From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Wed Dec 18 16:02:28 EST 1991
Article 2219 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Causes and Reasons
Message-ID: <331@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 91 19:47:54 GMT
References: <1991Dec17.033356.22762@oracorp.com>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 35

In article <1991Dec17.033356.22762@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
|... However, in order for
|these limitative results to have any implication for this endless AI
|debate, you must first have some reason to believe that humans do
|*not* suffer from these limitations. That is where I part company from
|Penrose, Lucas, and Searle.  ...

|Assuming that it is possible to program a computer so that it can be
|consistently interpreted as, say, thinking about cats, there is still
|the possibility that it can *also* be interpreted as thinking about
|cherries, or chess, or chemistry. A physical system can be
|*interpreted* in infinitely many ways.

But this is open to the same issue as above.  What reason do we have to believe
that humans do not suffer from this *same* "problem"?

This is, and always has been, my main objection to *all* of the anti-AI
literature.  It never provides any reason except mere self-generated intuition
to believe that its arguments fail to apply to humans.

|I think that this is a very important point, although it still doesn't
|prove that AI is impossible, only that it has strange (though not
|inconsistent) consequences. I'm inclined to just bite the bullet and
|face up to the possibility (likelihood, in my opinion) that what a
|*person* is thinking about is not uniquely determined.

Yeah, what I said.

Or else the non-uniqueness "result" is invalid.

One or the other.  All 'anti-AI' argumants apply to humans!
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



