From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Apr 16 11:34:17 EDT 1992
Article 5071 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Message-ID: <521@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 92 23:48:24 GMT
References: <1992Apr6.023638.518@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr6.182533.109@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Apr6.224129.7406@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr7.205221.3728@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 37

In article <1992Apr7.205221.3728@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
|
|But where does this lead us?  To entities that only have a "part" of a belief,
|or a "bit" of an experience, a "portion" of qualia?

Essentially.  I have no trouble with ideas like 'limited understanding'
or 'rudimentary qualia', or ...

Note that the boundry cases are not necesarily best described using words
like 'part' or 'bit', often words like 'limited' or 'partial' or some
such thing are more expressive of what is happening.

As a concrete example, I would say that Schank's "story reading" program
shows (very) limited understanding; nothing like the type of understanding
that humans have, but it captures *some* of what is involved in human
understanding, and can therefore be said to understand, to a limited degree.

|  I want to be a realist
|about mental states, and so therefore believe that it is not simply a matter of
|"deciding" whether rocks have beliefs, like one would decide whether glass is
|a liquid or a solid.  There is, from my perspective, a *fact of the matter*
|whether or not rocks, or thermostats, or SHRDLU, has mental states.

I tend to agree, fuzzy boundries do not necesarily deny objectivism, just
universal certainty. There will still be many unambiguous situations, and
even the ambiguous states will still have a 'fact of the matter', it will
just be one that defies classification.


One if the main issues of philosophical concern is the appropriate criteria
for deciding what things have the various 'qualities' associated with
minds.

It is here that this group can make its biggest contribution.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


