From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Tue Jan 21 09:26:53 EST 1992
Article 2858 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Cargo Cult Science
Message-ID: <379@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 92 18:48:42 GMT
References: <92Jan15.175909est.14446@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1992Jan16.061242.21335@news.media.mit.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 26

In article <1992Jan16.061242.21335@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
|  But indeed we have a proof problem here, because the
|intrusion of terms like "intentionality" which are not defined make
|proof (and disproof) impossible because you can't check an alleged
|proof.  That's why Turing suggested replacing "Can Machines Think" by
|the Turing test -- in order to replace bogus proof-demands by
|empirical tests.  The test is whether people agree that such-and-such
|a machine appears to think like a person, but only by whatever
|standards that those people themselves choose to apply, rather than by
|some ambiguous standard.

This is exactly why I have been trying to get some usable definitions of
"understanding" from the Searle supporters.

So far the only satifacory answer I have gotten is from people who *disagree*
with Searle, namely the modified Turing Test approach (individual judgement
criterion).

But since that is already the criterion I use, and by which I conclude that
Searle's CR *does* understand Chinese, it really gets us no forwarder in
this debate.  I still have seen no usable criterion by which it is possible
to conclude that CR does *not* understand Chinese.
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



