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Article 5725 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: learn@speedy.acns.nwu.edu (William J. Vajk)
Subject: Re: on what meaning means
Message-ID: <1992May18.205559.1464@news.acns.nwu.edu>
Keywords: symbols, grounding, analog
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Organization: Dares No Organization Like Dis Organization
References: <1992May17.212856.2199@Princeton.EDU> <1992May18.120950.22705@news.acns.nwu.edu> <1992May18.190323.14676@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 20:55:59 GMT

In article <1992May18.190323.14676@psych.toronto.edu> Michael Gemar writes:

>In article <1992May18.120950.22705@news.acns.nwu.edu> William J. Vajk writes:

>>I don't think discussions involving Helen Keller are inappropriate in
>>context. We are not attempting to equate Helen with a machine. We are
>>however, attempting to describe machines which behave in ways very human.

>*I* thought what we were doing is trying to determine if such machines
>are possible.  If this is the case, then saying that the situation that
>Helen Keller was in is the same as that of a program, then you have simply
>begged the question. 

If we describe the action of a hip, and then attempt to build a machine
which behaves as does a hip, we have not built a hip, only an emulation.

If we describe a machine which behaves as a hip, and discuss some 
particular human's hip (perhaps because it is unusually strong or has
some other salient feature)  in comparative terms, then we have not 
relegated the human's hip to the category of a "machine."

I think in both cases, we are dealing with a subset of the reality as
I had noted above with carefully chosen words "which behave in ways
very human" directly specifying a subset of the totality we use to
understand the concepts "human" and "hip."

Anyone care to venture further into this and discuss what happens when we
take the machine emulation of a hip and actually install it into a human?

Please sprinkle appropriate doses of :-) into this thread....but the
bootstrap concept is still valid.

Bil Vajk    


