[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Thu Dec 31 08:13:23 UTC 2009


2009/12/31 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> --- On Wed, 12/30/09, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> I make a clear distinction between those two
>> categories of things. Computer simulations of real things do
>> not equal those real things they simulate, and some
>> "simulate" nothing real in the first place.
>>
>> A simulated thunderstorm won't be wet except in its
>> simulated world.
>
> Really? Seems to me that not even wetness exists in that supposed world. Your supposed world exists only in some person's imagination, helped along by some well-written code resident in some computer's RAM that helps to make that supposed world easy to imagine. Not only does no wetness exist there, there's no there there.
>
> And simulated minds can't observe themselves any more than can the simulated goldfish that appear to swim on some screen-savers.

If a mind is like any other thing at all it is like an abstract
mathematical entity, not like a physical object. The brain or computer
is the physical object instantiating the mind, like a sphere made of
stone is a physical instantiation of an abstract sphere. You can
destroy a physical sphere but you can't destroy the abstract sphere,
since you can instantiate it again multiple times on multiple
substrates, provided that you know how to do so. Similarly, you can
destroy a brain but you can instantiate the mind it represents again
multiple times on multiple substrates, provided that you retain the
information enabling you to do so. So against your intuition that mere
abstraction cannot give rise to mind I put my intuition that
abstraction is necessary for mind, and the only purpose of the real
object is to instantiate the abstraction. Not a rigorous argument, but
you've more or less admitted that you trust your intuitions more than
you trust rigorous argument.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list