From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Thu Jan 16 17:19:58 EST 1992
Article 2670 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl
>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Penrose on Man vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Jan13.193309.10847@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1992 19:33:09 GMT

Tal Kubo writes:

>>There is no evidence that humans can go beyond formalized reasoning, so
>>it is not clear what you are demanding be explained.

> No Turing machine, turbocharged with any oracles you like, could do
> better than finding all the true statements and writing down their
> proofs.  It would lack the abilities accessible to human intuition: to
> discern meaningful and important statements, and to get at their truth
> or falsity, guided by means other than complete proof or refutation.

> That we can meaningfully (well, let the reader judge) discuss abstractions
> such as reasoning and formalization speaks to our essential transcendence
> of formalized reasoning.  Whereas I can imagine the limits of computer
> "reasoning", I see no such limit to human understanding.

I understand that many people feel this way, but I still say that
there is no evidence that any of these wonderful things that humans do
are nonalgorithmic. If you want to claim that we don't yet know how to
write algorithms to do these things, I agree. But if you want to claim
that it is impossible for an algorithm to do them, I demand more
evidence, or a more conclusive argument. The fact that we don't know
how to do something does not imply that it is impossible.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY



