From: Hudson Joe (jh798@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Feb 28 2001 - 12:28:06 GMT
Catherine
I liked your conclusion.
Of course it would be difficult to model the mind from understanding it
before fully understanding it. But even if we knew exactly how the mind
works (if that's possible) I think we would still have a problem building
one in any way other than to create it in its infantile state and to let
it grow and develope as we do. How can you have a mind that is
recognisable as human without a personality and a large collection of
memorys? And how can you get those without experiencing life as we know
it? These don't seem like implementation independant characteristics. But
even if they were they are not the main issue. If what we mean by mind is
self awareness, i.e. 'someone home' or consciousness, then we are in a
situation where no one (that I'm aware of) has the slightest foot-hold on
how symobls are even relevent let alone on how they can be used to
bootstrap themselves onto consciousness.
Perhaps a computationaly based intelligence could be the platform on which
a mind could exist, but that is not the same as saying the intelligence
emcompasses the mind, or that we would know what was giving rise to the
mind.
Also how could we possibly verify that 'someone was home' in our
creation? We can't even do that with each other. As for intelligence
without a mind then I agree, computation is probably sufficient.
Joe
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