CMSC 477/677 - Spring 2005
Discussion Questions for Class #12, March 10
Reading: Consciousness papers: Bechtel, Dennett, Anderson
Bechtel, "Consciousness: Perspectives from symbolic and connectionist
AI"
- What's the difference between consciousness and attention
(if there is one)?
- If you could design an agent that exhibited all of Churchland's functional
features of consciousness, would you actually have a conscious system? Why
or why not?
- If it's true that consciousness is biologically localized in the intraluminar
nucleus, does that mean we need one of those in our agents in order to have
consciousness?
- What is meant by qualia or qualitative experience? According
to Nagel et al. (p. 6), "the qualitative character of mental events is not
due to either the functional or physical character of cognitive systems but
is in some way beyond the physical and functional dimension." Aren't we
just back to Searle's magical, metaphysical "intentionality"?..
- ...and if we are, what is "intentionality?"
Dennett, "Consciousness in human and robot minds"
- Summarize the four arguments presented by Dennett that argue against
computational models of consciousness (dualism, organic essence, origin chauvinism,
and complexity).
- Dennett then goes on to say, "Hey, let's build a robot and not worry
about consciousness!" Do you think that the Cog project will have anything
useful to say about consciousness? About cognition? And if not, why do you
suppose this paper claims to be about consciousness but is really all about
Cog?
Anderson, "Embodied cognition: A field guide"
- (Like I said in my e-mail, you probably want to skim much of this paper,
but Section 2 is worth reading fairly closely, since it addresses Brooks's
arguments about the history of evolution and how it shoudl affect how we
develop models of intelligence.)
- In twenty-five words or less, what is this paper about? (I'm
still trying to come up with my own answer to this one..."
- What is "Embodied Cognition"? What is the symbol grounding problem?
What is the difference between embodied and situated cognition?
- In his discussion about Cambrian Intelligence, Anderson seems to be
arguing against the very idea of planning. Yet people clearly do some
to deliberatively plan at least some of their actions. Anderson does
address this point. How would you summarize his reasoning?
- What are some of the key criticisms of embodied cognition, as discussed
by Anderson in Section 5?