ANK@CUNYVMS1.BITNET.UUCP (02/23/87)
Today's (22 Feb. 87) New York Times Book review section carried
a full page review of Minsky's "Society of Mind" {pp 339 Simon &
Schuster $19.95} by James W Lance, a professor in neurology from
Australia.
Since the beginning of this year, over a score of people have
devoted a cumulative of 100 + hours debating over Marvin's comments on
Consciousness. With that as a backdrop I wanted to see what Dr. Lance
had to say ! Well nothing much that readers of AI-Digest do not
already know.
In all fairness to the reviewer I must say he did a good job of
filling a page with bits and pieces from the book. But what he did not
accomplish is to critique the book as a scholarly (I am right ?...Well
many may think not..) work. New York Times, I must complain, has not been
very serious in the past two years, when it comes to reviews relating
to such topics, in comparision to other scientific books that pass through
their tables.
What then is my gripe ? I think "consciousness" is a very
serious matter. Furthermore the classical Mind-Body question will
always re-occur every few decades in the light of a new philosophical
construct. Therefore to attribute the onus of assigning the
*definitation of "consciousness" to Minsky's posting in AI Digest, is
wrong. I did not see much debate when PDP was published by M.I.T.Press
? Listen folks ! I think there is more mileage to be got from the two
Volumes of Parallel Distributed Processing than in "Society....".
I rather suspect that we in the academia expect great architecture
every monday morning. Similarly Minsky's book is *not* supposed to be
taken as the final word or *official* pronouncement of "mind-brain debate".
The purpose, as I understood it from reading the book, was
to generate idea's and reflect on the homely's and aphorisms that
the book is so full of. It is true that many common-day phenomena
relating to memory is outside many models of memory. Let me illustrate
" I forgot the my telephone number of two years ago in
Cambridge.... and last week right in the middle of
Fifth Ave. and 42nd. it came as a flash.."
I do not think many theories of memory either explain one
or the other problems, but none that in the classical sense address
all the issues. (Yes ! not even the latest theories. That's the
complexity of studying Man and his mind using expirical tools)
The point I wish to make is simple. Many of us (graduate-level students)
could get many germ-of-an-idea from his book. Lets keep it at that.
All many of us need is a metaphor or a notion, and off we go. His
book does that rather neatly. It should be a required reading along
with Drefus's, if we have to go beyond satisfying our Ph.D. requirements.
The last paragraph of Lance's review was, and let me paraphrase it:
"This is a disturbing book for a neurologist to read
because of the summation of mathematics + psychology
+ philosophy still does not approach the complexities
of neurology. And yet the text pursues an exciting
trail to the elusive goal"
Sure enough, I guess Minsky did not expect to give one either (or so I
presume..) I'm sure it is easy for Harnad to reduce all "books in
Psychology, Philosophy, Biology....theatre, music..." to the MIND-BODY
problems. Not that I personally mind, but it is better that we limit
the domain.
Finally I wonder if *intensional-realist* like Harnad (maybe I'm wrong)
really have a plausible model of the mind ?
Anil Khullar
{Ph.D. Program in Psychology
C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center.
New York NY 100036 }
ank%cunyvms1.BITNET@wiscvm.edu
BITNET: ank@cunyvms1
PS: I personally think Harnad
has given me enough insights
for my term-paper.......