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Article 3033 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: <1992Jan22.223100.7270@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Jan 92 22:31:00 GMT
References: <1992Jan18.150345.15050@oracorp.com> <6031@skye.ed.ac.uk> <42032@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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In article <42032@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <6031@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>
>>Why is it [conversation] such good evidence [for understanding]?  
>>Because it works for people?  So what?
>>[...]
>>I don't see any necessary connection between conversation and
>>understanding. 
>
>If the conversation were so unrestricted that you could turn it
>into an interrogation of a willing subject, then I think it could
>constitute as strong an indication of the existence of understanding
>as is conceivable.

To you, perhaps.

>                   You could probe deeply on specific topics,
>and ask a series of questions that could only be answered by
>someone who truly understands the topic.  It seems to me this
>would be totally convincing.  In the face of such a conversation,
>you could only entertain the possibility that despite appearances,
>there is no understanding, by using the word "understand" in a 
>new sense, a sense that demands a particular mechanism of understanding 
>with no observable consequences.

There is certainly a sense of "understand" that involves understanding
a topic.  Searle's talking about understanding as in understanding
Chinese, as in knowing what words mean, as in knowing that some
pecualiar shape means "snowball".  It's not a new sense.  Whether 
the ability to do it involves "no observable consequences" is another
question.

Moreover, neither the Turing Test not conversation in general is
all "observable consequences".  It's wrong to go from "there have
to be observable consequences" to "there have to conversational
consequences".  Whenever someone does this, and it's pretty common
in these debates, I have to wonder whether they're not just
transferring their views on the significance of observabale
consequences to the Turing Test without any further justification.

Indeed, this happens so often that I sometimes wonder how many
of the other supporters of the TT are making the same mistake.

-- jd


