Mike Tintner wrote:
There is a crashingly obvious difference between a rational computer and
a human mind - and the only way cognitive science has managed not to
see it is by resolutely refusing to look at it, just as it resolutely
refused to look at the conscious mind in the first place. The normal
computer has no problems concentrating. Give it a problem and it will
proceed to produce a perfect rational train of thought, with every step
taken, and not a single step missed. (Or to put that another way - it
has zero freedom of thought).
Completely wrong, I am afraid.
This is a view of "computer" that is so antiquated it belongs in the
early 1960's, when people were told that "computers can only do what
they are programmed to do", as a way to reassure them that they should
not be afraid that the computers were really able to think (and were
therefore a threat).
You can program a computer to be deterministic, or you can program it to
be non-determinstic. You choice. Some approaches to AI do indeed take
an approach that would leave the machine with no choices in its
reasoning paths .... but that is only one choice.
It is certainly not my choice, or those of many others. It is important
not to tar everyone with that brush.
Richard Loosemore.
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