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Article 6616 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Test Myths
Message-ID: <BILL.92Aug13201500@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 92 03:15:00 GMT
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In-Reply-To: minsky@media.mit.edu's message of 13 Aug 92 23: 02:20 GMT

minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky, who ought to get some new
News-posting software) writes:

   > What I considered to be wasteful of time were the various lists,
   > over the past month or so, of criteria for defining intelligence
   > as a thing, rather than as a relationship.  This leads people to
   > worry about whether rocks or plants are intelligent, and similar
   > silly things.

For me this has been from the beginning a psychological question.
There is considerable agreement between people in the things they call
intelligent, and I wanted to gain a better understanding of how we
arrive at these judgements.  I don't believe that words like
"intelligence" have any universal significance, but they affect the
way human beings think, and our thinking will be clearer if we
understand their hidden associations.

   > It seems to me that we use the word "intelligence" in regard to
   > mental performances that we admire.

This is the first definition I've seen that I can't easily refute (and
I'll admit that it didn't occur to me).  Very elegant.  But it
naturally leads to the next question: What kind of mental performances
do we admire?  (And related questions, such as, do different cultures
tend to admire different kinds of mental performances?)

	-- Bill


