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Article 3100 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <42189@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 92 01:38:18 GMT
References: <11774@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <42143@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Jan23.211511.23572@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
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In article <1992Jan23.211511.23572@aisb.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <42143@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>>I cannot find a mention of "internal self-awareness" in any definition
>>of "understand" in a dictionary.
>...
>In this debate, people are using words like "understand" as a way to
>refer to the whole cluster of intentionality, consciousness and so
>forth that Searle is talking about.  Sometimes, to suggesting that
>it all turns on one word, I write things like "understanding, or
>consciousness, or intentionality, or whatever".

I made the mistake of trying to make a very narrow point about
certain statements read apart from the vast comp.ai.philosophy
debate, which I certainly do not "grasp" in its entirety.
That point is that conversation can give strong evidence that
a subject "understands," grasps the meaning of various concepts.
It is far less clear to me that the same could be said for
"consciousness."


