[-empyre-] Pribran and Penrose

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

In reading the article on Pribran's work (
http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp ) I ran across a mention of Roger
Penrose and his claim that humans can solve the halting problem (mentioned
in a previous post). Penrose, I realize, is a notable
scientist/mathematician. But, then, Newton and Leibnitz made some strange
claims in their day, also, mostly in their desires to unite
religion/spirituality with science.

I think we glimpse the widespread nature of the repugnance to the notion
that computability is an adequate model of human thought processes in
Penrose's claim that humans can solve the halting problem (or any valid
variant thereof). The logic is, apparently, considered to be fallacious, yet
it has quite a following. There's a great deal of material on the net on the
subject. google searches of (+penrose +godel) or (+penrose, +"halting
problem") yield much interesting reading.

"Martin Gardner calls Penrose's book "the most powerful attack yet written
on strong AI." If so, AI must be doing pretty well. If the book were
condensed to a paper by deleting the excellent tutorials, and if Penrose's
name weren't on it, I doubt if the paper would have been much noticed, or
even published. Regardless of your opinions about the appropriateness of
current AI research strategies, or about the length of the road ahead,
Penrose's book offers no substantial reasons to change your views about the
long-term possibility of computer-based AI. The fact that many casual
observers have been misled about this is yet another indication of the
inadequacy of our current methods of forming and communicating scientific
consensus." (from http://hanson.gmu.edu/penrose.html )

Pribran's work does not appear to be related, from the little I've read (
http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/ ), to such claims. There is no
indication that I could see of any claim that human thought is not
algorithmic. Pribran's work is very interesting to me, though it would take
quite a long study to really appreciate it and understand it. What I read
was a great description of what a hologram is and its relevance to Pribran's
theory. And Pribran's theory is a model of the way in which data is stored
and processed by the brain, so far as I can see. Fascinating stuff. One
shudders, however, at the thought of what is involved in verifying any of
these theories. Lots of needles and electrodes and poking and prodding a lot
of innocent brains (to death, probably, in many cases).

ja