Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #05119
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: "John A. deVries II" zozzles@lanl.gov
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 11:38:25 -0600
Subject: [alt-beam] What does purposeful mean, anyway?
>On Thu, 8 Jul 1999 08:10:36 EDT, JVernonM@aol.com wrote:
>>Now, Mr. Tilden gave us a new
>>definition. A robot is an automaton that survives for it's own purpose.
Unless you can convince me that an automaton has a purpose of its "own",
I'm afraid that I find that definition to be useless. Furthermore, I
believe that appealing to Tilden's Three Laws is of no value -- no matter
what degree of sophistry you employ, the "purpose" of a robot (at least so
far) is determined by its builder -- whether that purpose is to survive, to
utilize energy, to seek better sources of energy or whatever.
A photovore seeks light because you build it to.
A symet jiggles because energy is available and it doesn't have any other
choice.
Walkers walk because of very good engineering.
As soon as you talk about "owning" a purpose, you -have- to allow for the
concept of "not owning" or even "actively avoiding" a purpose. None of the
robots described in this list have any CHOICES along those lines. The
choice of purpose (whether survival or anything else) is entirely up to the
builder.
Zoz
---------------------------------------------------------------
John A. deVries II
zozzles@lanl.gov
------------------------------------------------------------------------
eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/alt-beam
http://www.egroups.com
- Simplifying group communications
Home