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Article 2579 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence testing
Message-ID: <5921@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jan 92 23:52:42 GMT
References: <1992Jan1.115429.2331@arizona.edu> <BSIMON.92Jan2070527@elvis.stsci.edu> <1992Jan3.122235.26340@aifh.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan4.001854.2209@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 82

In article <1992Jan4.001854.2209@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

In article <1992Jan3.122235.26340@aifh.ed.ac.uk> bhw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Barbara H. Webb) writes:

>Answer to Q1: on this view, it's quite possible that consciousness is
>irrelevant to explaining behaviour (this is something like my own
>view). 

I find this entirely bizarre.  People are conscious, yet that's
irrelevant to explaining their behavior, even though it seems to them
that consciousness is involved in the production of their behavior.
It's hard to see why you wouldn't then conclude they just as well
might not be conscious.  Indeed, the Behaviorists are often accused of
just that sort of conclusion.

Now, it may be that some non-conscious entity could have human-
like behavior, and so in a sense the behavior could be explained
without reference to consciousness; but I don't see how it's
possible to explain the behavior of a conscious entity in that
way, unless it happened to produce the behavior without involving
its consciousness (unlike humans).

>>Searle and others also seem to think that the behaviour is perfectly
>>possible without such processes (without 'real' intentionality,
>>consciousness, thinking).

Searle doesn't think that.  What is the evidence for this claim?

Searle admits it as an assumption so that he can make his Chinese
Room argument, nothing more.

>>If it _is_ possible, then what is the
>>justification for supposing that such processes are necessary to explain
>>human behaviour? Why not go along with the behaviourists? 

Well, for one thing, if it were possible for some entiries to have
the behavior w/o such processes, that wouldn't mean such precesses
were not involved in human behavior.

>>In summary, the Turing test (which ascribes 'thinking' to anything that
>>exhibits the intelligent behaviour of a human) is based on the
>>assumption that such internal processes are _necessary_ for the
>>behaviour to occur.

>>This completely contradicts the Behaviourist
>>doctrine, as above, that the behaviour is in _no way_ explained by
>>referring to such internal processes.

Above you seemed to have the Behaviorists were saying the internal
processes weren't necessary to explain behavior.  Now they're saying
the precesses can't be involved in an explanation.

>All equivocation on "internal processes" aside, I don't see any
>contradiction in the two theses mentioned.  (Compare: a screen is
>necessary for a television, but it doesn't explain the television.)

I agree.

>>One of the replies to my previous posting said that, well, they were
>>using small-b behaviourist to mean 'someone that believed that observing
>>the behaviour was sufficient to ascribe mental states (conciousness)'.
>>This is perhaps a common usage, but has nothing to do with Behaviourism,
>>or with the reasons Behaviourism was rejected. It also seems pointlessly
>>tautological to append the description 'behaviourist', in this sense,
>>to the Turing test.

That was my reply.  I use "behaviorism" because I get tired of
repeating longer phrases such as "behavior is sufficient evidence
for consciousness".  And please note that I used the word in many
places where it was not appended to the Turing Test.  I have no
idea why you are accusing me of pointless tautology.

However, this small-b behaviorism does have something to do with
Behaviorism.  Among the small-b sort, one often finds the view that
talk about consciousness, intentionality, and so forth is
unscientific, that such subjective things can never be tested
by external observers, etc.  This idea that we ought to treat
consciousness and the like as if they didn't mater is shared
by the big-B Behaviorists, as is the idea that consciousness,
free will, and the like are just illusions or epiphenomena.

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