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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Penrose on Man vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Jan19.212725.10371@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan18.134014.7771@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Jan18.230131.26325@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan19.011008.7786@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 92 21:27:25 GMT
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In article <1992Jan19.011008.7786@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>Right.  Let's see how it goes: in the course of empirical observation, you
>come up with a formal theory that you don't understand, without ever
>passing through the intermediate stage of synthesizing it from the results
>of your studies, since this process would naturally lead to understanding.
>Moreover, either you have to dispense with the principle of semantic
>compositionality, or admit that your theory will have a primitive
>constituent part wholly incomprehensible to you, so that your lack of
>understanding will not be due to its size.  Sounds like bullshit to me.

Non sequitur.  The degree of understanding implied by empirical synthesis
in no way implies the degree of understanding required to judge consistency.
Nor does the degree of understanding implied by semantic compositionality.

>By the way, does this mean that you have finally realized that strong AI
>does make epistemological claims?

Not at all.  "Strong AI", i.e. the view that an appropriately programmed
computer would think, makes no epistemological claim.  AI, more generally,
certainly does.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


