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Article 2387 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle's response to silicon brain?
Message-ID: <1991Dec23.180805.44802@spss.com>
Date: 23 Dec 91 18:08:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: spss.1991Dec23.180805.44802
References: <1991Dec18.173854.3551@spss.com> <45304@mimsy.umd.edu>
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In article <45304@mimsy.umd.edu> kohout@cs.umd.edu (Robert Kohout) writes
(quoting me):
>>AI researchers
>>are attempting to model what minds do, which is a nice scientific project.
>>(The distinction between modelling and creating minds has no practical
>>effect at this time.)
>
>A minor nit. Cognitive psychologists are mind modelers, AI researchers 
>desire to engineer intelligent systems. Most of the time, one cares
>very little whether or not a particular system mimics the human mind
> [....]  Nonetheless, I
>must object to your parenthetical. There is a very big difference
>between modeling a mind and get a computer to do some of the things
>that people do with little or no effort.

As a meta-nit, my parenthetical remark did not deny this.  What I meant 
was that no one is near enough to modelling the human mind that the distinction
between a mind and a simulation of a mind has any practical interest.
(I believe this was your very point in another posting.)

But I'm sure you're right that most AI researchers have no intention of 
"modelling the mind"; they simply want to make machines do some of the 
things that minds do.


