From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Wed Oct 14 14:58:08 EDT 1992
Article 7164 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Human intelligence vs. Machine intelligence
Message-ID: <26696@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:33:16 GMT
References: <26 <burt.718398109@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> <26608@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 53

In article <burt.718398109@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees) writes:

[I have omitted other attributions since this poster messed them up.
In fact, I am the author of the >>> remarks.]

>>>Penrose, although a famous physicist, can't be counted as an expert in
><>this field.

>  Like the 300 lb gorilla, Penrose can be counted an expert in whatever
>field he chooses to put his mind to.

Well, this may the case, for you, if Penrose happens to know more about
everything than you do :-)

>  Actually, Penrose gives much better arguments against machine intelligence
>than this.  The Godel argument, for example...  

The silliness of the Godel argument has been pointed out many times on
this group. If you care to post a statement of it, cross-posting to
sci.phil.tech, I'm sure hundreds of posters will oblige you with
refutations :-) For a start it only applies to consistent systems, and
consistency is neither necessary, desirable, nor probably even
achievable in a system capable of behaving intelligently in a world
described by sensed categories it has had to learn.

Any more good arguments of Penrose you'ld like to cite?

>>>An indication of the status of Penrose's critique of artificial
>>>intelligence is that -- apart from reviews at the time of publication
>>>-- nobody in the field is bothering to refute it ....

>  More likely, nobody in the AI community can refute them.

Clearly you haven't read any of the reviews of Penrose by AI people.
At least one was posted here.

>  What seems to be the case in this debate is that people on either side
>are really arguing from hidden metaphysical assumptions ...

These days the assumptions aren't so hidden. If authors fail to make
their metaphysical assumptions explicit it doesn't usually take long
before someone remedies the omission.

>In terms of a research paper this gives one the opportunity
>to investigate such things as the nature of consciousness ...

You'ld better hurry up, since almost every philosopher with
pretensions to expertise in the area has either just published a book
dealing with consciousness, or is writing one.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


