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Article 3031 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: <1992Jan22.215054.6912@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Jan 92 21:50:54 GMT
References: <1992Jan21.210028.6756@oracorp.com>
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Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
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In article <1992Jan21.210028.6756@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>Jeff Dalton writes: (in response to Marvin Minsky)
>
>> This whole point [whether a table-lookup program can be conscious]
>> relies on "conscious processing" being something mysterious so that,
>> for all we know, our coffee cups are conscious and just pretending
>> not to be. Or some very simple program, nowhere near passing the
>> Turing Test, is conscious, just not very bright.
>
>That paragraph does not make a bit of sense to me. I take the
>behaviorist Strong AI position as implying that there is *not*
>anything intrinsically mysterious about consciousness, that there is
>*not* any reason to suspect that coffee cups are conscious.

It's the claim that mere table lookup might amount to conscious
that relies on consciousness being something that almost anything
might have -- so that the whole burden of proof is on someone
wanting to show that something i

>Who said anything about being sure? If in the future someone thinks of
>a convincing argument that the table lookup is not conscious, then
>people will agree that the Turing Test is not sufficient to
>demonstrate consciousness.

I'm glad you think so.

>> If that's all that's required, then let's start dancing in the
>> streets.  No need to do all that hard cog sci work - just imagine
>> a very large table and wait for the hardware guys to catch up.
>
>That also doesn't make a bit of sense to me. The proof that something
>is, in principle, possible is not the same thing as achieving it (nor
>is it the same as knowing *how* to achieve it).

Proof that machine consciousness is possible in principle would be 
enough to refute Searle, hence an occasion for rejoicing.

-- jd


