From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!mips!mips!decwrl!access.usask.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!zirdum Mon Mar  9 18:33:50 EST 1992
Article 4136 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb28.182834.16972@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
References: <1992Feb27.025740.8034@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Feb27.182302.5525@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992Feb28.054246.17299@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 18:28:34 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <1992Feb28.054246.17299@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>In article <1992Feb27.182302.5525@ccu.umanitoba.ca> 
>zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum) writes:
>>
>>Absolutely, If the system only spouts sentences without being able
>>to answer questions *in an efficient, understandable way* then
>>I would be the first to say that the machine is *NOT* intelligent!
>>
>  Urk.  Sometimes after severe brain damage a patient
>will be in what is called a "locked-in state", in which
>they are aware of what is going on and capable of thinking
>but unable to respond in any way.  We know about such
>states because on occasion patients have emerged from 
>them.  But probably many times they do not emerge.  Are
>you going to say that such patients are not intelligent?
>

Sorry, I did not mean to say that this is the definitive definition
of intelligence, but had we come upon a rock that was in a
"locked-in-state" there would be no reason to suppose it is
intelligent.
In any case, if the patient is in such a state that they are
unable to solve problems (using their memory perhaps) then I
would say that they are not intelligent!
Please excuse my lack of technical terms here, but I think
that too many people on the net are spouting technical
terms, and using them in ways that *they* do not understand!
*Please people, I beg of you - make things as simple as possible
but no simpler!*

BTW, it is up to you to determine how to find out if the
patient is solving problems or not!

>	-- Bill


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*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
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