Re: R&M's "memory illusions" and functional verbal response classes

From: Sergio Navega (snavega_at_intelliwise.com)
Date: 07/30/04 

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:13:20 -0300

"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> escreveu na mensagem
news:41097111.79960095@netnews.att.net...
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:24:51 -0300, "Sergio Navega"
> <snavega@intelliwise.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
> >I think consciousness is irrelevant to the study of intelligence
> >because what you just said: intelligence begets consciousness, but this
> >is reasonable only in the human case. I doubt that one can justifiably
> >entertain the idea that other animals are conscious the way we are.
> >So this seems to be a red herring, a concept where philosophers
> >may spread their abstractions without much regard with objective
> >notions.
>
> Well philosophers are wont to spread their manure all over the place,
> and neither intelligence nor science has prevented that. The point I
> was trying to make is if intelligence indeed begets consciousness, any
> attempt to produce intelligence artificially has to be consistent
> mechanically with the production of consciousness. Otherwise it would
> not be intelligence unless you're suggesting there are multiple
> distinct forms of intelligence in mechanical terms, one for plants,
> one for animals, and one for conscious beings.

This is the line of inference that I'm not confortable with. I find
the word "consciousness" so full of unclear implications that I'm
afraid it can prevent the development of even simple mechanisms.
That's the real issue: we are today incapable of building
"artificial mice", let alone human level AI. How could the
concept of "consciousness" help us achieve this limited goal?
In my way of seeing things, consciousness is just a diversion,
at least for AI purposes.

>
> > In order to advance our scientific understanding of
> >intelligent mechanisms, we must focus on the relevant abstractions
> >about such mechanisms. I may accept the idea of "awareness" (as used
> >by cognitive scientists), but I don't pay much attention to the
> >philosophically tinted word "consciousness".
>
> Oh I don't know as consciousness is any more tainted than intelligence
> when it comes to philosophy and philosophers. I suppose I'd like to
> understand whether you see artificial intelligence as feasible without
> mechanical consistency with other forms of intelligence. I would think
> that there has to be a common mechanism underlying all forms. Else you
> wind up having to assume multiple mechanical principles of sentience.
>

I see two distinct things here. If by "mechanism" you're referring to
the same physical arrangement, then no, I don't think all forms of
intelligence must share this level. But if you say that all intelligent
organisms (biological or future artificial) share some set of
essential principles, then yes I agree with that. Thus what I find
important is to discover what these principles are, and "where"
(in terms of level of analysis) they are. Once we have a first model
of this level (no need to be "perfect"), then we may start choosing
the physical implementation strata.

Sergio Navega.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: R&Ms "memory illusions" and functional verbal response classes
    ... >> mechanically with the production of consciousness. ... >> when it comes to philosophy and philosophers. ... >> wind up having to assume multiple mechanical principles of sentience. ... consideration that needs to be factored in to any set of mechanisms. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: R&Ms "memory illusions" and functional verbal response classes
    ... >> artificial mice with intelligence. ... >> understanding consciousness as a concept, if we can, would provide ... Robots are categorically distinct from sentient beings of any kind. ... >> consideration that needs to be factored in to any set of mechanisms. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: Some comments on the vegetative cogitation debate
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    ... explanation of the mechanisms behaviour simply in terms of the laws of ... to incorporate all of the physical bases for consciousness. ... than one could assert that an object is not made of carbon and then go ... physics involved without making specific reference to consciousness. ...
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  • Re: Some comments on the vegetative cogitation debate
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