Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <946@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 88 06:05:46 GMT
References: <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2070015@otter.hple.hp.com>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 21

In article <2070015@otter.hple.hp.com>, cwp@otter.hple.hp.com (Chris Preist) writes:
> The brain is a product of the spinal chord, rather than vice-versa.

I'm rather interested in biology; if this is a statement about human
ontogeny I'd be interested in having a reference.  If it's a statement
about phylogeny, it isn't strictly true.  In neither case do I see the
implications for AI or philosophy.  It is not clear that "develops
late" is incompatible with "is fundamental".  For example, the
sociologists hold that our social nature is the most important thing
about us.  In any case, not all sensation passes through the spinal
cord.  The optical nerve comes from the brain, not the spinal cord.
Or isn't vision "sensation"?

> For this reason, I believe that the goals of strong AI can only be 
> accomplished by techniques which accept the importance of sensation. 
> Connectionism is the only such technique I know of at the moment. 

Eh?  Now we're really getting to the AI meat.  Connectionism is about
computation; how does a connectionist network treat "sensation" any
differently from a Marr-style vision program?  Nets are interesting
machines, but there's still no ghost in them.