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Article 3205 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <11979@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 28 Jan 92 07:54:43 GMT
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In <1992Jan27.201926.20498@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> Andrzej Pindor writes:
]Several people can read the same instrument and decide whether they agree what
]it says. Then they accept what they agree on. That's how science is done.

Do tell.  Is that how science is done?  A committee sets up an
experiment, then at various points in the proceeding, each member of
the committee steps up to the meter and says "Yup, that's the reading
all right".  Of course this is ridiculous, scientists don't verify
experiments by verifying individual readings.  That would be
hopelessly inconvenient and would also lead to methodological errors.
Scientists verify experiments by repeating the experiment in a
different place, with different subjects and different instruments.

]But no one except you can introspect on your 'understanding' (or whatever). 

Of course not.  Others introspect on their own understanding.  The
fact that the thinker as well as the subject is different is a
methodological _advantage_, not a problem.

]Hence it is not science.

Hence you are inventing arbitrary and unfounded "rules of science" to
prove your point.

]Haven't you found out that your introspection tells
]you sometimes contradictory things (am I happy or not? am I conscious or am I
]dreaming?)

Haven't you found out that people have reached contradictory
consensuses?

] In case of reading an instrument you can compare your experience
]with that of others, in case of feeling that you understand, you can't. The 
]first is science, the second is not.

How do you know that comparing your experience with that of others
leads to more certainty in empirical observations?  The answer is that
you determine this by introspection.  Of course you can put off
introspection by one step by appealing (rather weakly, in my opinion)
to inductive reasoning, but at the end the reason you finally believe
anything involves believing because introspection tells you that you
have enough evidence.  Therefore, _nothing_ you know can be more
certain than what you know by introspection alone.

]>No, I have a third choice.  I can simply observe that there is no
]>known method of determining consciousness _in others_ which is free of
]>_believing that they are like you_, and reserve my opinion on whether
]>such a thing might ever be possible.  This, coincidentally, is the
]>choice I take.
]>
]This seems to imply to me that according to you consciousness is possible 
](by your definition) only in beings that _are like us_, unless proven
]otherwise.

Can't you see the difference between claiming that a thing is
impossible and claiming that there is no known way to detect it?
Especially given that I have already said I do not believe it is
impossible.

]It also seems that you cannot imagine how this could ever be proven and even
]tend to think it is impossible in principle.

Only because you are reading into my comments what you want to see.  I
don't accept your blind faith in the behaviorist method of detecting
mental things, but that does not mean that I deny the possibility of
any other method of detecting them or the possibility of their
existence in other things.

]To me it sounds like: 'I am convinced that humans have souls until you prove
]otherwise. In fact it might be impossible in principle to disprove existence
]of a soul'

That's because you aren't reading what I'm writing.  I never mentioned
souls, and if you replace "soul" with "mind", the sentence still does
not reflect what I said.  Why do you AI'ers all insist on trying to
tell me what I said and always get it wrong?  Could it be an
unconscious defense mechanism?
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman


