Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: > Stathis wrote: > I can understand that, for example, a computer simulation of a storm is > not a storm, because only a storm is a storm and will get you wet. But > perhaps counterintuitively, a model of a brain can be closer to the real > thing than a model of a storm. We don't normally see inside a person's > head, we just observe his behaviour. There could be anything in there - a > brain, a computer, the Wizard of Oz - and as long as it pulled the > person's strings so that he behaved like any other person, up to and > including doing scientific research, we would never know the difference. > > Now, we know that living brains can pull the strings to produce normal > human behaviour (and consciousness in the process, but let's look at the > external behaviour for now). We also know that brains follow the laws of > physics: chemistry, Maxwell's equations, and so on. Maybe we don't > *understand* electrical fields in the sense that it may feel like > something to be an electrical field, or in some other as yet unspecified > sense, but we understand them well enough to predict their physical effect > on matter. Hence, although it would be an enormous task to gather the > relevant information and crunch the numbers in real time, it should be > possible to predict the electrical impulses that come out of the skull to > travel down the spinal cord and cranial nerves and ultimately pull the > strings that make a person behave like a person. If we can do that, it > should be possible to place the machinery which does the predicting inside > the skull interfaced with the periphery so as to take the brain's place, > and no-one would know the difference because it would behave just like the > original. > > At which step above have I made a mistake? > > Stathis Papaioannou > > ----------------------- > I'd say it's here... > > "and no-one would know the difference because it would behave just like > the original" > > But for a subtle reason. > > The artefact has to be able to cope with exquisite novelty like we do. > Models cannot do this because as a designer you have been forced to define > a model that constrains all possible novelty to be that which fits your > model for _learning_.
If the model has been reverse-engineered from how the nervous system works (ie, transparent box, not black box), it will have the learning abilities of NS -- even if we don't know what they are. > Therein lies the fundamental flaw. Yes... at a given > level of knowledge you can define how to learn new things within the > knowledge framework. But when it comes to something exquisitely novel, all > that will happen is that it'll be interpreted into the parameters of how > you told it to learn things... this will impact in a way the artefact > cannot handle. It will behave differently and probably poorly. > > It's the zombie thing all over again. > > It's not _knowledge_ that matters. it's _learning_ new knowledge. That's > what functionalism fails to handle. Being grounded in a phenomenal > representation of the world outside is the only way to handle arbitrary > levels of novelty. That remains to be seen. > No phenomenal representation? = You are "model-bound" > and grounded, in effect, in the phenomenal representation of your > model-builders, who are forced to predefine all novelty handling in an "I > don't know that" functional module. Something you cannot do without > knowing everything a-priori! If you already know that you are god so why > are you bothering? So long as you can peak into a system, you can functionally duplicate it without knowing how it behaves under all circumstances. I can rewrite the C code double f(double x, double.y) { return 4.2+ sin(x) - exp(cos(y), 9.7); } in Pascal, although I couldn't tell you offhand what the output is for x=0.77 , y=0.33 > Say you bring an artefact X into existence. X may behave exactly like a > human Y in all the problem domains you used to define you model. Then you > expose both to novelty nobody has seen, including you.... and that is > where the two will differ. The human Y will do better every time. You > can't program qualia. You have to have them and you can't do without them > in a 'general intelligence' context. > > Here I am on a sat morning...proving I have no life, yet again! :-) > > Colin Hales --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---