From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!pindor Tue Jan 28 12:15:49 EST 1992
Article 3011 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.203042.453@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
References: <11722@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1992 20:30:42 GMT

In article <11722@optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
.....
>is your sense that is new.  "Understanding" implies an internal
>self-awareness that is not observable outside of the entity who
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>understands.  The power to answer questions implies only "knowledge".
>It is impossible in principle for one agent to distinguish between
>"knowledge" and "understanding" in another agent, because the
>difference is only sensible to the agent who has (or doesn't have)
>understanding.

By this token, a coffe cup could have 'understanding' too, right? From your 
statements, there is no way of telling whether it understands problem of AI
anyway less than you.
On a more serious note - has it ever happened to you that you had this self-
awareness of understanding and then you decided that you really did not
understand the said problem? I am sure it did. Try to remeber now what made
you to realise that you did not understand? Perhaps you ran into contradictory
conclusions mulling over consequences of concepts you thought you understood?
Since you are aware (I hope) of the fact that one (you including) may be wrong
in his/hers awareness of understanding, how do you attempt to make sure that you
really understand something? Are you just satisfied with the feeling 'I under-
stand'? You know how misleading it may be! So perhaps you manipulate in your
mind the logical consequences of relationships between the concepts  to see
if there are no contradictions. Such process can in fact go on unconsciously
(happened to me many times) and only when you run into a contradiction or 
a resolution of a contradiction it breaks back into consciousness. 
Now, why can't these procedures be applied to an external agent to test under-
standing (or lack of it)?
However, if you insist on importance of the subjective 'awareness of under-
standing' (like 'a feeling of happiness'), totally incommunicable to others,
that's fine, but what has this got to do with science?

>
>When you ask questions that "could only be answered by someone who
>truly understands the topic", what you mean is that you ask questions
>that you believe will require the formulation of new knowledge.
>Presumably, humans formulate new knowledge based on _understanding_ of
>the old knowledge.  But if a computer is able to formulate knew
>knowledge, it must do so by a set of rules, for that is how computers
>work, and a set of rules can always be reduced to knowledge.*
>
By the same token electrons, protons and neutrons have the property of super-
conductivity in them, because a piece of niobium metal can be made supercon-
ducting, right? And how about this: you will (hopefully) agree that a billion
monkeys typing for bilions and billions of years will eventually produce
Hamlet. Now, is Hamlet already in monkey's brains, or in typewriters? 

>Thus when you hypothesise that a computer can pass the Turing test,
>you hypothesise that knowledge alone is sufficient for passing it.
>Fine.  But once you hypothesize that knowledge alone is sufficient for
>passing the Turing test, whatever reason could you have for suggesting
>that understanding is involved?  Knowledge alone suffices.  Why invent
>other things that aren't needed?
>
Right, and why talk about things which are incommunicable? So let's just drop
the term 'understanding' and we will have more time for other, more useful
topics.

>					David Gudeman
>gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
>noao!arizona!gudeman


-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca


