At 10:03 PM 2/12/00 -0600, Russell Maatman wrote:
>ASAers:
>
>I'd like to respond to one rem ark Glenn made. See my comments below.
[snip]
>Glenn, I keep thinking that you are very close to the position I took in
>the post that started this discussion a few days ago. You rightly deplore
>judging whether a being is human on the basis of its looks or appearance. I
>agree. But I make the same claim for fossils and the behavior of the beings
>that were fossilized. I realize you have not included behavior.
I am really lost here. I have been arguing for behavior, not looks as the
key to being a human. So I don't understand this sentence stating that I
have not included behavior. That is about all I include. However, there is
one caveat and maybe this is what you are picking up on. Being human with a
normal body allows certain behaviors to leave physical remains which are
evidence of humanity. This is what I have done with fossil man (see
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/chron.htm) As is always the case, the lack
of those behaviors in an abnormal body not proof of the lack of humanity.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A case in point would be
the situation of quadraplegics.
Really--can
>you draw a line between a static being and that being in motion? Isn't the
>appearance of a being related to its behavior?
I am still lost here and not fully understanding where you are coming from
on this one. I will take a stab anyway. If I totally misunderstand your
point, then try again.
First, I don't think appearance and behavior are necessarily related
although we have trouble jumping fences that deer can easily hop over
because our appearance doesn't allow us to to that. Nor can we fly. So
there is some behavioral limitations due to appearance. But these sorts of
things are not what we refer to when we define humanity. High jumping or
flying isn't basic to making a human.
If you are suggesting that a human must be capable of motion, whereas a
computer AI sits like a lump of silicon on a desk top, I am not sure that
this is an adequate definition that will differentiate us from computer
intelligence. Consider the quadraplegic. They don't move very well and
must have machines assist their motion. All an unfortunate quadraplegic is,
is a brain siting on a motionless body. Before everyone takes offense here,
my Aunt was awarded Polio mother of the year in 1954 or so, being totally
paralyzed and having given birth to my cousin in an iron lung, who then
came to live with us for a while. In point of fact, at that time in my
aunt's life, she was merely a brain being kept alive by a breathing
machine. She was still human. Quadraplegics are still human.
Lets examine a couple of possibities. What is the difference between a
computer who can reason, tell you that he feels sad, who can remember
previous conversations, etc and a person who does the same thing? You
might say that the computer can't feel emotions. In point of fact you
don't really observe or know the feelings I say I feel. To you, they are
inaccessible. All you can do is hear my description of those feelings and
believe me. On what basis would you disbelieve a computer saying the same
thing? So what is the difference?
Now take another example. Maybe technology can't create a silicon brain for
some fundamental physical reason. But, we are becoming quite knowledgable
in manipulating biological materials via genetic engineering. Suppose in
the future genetic engineers (GE) use cat neruons to create a very large,
very complex brain which is not the same as a cat's brain but is bigger and
more complex. This can be done merely by altering the developmental program
of brain development. We already know in principle how to do this:
"The size of the cortex depends on the number of cells in it, and that in
turn depends on the number of founder cells in the ventricular zone. If
the timing of one crucial moment in development when the founder cells
start producing migrating neurons instead of more founder cells-were to be
delayed, the result would be a bigger brain. A single additional cycle of
cell division would double the number of founder cells and ultimately the
size of the cortex. Two added cycles would produce a four times bigger
cortex and so on exponentially. Such a small change in the timing of cell
division, says Rakic, could conceivably be controlled by a single gene.
"Alternatively, a change could have happened in a gene that programs
founder cells to die when they have reached the end of their usefulness.
Rakic and his colleagues have identified such a gene in mouse brain cells.
When they created a 'knockout' mouse in which that gene was missing, the
mouse's brain grew so large that it burst through the skull. Its normally
smooth surface had acquired small dents and folds." ~ Robert Kunzig,
"Climbing Through the Brain," Discover, August 1998, p. 69
Now, if this large cat brain was hooked up to a speech synthesizer, trained
to use it and then it told you that it was depressed, do you believe it? Is
it really feeling anything? I know that my cat can become depressed, so why
not a brain manufactured by GEs from cat neurons? Is this talking mass of
neurons artificially intelligent? It most certainly would be more
intelligent than my cat.
Another example. Suppose a human brain could be grown in vitro from some
human stem cells. Of course you would have to have lots of machines to keep
the thing alive but so what? Does this count as the creation of artificial
intelligence if you hook it up to a speech synthesizer? Is it human? I
would say yes he/she is human. But they would have no mobility. Mobility as
I noted above is not a defining characteristic of humanity. If you answer
no, that this is not the creation of artificial intelligence, what is the
difference between this situation and that of the large cat brain above?
Why is one not the creation of AI and the other might be? And if the large
cat brain can do all the things the human brain can do, what distinguishes
it from humanity?
Somthing like this has already been tried. There was a guy back in the 60s
who was experimenting with transplanting heads. His gruesome experiments
was shut down because of public outrage. Unfortunately, that public
outrage shortened the lives of quadraplegics. According to this guy, I
forget his name, the bodies of quadruplegics cease functioning at a younger
age on average. He was trying to prolong the lives of quads by
transplanting their heads to new bodies when their old bodies wore out.
The human would still be there, just the machinery keeping him alive would
be different. So what is the difference between a person in this situation
and a brain grown in vitro? Who has the image of God?
Of course, I know as well as
>you do that motion and no motion are qualitatively different. But for this
>discussion...?
>
>> Do I think that AI will be achieved nd the Turring test passed by some
>> computer? No. But I do think that there will be some close calls.
>
>Why no? Because our technology can never be good enough, or is there some
>other principial reason?
Basically my predjudice and nothing more. And as I think about it, I may
very well have been hasty in my condemnation of AI. It may turn out that
there is some fundamental physical limitation to using silicon as a basis
for intelligence. However, given Genesis 11:6-7 I am usually one not to
doubt that mankind can do pretty much as he wants, including making
artificial intelligence. It says:
"And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one
language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do."
If we can imagine AI, we can probably someday produce it--maybe not in the
way we originally envisioned it but we will probably produce it.
>
>I enjoy discussing this with you!
Me too, you are causing me to re-think some things I haven't thought about
for a while. Thanks.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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