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Week 3
Shawn Brady
It has been posited that the mind entails a wealth of understanding which has not been, and cannot be, accounted for in a physical symbol system. For example, as opposed to the scripts in Schank’s program which were used to suggest certain behaviors for certain situations, humans seem to be able to respond to unlimited situations in an unlimited amount of ways. It is doubtful that enough scripts could ever be entered into Schank’s program so that it would know what to do in any given situation. Why are humans able to do this? Hubert Dreyfus’ answer is that the human’s know-how is derived from “a kind of pattern recognition ability honed by extensive bodily and real-world experience” (37).
But does it simply come down to this? Does a physical-symbol system fall short of exhibiting true intelligence merely because the mind and its broad knowledge base are flexible in this experiential way? Can a human’s experiences lead to and account for their every action and thought? What if someone is presented with a completely unique situation about which they have never learned, thought, or experienced? Would they simply piece together bits of information from related experiences so as to determine what the best choice might be? If so, how is that different from the “guessing” done by Schank’s program?
James Durand
Because our minds are software ran within our brain, it is not hard to believe that there is more than one process at work at any given time. Can't we walk and chat with our friends in the same manner as a computer can surf the internet while playing music? Truly, our minds seem to have a whole lot of sub programs running, one for keeping balance, one for scanning for dangerous or out of place objects and one for playing a chorus of a song over and over in your head. Each section is mildly autonomous, and can keep on doing without you concentrating on it.
Regardless of the autonomy of the subprograms, something in there is still deciding which subprograms get to be running. Thus this multi-mind theory does not explain what your mind (core mind?) is.
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