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Article 3029 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.214347.6742@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Jan 92 21:43:47 GMT
References: <11722@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <42064@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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In article <42064@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>It is also impossible in principle to exclude the possibility that
>we were all created a minute ago, memories intact, as Russell pointed
>out.  I was responding to the question of why conversation could be 
>strong empirical evidence for understanding.  If you define understanding 
>to require unobservable "internal self-awareness," then of course
>it is impossible to establish beyond the shadow of doubt. 

If we don't have to establish beyond a shadow of doubt that
we were not all created a minute ago, why would we have to establish
beyond a shadow of doubt that there is internal self-awareness?
Let's just say we aim to establish both to a reasonable extent.

In short, you don't seem to be making a very good point agsinst
adopting "internal self-awareness" as part of the definition
of understanding.  We could just as well keep that definition
but drop the demand that we establish its presennce b.a.s.o.d.

>But the common meaning of "understand" is "to grasp the meaning of"
>(Webster's 7th, definition 1a).

So?


