Happy Birthday
in [UK Mac]
|
Prev: Sliverlight 4.0 full screen.
Next: new user dialogues
From: Richard Tobin on 30 Apr 2010 04:06 In article <83uj2lF4j1U1(a)mid.individual.net>, Bruce Horrocks <07.013(a)scorecrow.com> wrote: >A friend, back in his student days, attended a lecture during which >Penrose stated that he couldn't ever imagine a silicon-based computer >truly thinking. To which his waggish response was "So I suppose you >can't imagine a carbon-based computer thinking either?" Amusing, but rather begging the question - if silicon computers can't think, it might be because the brain is *not* a carbon-based computer. That is, when Penrose said "silicon-based computer" he presumably was not intending to refer to the properties of silicon (as opposed to carbon), but the way we used it to build computers consisting of deterministic logical components. -- Richard
From: D.M. Procida on 30 Apr 2010 04:27 Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > >A friend, back in his student days, attended a lecture during which > >Penrose stated that he couldn't ever imagine a silicon-based computer > >truly thinking. To which his waggish response was "So I suppose you > >can't imagine a carbon-based computer thinking either?" > > Amusing, but rather begging the question - if silicon computers can't > think, it might be because the brain is *not* a carbon-based computer. > That is, when Penrose said "silicon-based computer" he presumably was > not intending to refer to the properties of silicon (as opposed to > carbon), but the way we used it to build computers consisting of > deterministic logical components. Searle thinks that there *is* something special about biological processes that is key to consciousness. That's John Searle. I don't know what Robert Searle thinks. Daniele
From: Peter Ceresole on 30 Apr 2010 04:27 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > I assume - again, without actually knowing - that this or something like > it represents Dijkstra's position: that we are a little bewitched by > this idea of 'thinking', and that it is distracting, and as he says > irrelevant to to the question of machine intelligence. I think it's only irrelevant to the question of machine intelligence in a practical way; thinking about this won't help us develop working machine intelligence. It's just that we will quietly work away at it and suddenly realise that, in practical terms, it's happened. > I also think it's probably wrong. Questions like: is computing like > thinking? seem to be critical rather than irrelevant. I don't think they're irrelevant at all. Because it forces us to think about it, I think it's how we learn about ourselves, more than about computing. And it's huge fun (on a fairly wide definition of 'fun'), which is why people do it. -- Peter
From: D.M. Procida on 30 Apr 2010 04:42 Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > I also think it's probably wrong. Questions like: is computing like > > thinking? seem to be critical rather than irrelevant. > > I don't think they're irrelevant at all. Because it forces us to think > about it, I think it's how we learn about ourselves, more than about > computing. And it's huge fun (on a fairly wide definition of 'fun'), > which is why people do it. As Socrates famously said at his trial, the unexamined life is no fun at all. Daniele
From: Richard Tobin on 30 Apr 2010 05:40
In article <1jhr8hh.wwjim210vh9l5N%real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk>, D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: >Searle thinks that there *is* something special about biological >processes that is key to consciousness. And Penrose thinks that consciousness depends on non-deterministric quantum effects in "microtubules". >That's John Searle. I don't know what Robert Searle thinks. I don't even know who Robert Searle is! -- Richard |