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Article 3126 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: philkime@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Philip Kime)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Penrose on Man vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.182929.8626@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Jan 92 18:29:29 GMT
References: <1992Jan20.124249.7832@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Jan22.203136.24023@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan22.233028.7894@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan23.215806.29757@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
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In article <1992Jan23.215806.29757@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>[Followups directed to comp.ai.philosophy.]
>
>In article <1992Jan22.233028.7894@aisb.ed.ac.uk> philkime@aifh.ed.ac.uk () writes:

>As I've said before, "strong AI" is a technical term, due to Searle, and
>is not a term representing every view that an AI practitioner might hold.
>But the above is simplistic in any case.  One certainly does not have
>to be a "Symbolic Functionalist" to accept strong AI.

I'm not sure what you're reffereing to here when you say 'the above'. I
don't think I said that one had to be a SF in order to accept Strong AI
(if I did I was wrong).

>>And even then, any Symbolic
>>Functionalist worth his philosophical salt would be extremely wary what
>>was meant by 'program' here given the (possibly insurmountable) problems
>>in 'implementing', in a SF way, the necessary and sufficient conditions
>>for mentality discussed by Dreyfus.
>
>If one accepted the original Dreyfus arguments, presumably one wouldn't
>be a symbolic functionalist in the first place.

The 'Dreyfus argument' tends to be accepted by degrees in the SF world.
I know many SF's who still adhere to SF but are, by differeing degrees,
wary of the Dreyfus problem. There are many who 'accept' at least some
of Dreyfus's points but who remain SF's. Whether this is consistent is
another matter and most certainly is down to whether the person in
question is a Strong AI enthusiast.....weak AIers will take what they
can get in terms of application etc. but Strong AIers are almost
duty-bound to give up SF in the face of a even a little acceptance of
Dreyfus's points.


