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Article 3080 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Possiblity of FTL Travel vs Possibility of AI
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.200619.8514@cs.ucf.edu>
Keywords: AI  laws_of_thought
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 20:06:19 GMT

In the cognitive sciences the year is 1990.
[In physics the year is 1890]

As far as we can see, there are no obstacles to sequential machine sentience.   
Progress has not been as fast as originally anticipated, but that is to be  
expected in a new field.
[The only obstacles to faster than light (FTL) travel are engineering,  
disregarding troubling observations by some obscure American scientists.]

The cognitive sciences do not know the form a robust theory of the mind will  
take.  -- Insert your own prognostication.
[Within 15 years, a new physical theory by an obscure patent office clerk  
forbids FTL travel as a matter of Law.]

If the analogy with the history of physics holds, then the current  
controversies (Searle, Penrose, even Dreyfus) will be resolved some time in the  
coming decades in the form of a theory of thought whose form we can only guess  
at.  Of course, just as the world could have been Newtonian with an ether,  
Turing/Church may be all that there is to know about the mechanization of  
thought.

If there is a new theory, it will of course have the classical Turing/Church  
theory as a limiting case. 

The on going debate in this forum is thus a real debate about issues of  
scientific substance with potential observation consequences.  It is not just  
empty polemicizing by those who dislike the idea mechanical thought, or  
abstract philosophizing about imaginary universes.


