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Article 5088 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Chinese Room (or Number Five's Alive)
Message-ID: <1992Apr14.064526.16723@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 14 Apr 92 06:45:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: bronze.1992Apr14.064526.16723
References: <1992Apr1.030024.13504@psych.toronto.edu> <6737@pkmab.se> <1992Apr5.210553.11966@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 31

In article <1992Apr5.210553.11966@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:

>Under strong AI, one would be committed to such a view. Surely, if McCarthy
>believes is thermostat has beliefs, he believes that SHRDLU does. Same
>goes for any other thorough-going functionalists. Right Dave...?

No, not necessarily.  A functionalist need only hold that beliefs result
from the *right* functional organization, not from any old functional
organization.  The question of what organization suffices will get
different answers from different functionalists.

Personally I think that a thermostat certainly has representational
content, but it's stretching things somewhat to say that this is the
content of a belief, as "belief" might be held to require further
structure, e.g. interactions with other beliefs.  On the other hand,
it's not a million miles wrong.  A similar story holds for SHRDLU:
it has more complex contents; whether one holds that it has "beliefs"
depends on just what one requires of the term.

One way to think of it is to divide a propositional attitude like
belief, desire, hope, fear into (a) a propositional content, and
(b) an attitude to that content.  SHRDLU certainly has the content,
but the question of the attitude is somewhat murky, requiring a lot
of conceptual analysis.  I'd be happy to say that SHRDLU has the
more general attitude of "acceptance" (see Stalnaker's _Inquiry_),
and leave the more specific question of "belief" up in the air.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


