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Article 3275 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.195235.25830@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Jan 92 19:52:35 GMT
References: <1992Jan28.163046.13482@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Jan28.224548.9172@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <42378@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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In article <42378@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) 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. 

There remains a difference between deciding computers understand in
some existing sense and deciding to apply the word "understand" to
something computers do.  We already apply such words to computers (and
to simpler objects), but regard it as metaphorical.  It's possible
that we will stop thinking it metaphorical in some cases, but again
there are different ways it could happen.  We might decide that, say,
computers really do understand in the non-metaphorical sense; or we
might change the meaning of "understand".

>	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."

I don't think the mechanism matters in the same way for "play chess"
as it does for "understand", and I don't think I ever thought
computers didn't play chess, so I don't think the two cases have
all that much to do with each other.


