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Article 3213 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle Agrees with Strong AI?
Message-ID: <1992Jan28.153708.5508@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 28 Jan 92 15:37:08 GMT
References: <TODD.92Jan22225612@ai12.elcom.nitech.ac.jp> <1992Jan23.032151.8824@nuscc.nus.sg> <1992Jan23.165930.155@lrc.edu>
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In article <1992Jan23.165930.155@lrc.edu> lehman_ds@lrc.edu writes:
>In article <1992Jan23.032151.8824@nuscc.nus.sg>, smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
>> In article <TODD.92Jan22225612@ai12.elcom.nitech.ac.jp>
>> todd@juno.elcom.nitech.ac.jp writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>In article <1992Jan16.145637.26097@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu
>>>(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>>>
>>>>>  How about this: let's let Searle
>>>>>off the hook for a moment, be asking this question:
>>>>>
>>>>>	     If we could build a machine that is suitably reactive, and can
>>>>>	     assemble raw materials so as to make working copies of itself
>>>>>	     would the resulting machine be ALIVE?
>>>>>
>>>>>In  other words, is "understanding" analogous to "living" in the old
>>>>>vitalist controversies?
>>>
>>>This is a case where technology has imitated life quite well.
>>>Viruses (virii?), both biological and program varieties, can 
 <etc.>
>> I would prefer to let Eugene Spafford have the last word on this one.  The
>> following paragraph is taken from the final section of his paper, "Computer
>> Viruses--A Form of Artificial Life?," in the ARTIFICIAL LIFE II proceedings
>> volume:
>> 
>> 	Our examination of computer viruses leads us to the conclusion
>> 	that they are very close to what we might define as "artificial
 <etc.>
>  I think that a virus is a bad example here.  even today there is debate
>on the idea of a virus being condered "alive".  The problem with a virus is
>that it requires a host to reproduce, something that does not fit nicely in
>the "accepted" definiton of life.  And comment of the article by Sparfford:
>Yes, a virus can be in a barren and lifeless area(even the vacum of space
>for some) and survive.  The virus is a borderline creature.  As I said before,
>I don't think the virus was a good example.
>    Drew Lehman
>    Lehman_ds@lrc.edu

Umm, I hate to say this, but I rasied the vitalism point in order to
show how useless are the usual philosophical techniques for dealing
with commonsense terms like "intelligent" or, in this case, "living".
The point is that "virus" _is_ a borderline case, according to
present-day commonsense biology.  Similarly, a THERMOSTAT, or a PC
running Eliza, etc. could be examples of borderline intelligence, etc.
What I hoped to elicit was the recognitions that

  (1) "intelligence, intentionality, meaning, consciousness, etc. are
words that probably don't correspond to clear-cut all-or-none things
but are names for various clusters of phenomena regarded differently
by different observers and
 (2) they each have different complexity oir evolutionary
configurations, and
 (3)  Even though science has, in my view, adequately understood the
basic mechanisms of even what we all accept to be "higher-order forms
of life", philosophy has not, in general, absorbed the complexities of
the situation into its child-like definition-oriented discussion
technique.

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Philosophy is simply Bad Psychology    ---Marvin Minsky
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