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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.philosophy,net.rumor,net.misc,net.junk
Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain
Message-ID: <3971@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 21:14:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3971
Posted: Wed Jun 20 21:14:17 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Jun-84 21:14:17 EDT
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 37

John Crane cites, as evidence for the human mind being impossible to
duplicate by computer, two phenomena.

	(1) Subconscious memory - a person can be enabled (through
	hypnosis or by asking him the right way) to remember
	infinite details of any experience of this or prior life
	times. Does the mind selectively block out trivia in order
	focus on what's important currently?

As far as I know, there's no evidence of this that will stand up to
critical examination.  Even disregarding the "prior life times" part,
for which the reliable evidence is, roughly speaking, nonexistent,
the accuracy of recall under hypnosis is very doubtful.  True, the
subject can describe things in great detail, but it's not at all proven
that this detail represents *memory*, as opposed to imagination.  In
fact, although it's quite likely that hypnosis can help bring out things
that have been mostly forgotten, there is serious doubt that the memories
can be disentangled from the imagination well enough for, say, testimony
in court to be reliable when hypnosis is used.

	(2) Intuition - by this I mean huge leaps into discovery
	that have nothing to do with the application of logical
	association or sensual observation. This kind of stuff
	happens to all of us and cannot easily be explained by
	the physical/mechanical model of the human mind.

The trouble here is that "...have nothing to do with the application
of logical association or sensual observation..." is an assumption,
not a verified fact.  There is (weak) evidence suggesting that intuition
may be nothing more remarkable than reasoning and observation on a
subconscious level.  The human mind actually seems to be much more of
a pattern-matching engine than a reasoning engine, and it's not really
surprising if pattern-matching proceeds in a haphazard way that can
sometimes produce unexpected leaps.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry