From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Jan 21 09:26:57 EST 1992
Article 2865 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl
>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Jan18.150345.15050@oracorp.com>
Date: 18 Jan 92 15:03:45 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation
Lines: 42

Jeff Dalton writes:

> I suspect that what you're getting at is that if I think conversation
> without understanding is impossible, then I should accept the Turing
> Test, because whenever there was conversation there would (in my view)
> have to be understanding.  

I just don't get it. You believe that "conversation without
understanding is impossible", but you don't believe "conversation
implies the existence of understanding"? I don't understand the
distinction

> Well, if I could _show_ that conversation was impossible without
> understanding, then I should indeed accept the Turing Test. But
> I can't show it's impossible, and neither can the people who want
> us to accept the TT right now.

Why does anyone have to _show_ that it is impossible? The Turing Test
isn't a proof of intelligence, it is just supposed to constitute
empirical evidence. I don't see how you can believe that conversation
is impossible without understanding without believing that conversation
is empirical evidence for understanding.

> The arguments for accepting the TT right now do look rather like
> residual operationalism and behaviorism.  They often involve saying
> (or implying) that there's no way to test for "real understanding",
> that the question of "real understanding" is meaningless or
> unscientific, and so on.

The argument for accepting the Turing Test right now is simply that,
right now, there are *no* examples of beings able to pass the Turing
Test that we don't consider to possess understanding. That is, the
Turing Test is empirically valid for exactly the same reasons that
your belief that conversation without understanding is impossible.
The validity of the Turing Test seems to me to be implied by your
belief that conversation without understanding is impossible, so I
don't see how you can accuse supporters of the Turing Test are
stinking behaviorists.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


