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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Humans and Turing Machines
Message-ID: <730@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 13:52:26 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.730
Posted: Thu Oct 24 13:52:26 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 04:04:38 EST
References: <227@rtp47.UUCP> <608@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 18

In article <608@spar.UUCP> ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes:
>     To many people, machines are things like those our technology has
>     produced -- collections of simple inert objects interconnected using
>     simple causal relationships, hierarchically constructed so as to
>     produce a specific effects in response to associated inputs. The
>     machines's goodness is usually related to how precisely that it
>     responds to control inputs.

I think you are falling victim to a common misconception here.  Simple inert
objects interconnected using simple causal relationships will only produce
simple machines.  No one (recently) has claimed that the human mind can be
simulated with a simple machine!

However, I would deny that a large computer running a complex program is
"interconnected using simple causal relationships".

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108