cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley) (11/06/90)
The following is a post forwarded by me for Stephen Miller at NASA whose system seems to have posting trouble. Please direct responses to him at the address below... From smiller@aio.jsc.nasa.gov Mon Nov 5 11:48:14 1990 Received: from aio.jsc.nasa.gov by violet.waterloo.edu with SMTP id <AA18512>; Mon, 5 Nov 90 11:48:14 EST Received: by aio (5.57/Ultrix2.4-C) id AA07923; Mon, 5 Nov 90 10:46:29 CST Date: Mon, 5 Nov 90 10:46:29 CST From: smiller@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Stephen Miller) Message-Id: <9011051646.AA07923@aio> To: cpshelley@violet Status: R To: eos!shelby!agate!apple!usc!wuarchive!uunet!ogicse!pdxgate!eecs!erich Subject: Re: Split from AI/CogSci... misc. comments Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy In-Reply-To: <497@pdxgate.UUCP> Organization: NASA JSC Houston, TX Cc: Bcc: In article <497@pdxgate.UUCP> you write: > > After a little more thought on the topic of the last article, It comes >to me that several comments that I made states part of my argument more >eloquently. > > (I had noted how our concepts differentiate as we learn a topic, and >given an example of my own concept differentiation in "AI") > > Our own preoccupation with the messy concepts of "conciousness", and even >"intelligence" are a testament to our own naivete in a way. We are learning >more and more that although some principle issues that get people interested >in a field are interesting, they end up becoming sort of moot questions as >the field matures and *better* questions are dicovered. I think that this >consideration would be valid here as well in the argument to give "AI" its >own language. > > Later, > Erich > > / Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \ >>--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--< > \ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* / > "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it." my response: let's take an elementary spelling course: original (there were some others, too.) (it causes loss of credibility...) content: i like it, however, do you think there is an emotional/instinctive element in perceiving concsiousness in another entity? certainly our need (emotional, instinctive, whatever type) has something to do w/it. i for one think a lot will come to light when the first generation of babies grows up w/intelligent-acting computer/robot systems freely available. that is, when these systems are in the nuturing environment such as at home and at day school. will the children grow up considering "robbie" to be a companion and playmate, a significant other persona? or will the children say "oh, it's just the computer", and not become attached to it as they do to their human friends and playmates? ...will there be an emotive element? if there is, will the children think the systems conscious? i think it is a tremendously complex question, this one about machine consciousness, and a tremendously important one. it has bearing on all kinds of ethical and moral issues, not to mention many different branches of scientific inquiry. like all inquiry, and revolutionary scientific (or other) thought and ideas, it will take both completely NEW ways of looking at things (witness Heisenberg, Einstein, Darwin,...) and more than one person brave enough to think these new things/ways, and (lastly) time. revolutionary ideas neither form nor become accepted overnight. i maintain what we are witnessing and contributing to is a completely new way of conceiving (for western man, at least) of our selves, our machines and technologies, and our other things in our universe; i.e. other intell- igences, including not only computer ones but also nonterrestrial ones such as ocean-going mammals, other life forms on earth, and extra-terrestrials. i think it is a fundamental revolution in the way we conceive of ourselves and our place in the universe. all the evidence points to this conclusion. we are consistently encountering multiple levels of reality in particle physics, cognition, astronomy, computer science, bioengineering. the same thing happens if one reads cultural philosophies from a variety of nonwestern and western cultures. ...enough for now. i welcome comments and responses. .steve. -- Cameron Shelley | "Fidelity, n. A virtue peculiar to those cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu| who are about to be betrayed." Davis Centre Rm 2136 | Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390 | Ambrose Bierce
erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) (11/06/90)
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley) writes: >The following is a post forwarded by me for Stephen Miller at NASA >whose system seems to have posting trouble. Please direct responses >to him at the address below... >In article <497@pdxgate.UUCP> you write: (Erich Boleyn) [stuff deleted] >my response: > let's take an elementary spelling course: original > (there were some others, too.) (Sorry, when I get excited, my ability to communicate degrades quickly, usually starting with my spelling ;-) > (it causes loss of credibility...) Bummer... but true. It is a testament to the need of nicely formed arguments instead of valid content in any field. (sigh) > content: > i like it, however, do you think there is an emotional/instinctive >element in perceiving concsiousness in another entity? certainly our >need (emotional, instinctive, whatever type) has something to do w/it. I am absolutely sure it does. There was an excellent posting made not long ago (a week or two (?)) which discussed this point. I think it has to do both with our innate social needs/wants, and with our own conceptual structure that we try to fit the behavior of the devices into (or, for that matter, look at how many people who work and/or live closely with animals anthropomorphize them to some extent...). > i for one think a lot will come to light when the first generation >of babies grows up w/intelligent-acting computer/robot systems freely >available. that is, when these systems are in the nuturing environment >such as at home and at day school. will the children grow up considering >"robbie" to be a companion and playmate, a significant other persona? or >will the children say "oh, it's just the computer", and not become attached >to it as they do to their human friends and playmates? > ...will there be an emotive element? if there is, will the children >think the systems conscious? I think the question will have an interesting answer... but probably not one that you listed. > i think it is a tremendously complex question, this one about >machine consciousness, and a tremendously important one. it has bearing >on all kinds of ethical and moral issues, not to mention many different >branches of scientific inquiry. like all inquiry, and revolutionary >scientific (or other) thought and ideas, it will take both completely >NEW ways of looking at things (witness Heisenberg, Einstein, Darwin,...) >and more than one person brave enough to think these new things/ways, >and (lastly) time. revolutionary ideas neither form nor become accepted >overnight. > i maintain what we are witnessing and contributing to is a completely >new way of conceiving (for western man, at least) of our selves, our machines >and technologies, and our other things in our universe; i.e. other intell- >igences, including not only computer ones but also nonterrestrial ones such >as ocean-going mammals, other life forms on earth, and extra-terrestrials. > i think it is a fundamental revolution in the way we conceive of >ourselves and our place in the universe. all the evidence points to this >conclusion. we are consistently encountering multiple levels of reality >in particle physics, cognition, astronomy, computer science, bioengineering. >the same thing happens if one reads cultural philosophies from a variety >of nonwestern and western cultures. I somewhat agree with what you say, but there are some points that puzzle me in the implications. Up until recently, our philosophical foundations have gone fairly untouched (the argument of Newtonian vs. Quantum mechanics notwithstanding), i.e. we still use the same philosophical concepts that have been used for a *long* time, with little change. Even before they were formalized, these concepts were used in a loose way in social interaction and classification of other humans. I think the boundaries of "AI" have been enroaching on the "final fortress" of the old concepts, and it is looking like that may fall, and with it the revolution you speak of will take place. What I am curious about is what form some of these new concepts may take. I am also curious about how "fundamental" they are. We use the somewhat naive terms "conciousness" and "intelligence" in our social discourse, but we seem so weded to them, is there a reason for it? It very well could be that our whole society contributes to this in a way. I sometimes wonder if our emotional states could be as much a hindrance to the progress of knowledge as anything else... *plus* they ground us in a specific framework. Look at the response of the fundamentalist christian movement to the progress in science. It wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that they even existed. To me, it looks like a fear response to the pressure of newer scientists that were claiming more and more that religion was unnecessary. The mysticism movements on the surface appear similar to some of this, although different in their own way. It appears to be a combination of new evidence and fear to be called "just a machine" (at least on the surface... I admittedly have little experience with most of them), and a lack of understanding of the materialistic sciences, in some cases, I'm sure. I wonder how much our own innate concepts given by culture can cloud understanding of some things... Oh, well, just a few thoughts. Erich / Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \ >--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--< \ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* / "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."
smiller@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Stephen Miller) (11/09/90)
as to the (sigh) need for form before content, this is "not necessarily
so"! it's just that natural language is our (your-mine) medium of
expression and communication here. in order to communicate affectively,
we need to follow the rules. rules of grammar and syntax are some of
those. by not knowing (or following) the communication rules, ones
arouses preliminary questions in some receivers' minds. (at least in mine.)
well, it was no big thing, just a minor aggravation.
now to the content (which i think we both agree is the important thing!):
thank you for your comments. i do, however, think the changes i'm
talking about ARE fundamental. as witness, your comment "has our
emotive base slowed down our scientific understanding?" [paraphrased.
if i got it wrong, just correct me.] my point exactly is this: that we
(western man) has been trying to ignore this aspect of reality, along
with others (such as consciousness) for the last 2000 years or more.
(that is, within the physical and "rigorous" sciences.) this is because
these areas of life and reality do not fit well into empirical frames,
and because these are the HARD questions. we are getting close(r) to the
real tough ones now, the ones philosophy has asked since the greeks and
before. (the ones like "what are we?" "do i exist?" "what is matter
(the universe)?" and "where did i (we) come from?") our physical sciences
(and life sciences) and now mathematical-comp.sci. and so on have
progressed to the point where we are confronting these very basic
("fundamental") questions and issues.
we are reaching the point where it is no longer viable to think of
ourselves as supreme, different, or separate. other mammalian intelligence
shows we should be cautious in thinking we are the smartest, cognitive
science/AI/our discussion subject is evidence that we are confronting the
question of whether we are different or not (through defining boundaries;
i.e. what things are intelligent, have consciousness, and so on), and
back to the old modern physics findings to show that we are not really
separable from our world/environment.
thank you for agreeing with me that we are in a revolution of
thought here, now. i think it is evolution. of human consciousness!
.steve.erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) (11/09/90)
smiller@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Stephen Miller) writes: > thank you for your comments. i do, however, think the changes i'm >talking about ARE fundamental. But a better question might be fundamental with respect to what? I agree that we (as a social group) are changing, and that the new concepts are starting to take on forms like those never before. We could get fundamental change of the social condition but wash over how our biological basis cements certain features. > as witness, your comment "has our >emotive base slowed down our scientific understanding?" [paraphrased. >if i got it wrong, just correct me.] my point exactly is this: that we >(western man) has been trying to ignore this aspect of reality, along >with others (such as consciousness) for the last 2000 years or more. >(that is, within the physical and "rigorous" sciences.) this is because >these areas of life and reality do not fit well into empirical frames, >and because these are the HARD questions. What I really meant was that our emotive base may well be fundamentally inefficient for certain things. Look how it is causing problems for our society at the population densities that we have now? I don't think it has been entirely free of problems in the sciences, however much we chose to ignore it. I question how much could we change with this kind of fundamental structure involved (maybe several levels removed). But isn't this ignoring the (very likely) possibility that those questions could be fundamentally *bad* ones to ask? One of my points in the origonal posting on this thread was that the very *words* conciousness and intelligence can be confusing. They evolved from a social useage that was useful for dealing with humans, but I am becoming more and more convinced that they not only apply badly to the rest of the world, but may be a naive set of concepts when pursuing it generally. That's the question I'm asking. What if we do find that intentionality is a less efficient method of representation and/or question asking than some other method (to be dicsovered, maybe), can we leave enough of the intentional philosophy behind to be useful? I wonder... > we are getting close(r) to the >real tough ones now, the ones philosophy has asked since the greeks and >before. (the ones like "what are we?" "do i exist?" "what is matter >(the universe)?" and "where did i (we) come from?") our physical sciences >(and life sciences) and now mathematical-comp.sci. and so on have >progressed to the point where we are confronting these very basic >("fundamental") questions and issues. I think that the questions too represent a problem (specifically, human intentionality). This is an efficient system that we have for dealing with the universe, but we have no basis for expecting the universe to play our game when it comes to this. Science has long been a process where the first problems in a field were set aside and realized to be bad questions, or inappropriately concieved. Reading this group alone suggests the problems with using these "human-only" (or maybe mammal-only) concepts for too much more. There have been heated arguments where people were practically representing the same side, not to mention so many uses of the words "conciousness" and "intelligence" that I don't even like to use the words out of parenthesis any more (I use them like quotes from books, i.e. to refer to the whole idea of "machines" and the "mind"). > we are reaching the point where it is no longer viable... Yes, I think that a lot of us are already thinking of it in a similar way. But that's not the end of it... > thank you for agreeing with me that we are in a revolution of >thought here, now. i think it is evolution. of human consciousness! ^^^^^^^^^ I think that the *real* evolutionary step happened many thousands of years ago, by giving the potential for this kind of social evolution. I also tend to think we are approaching a kind of critical mass where *extremely* rapid chages (or even phase transitions, if you like) are going to occur. Erich "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is." / -- Erich Stefan Boleyn -- \ --=> *Mad Genius wanna-be* <=-- { Honorary Grad. Student (Math) }--> Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \ Portland State University / >%WARNING: INTERESTED AND EXCITABLE%<