
They looked at the copy and the original, and decided that the original 
was faulty --- and so the copy lived on, with tastes that the original 
knew (before his demise) simply did not match his own.

Finally, Lewis Carroll's story catches very well what I was trying to say.
I am surprised you did not notice. We cannot use only symbols to deal with
the world. At some point we must stop that and deal directly with the
world. That symbols are also physical objects does not vitiate my point.
And any system which only uses symbols will not be conscious. However, if
you really believe that Carroll's story represents my own argument, something
has gone badly wrong in our conversation. You might begin by telling me
what you think my argument is.

To Dr. Strout: Yes, you might consider that I was using the word "computer"
in a different way. Since I don't want to get involved in arguing about
right and wrong uses of words, I will say this: "computers" of the sort
we are differ a great deal from Crays, PCs, etc --- not matter how large
and elaborate such machines may become. I believe that is an essential 
distinction. I have even explicitly said that I am NOT arguing against
the possibility of artificial intelligence or artificial awareness ---
I am discussing the kind of computers which may have it versus other
kinds which cannot have it.

Shall we call one kind computers and the others something else? Perhaps.
But whatever else we do we should be clear about the distinction.

To Mike Perry: Now look here. Are you really saying that everything is 
symbolic? Not representable by symbols, but actually symbols themselves?
I doubt that completely, unless perhaps you have decided to redefine 
the world "symbol" so it includes everything... in which case you are
saying nothing at all. Who attaches meaning to these symbols, anyway?
Without that, you have no symbols.  

As to whether or not we are finite state machines, I remain dubious. One
issue coming directly from quantum mechanics is that not ALL measurements
(in theory) have a quantum character. For instance, momentum is a vector,
and its value as a vector -- a direction in space --- is not quantized,
though the relation between position and momemtum is. That alone raises
questions about whether quantum mechanics says we are finite state 
machines. In practical terms, our components undergo constant renewal,
so that their quantum states will constantly change. This means to me 
that any attempt to really list the finite number of states we are in will
fail --- not because of its number, but because it changes all the time.
Sure, we can make generalizations, but then we will lose that finite
character: an infinite set of molecules can be in the right conformation
to produce ME or YOU.

		         Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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One major distinction between (say) Crays and human beings comes down to
the issue of whether they operate with symbols or work in the world without
using symbols (at root). I am saying that this distinction is key.

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