Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2790 talk.philosophy.misc:1676
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From: hajek@gargoyle.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Greg Hajek)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <286@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 88 21:48:47 GMT
References: <563@metapsy.UUCP> <1841@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Sender: hajek@gargoyle.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: hajek@gargoyle.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Greg Hajek)
Organization: U. Chicago Computer Science Dept.
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In article <1841@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>Those bothered
>by possible loss of free will should recall that in a system complex
>enough, there is room for the possibility of indeterminacy, be
>it a biological system or whatnot.

Well, it's not immediately apparent that indeterminacy is a function of 
complexity, in any sense.  The two-slit experiment is extremely simple,
analyzed within the context of quantum mechanics, but that doesn't resolve the
question of point-wave duality.  Similarly, no PDP network will exhibit behavior
that defies a deterministic explanation when run on a computer; indeed, just
dump every step of processing, and you have a low-level explanation right there
(of course, as complexity increases, you increase the possibility that, say,
a cosmic-ray particle will come screaming through your computer, but even such
an event as this is not "indeterminate").

>I will ask Serge the same questions I asked Gilbert: if humans are
>not a machine, what elements are added to the body (which seems to
>be a physical machine as far as we can tell) which make it otherwise?
>Are these material or immaterial?  Is there some aspect of human
>beings which does not obey the laws of nature?

I wasn't asked, but while I'm shooting my mouth off . . . if humans are not
machines, of course there is no material addition to the body, since that would
just comprise a different machine.  Nor is there any assumption that humans do
not obey the laws of nature, but rather that our perspective on the laws of
nature as being equivalent to the "laws" of physics is erroneous.  This is
required from a dualist point of view, for instance:  if a non-physical event
can govern physical behavior, conservation of energy goes right out the window,
and not just such that (delta E)*(delta t) <= h.

But assuming such a dualist stance leaves some ugly questions:  why do the
empirical observations of physicists generalize so well to encompass new
situations (that is, why does physics work)?  If a nonphysical theory of the
world is going to be adopted, it's really not a good enough reason to do so
just so that the task of creating an intelligent machine is impossible, sans
any other motivation.  I would certainly expect God to pick on the economists,
too, at least.
----------
Greg Hajek {....!ihnp4!sphinx!gargoyle!hajek}
"I don't know what the big deal is, I don't feel anything yeeeEEEEAAAAAA...."