X-Message-Number: 7960
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 22:15:44 -0800 (PST)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Uploading and stuff

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In #7946   (Thomas Donaldson) On Wed, 26 Mar 1997 Wrote:

        >the Turing Test has faults.


I agree but it's all we have.



       >Its main fault is that it is far too based on language rather than
              >behavior.


I disagree, but our viewpoints on this are not as far apart as I thought, 
behavior is indeed the only legitimate test of intelligence or consciousness, 
I just think language is behavior.            



        >A tree is not a representation of a tree, while a picture of a tree
                >is.

And a picture of a tree is all you can ever have , a picture painted by light 
on your retina. How is that different from a TV camera?



        >the central part of awareness, which we share with animals and not
        
        >with computers, is our reaction to real things not as symbols but as
                >what they are.


If you make use of the real thing and not just its symbol when you think  
about it, how do you fit something into your head as big and hot as the sun  
when you think about our nearest star?
           


        >Turing Test really does have problems, and I took my Chinese Room
        
        >story directly from one of its critics. I am interested in his
                >response to it.
           

You already know about Searle's room, now I want to tell you about Clark's 
Chinese Room. You are a professor of Chinese Literature and are in a room 
with me and the great Chinese Philosopher and Poet Laotse. Laotse writes  
something in his native language on a paper and hands it to me. I walk 
10 feet and give it to you. You read the paper and are impressed with the 
wisdom of the message and the beauty of its language. Now I tell you that I 
don't know a word of Chinese, can you find any deep implications from that 
fact?  I believe Clark's Chinese  Room is just as profound as Searl's  
Chinese Room.
           
        >everything we do is real rather than symbolic (when stripped down 
        >to its basics
           

Our brain reacts to the electro-chemical signals from nerves connected to a 
transducer called an eye. Our computers react to the electronic signals from 
wires connected to a transducer called an TV camera. 

Our brain uses theories to explain those signals, so would intelligent 
computers. What theories do is explain how some sense sensations relate to
other sense sensations. For example we receive information from our eyes, 
we interpret that information as a rock moving at high speed and heading for 
a large plate glass window, we invent a theory that predicts that very soon 
we will receive another sensation, this time from our ears, that we will 
describe as the sound of breaking glass. Soon our prediction is confirmed so 
the theory is successful, but we should remember that the sound of broken  
glass is not broken glass, the look of broken  glass is not broken glass, 
the feel of broken glass is not broken glass. What "IS" broken glass? It must 
have stable properties of some sort or I wouldn't be able to identify it as a 
"thing",  I don't know what those ULTIMATE stable properties are, but I know 
what they are not, they are NOT sense sensations.  I have no idea what 
glass "IS". The sad truth is, I can point to "things" but I don't  know what 
a thing "IS"  and I 'm not even sure that I know what "IS" is, and an 
intelligent computer would be in  exactly the same boat.


                                            John K Clark    

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