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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: mind vs. brain
Message-ID: <750@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 16:02:49 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.750
Posted: Tue Oct 29 16:02:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 01:38:50 EST
References: <1794@watdcsu.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Distribution: net
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 61
Summary: 


In article <1794@watdcsu.UUCP> dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) writes:
>Let me suggest the following analogy: mind is to brain as digestion is
>to stomach.  [...] Nobody ever writes articles claiming that "no machine can
>produce digestion".  Why not?
>
>Because everybody understands that the word "digestion" is a word we
>use to describe activities performed by the stomach, ie. the stomach
>digests food.  This is made easy to understand by the fact that, for
>the noun "digestion" denoting activities, there is a handy verb,
>"digest", which denotes the same activities.
>
>The noun "mind", similarly, denotes some activities performed by the
>brain.  Unfortunately, our language doesn't provide us with a handy
>verb to denote these activities, so many people tend to sucked into
>thinking of "the" mind as a "thing".  So people waste millions of hours
>wondering if "the" mind exists, where does "it" exist, etc.

Yes, there is such a word.  That word is "think".  So we really have:
thinking is to brain as digestion is to stomach.  It is true that there
is no word analogous to mind for the stomach.

Your stomach performs certain chemical reactions, to convert food into
chemicals directly usable by your body.  From this, it easy to see what
parts of what your stomach does can be abstracted from your actual stomach,
and what cannot.  Specifically, the nature of the reactions can be
abstracted; the fact that they are being performed on the food you ate,
to provide chemicals for your use, cannot.

The brain performs certain computations, to make decisions for actions to
be taken by your body.  The computations can be abstracted; the fact that
the decisions are instantiated in your body cannot.

Now there are two separate questions here.  One is, is the Turing machine/
computer model strong enough to represent the computations performed by
your brain?  On this question, no proof is available.  Personally, I believe
it is.

The second is, if you successfully abstract the computations done by your
brain into a computer or some other machine, does that machine think?  Is
it you?

First of all, I would assert that a "successful" abstraction would respond
like you, modulo the differences in the sensory information and action
modes available to it.  Anything less than this is not a success.

So, given a machine which responds "like" a person, what grounds can there
be for denying that that machine thinks?  I can see none, except for
mystical concepts like "souls".  (In particular, I don't understand what
an "intentional state" is supposed to be.)

As to whether that machine is "you": as I have argued elsewhere, barring
mysticism, this is a debate about definitions.  I think it is more consistent
with the common usage to answer yes.

>David Canzi, an entirely physical phenomenon.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108
(Also an entirely physical phenomenon.)