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Article 3343 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: <42517@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 92 17:12:17 GMT
References: <12067@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu
Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Lines: 26

In article <12067@optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>[under the hypothesis that a machine passes the Turing Test:]
>What reason do I have to believe that syntactic manipulation _does_
>generate understanding?  

I'm still missing something from your argument.  We have only one
example of understanding, in humans.  So right now, understanding
is 100% correlated with the way humans do it, which under your
assumptions, is not syntactic manipulation.  We currently have
no evidence that machine syntactic manipulation can generate
understanding (to adopt your terminology).  (This claim could
be argued, but I'll pass over that to match your assumptions.)
	But if machines in the future do pass the Turing Test,
the database of evidence at our disposal for forming inferences
changes.  You seem to be saying that you will use the old
evidence that syntax can't lead to understanding, to reject
the new evidence which could as well be read as supporting
the opposite conclusion.
	Although this is perfectly reasonable, I don't see
why you feel that you are so right in your convictions, and someone
who uses the TT evidence to conclude that syntax can lead to
undertanding is so wrong (or that thinking of it as merely
"syntax" is wrong).  It's not that your position doesn't
make sense; it does.  What is mystifying is why you feel that
your position is the only tenable one, and others who don't
share your unshakable faith in your assumptions are so confused.


