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Article 6187 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick Cassimatis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Vitalism and Intellectuaism
Message-ID: <1992Jun10.041831.16727@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 92 04:18:31 GMT
References: <1992Jun7.002032.614@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Jun8.134537.468@cs.ucf.edu>
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In article <1992Jun8.134537.468@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>In article <1992Jun7.002032.614@news.media.mit.edu> nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick  
>Cassimatis) writes:
>> I'm
>> willing to bet quite a bit that these problems won't be solved by
>> people who expend most of their "mental energies" to solve Searle's
>> puzzle.
>It seems to me important to establish, if possible, what the fundamental
>limits are.  We already know time should not be wasted on the halting 
>problem.

Yes, but the halting problem is well defined (it's part of math --
which means that it is well-defined by definition!)  The rest of my
post was an attempt to show that the putative limits of understanding
and so forth are not well defined.

>Think of questions to the computer : "Computer, correlate positronic
>emission anomalies with unusual Romulan activity in sector 6." which
>require intelligence.  Then compare Data's questions, "Jordy.  Why do
>you laugh?" which show consciousness.  It is interesting that the
>writers have made Data the only one of his kind; the secret of
>the conscious (?) robot died with his creator.

What is so special about a why-question that it requires consciousness?

There is a debate among some biologists concerning whether a virus is
alive or not.  My Bio class in high school spent about 30 minutes one
time debating this.  Though I wasn't particularly interested in the
begining, I became so when it the following question dawned on me:
"What would it matter either way?"  Assumet that you call it alive.
Then so what?  Assume that you call it not-alive.  Agin, so what?
Assume that we agree now that it is not alive, but then 30 years later
we come up with a formal definition of life that clearly includes the
virus.  So what?  Will this change the methods we use to combat the
virus, the way we sneeze when infected, the chances of us curing the
common cold ....  Not one bit!  So the only effect the debate could
possibly have is a change in linguistic convention.  Notice that no
self-respecting biologist would suggest that rats have a
life-substance that a virus doesn't -- the way we think about
organisms is sophisticated enough not to need vitalistic terms.

Now think about the debate over whether computers can *really* be
intelligent or *really* understand.  How is it different from the
question of wether a virus is alive or not?


