[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Sun, 12/20/09, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> That idea entails panpsychism; the theory that
>> everything has mind. As I mentioned to someone here a week
>> or so ago, panpsychism does refute my position here that
>> only brains have minds, and it does so coherently. But most
>> people find panpsychism implausible if not outrageous.
> 
> Not everything has a mind, just information-processing
> things. Mind is not a binary quality: even in biology there 
> is a gradation between bacteria and humans. The richer and more 
> complex the information processing, the richer and more complex the mind.

One can argue that everything "processes information" at some level. Again, it entails panpsychism, in which even the lowly punch card somehow has a mind capable of "understanding".

-gts