From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff Fri Jan 31 10:26:46 EST 1992
Article 3241 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff
>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle Agrees with Strong AI?
Message-ID: <1992Jan28.225750.9362@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Jan 92 22:57:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: aisb.1992Jan28.225750.9362
References: <1992Jan23.032151.8824@nuscc.nus.sg> <1992Jan23.165930.155@lrc.edu> <1992Jan28.153708.5508@news.media.mit.edu>
Sender: news@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Network News Administrator)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 31

In article <1992Jan28.153708.5508@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>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.

Just because day fades gradually into night doesn't mean we can't
tell light form dark.

>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.

I want nothing to do with definition-oriented discussions.

Moreover, the definition mania on the net often comes from
those who want everything to be scientific and verifiable.
But maybe that's th efault of bad philosophy of science
rather than science.


