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Article 3253 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: <42378@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 92 14:05:40 GMT
References: <1992Jan23.215711.6793@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Jan24.175613.7947@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan28.163046.13482@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Jan28.224548.9172@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
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In article <1992Jan28.224548.9172@aisb.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In my view, whether or not it "understands" will depend on how it
>works.  If it works like humans do, in the relevant ways, ...
>then I'd say it understands.  If it works in some different way,
>it would depend on just what that way was. ... 

Although you dislike "definition mania," I think it can serve a
purpose to reveal how people are using words.  You use (or plan
to use) "understand" in a way different than I:  I will ascribe
undertanding to a entity independent of the mechanism.  My guess
is that, if in the future computers are passing the Turing Test 
routinely, we will all start to use the word "understand" to encompass 
what the computer does regardless of how it does it. 
	To reuse an example you mentioned in another post, 
chessplayers say that computers "play chess," even though we all
know that their mechanism for accomplishing this is different
from human play, even "in the relevant ways."  I suspect the same
will happen with "understand."


