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Article 7218 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Human intelligence vs. Machine intelligence
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Keywords: penrose, church-turing hypothesis
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References: <1992Oct7.151533.7822@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> <BvytMD.9FC@cs.bham.ac.uk> <1992Oct11.200006.685@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 21:21:56 GMT
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In article <1992Oct11.200006.685@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> ginsberg@t.Stanford.EDU (Matthew L. Ginsberg) writes:

>And Sloman's claim about behavior ignores probably the
>most profound lesson of twentieth century science: Claims are only
>meaningful to the extent that they can be tested.  This observation
>underlies advances in the philosophy of science, the development of
>quantum mechanics, and the development of theories of computation.

That's amusing.  Maybe it's the most profound observation of
twentieth century engineering; it's certainly doesn't follow
from twentieth century science or philosophy.  Most physicists,
for instance, are quite happy in accepting that the difference
between (a) nonlocal hidden-variables theory of quantum mechanics,
(b) wavefunction-collapse theories, and (c) "many-worlds" theories
is quite meaningful, even though it's probably untestable.

Of course, untestable aspects of reality may not be very *useful*,
but that's quite a different matter.

>And what it tells us is that behavior alone is a sufficient basis
>for attributing anything whatsoever.

Even if one accepted this kind of unreconstructed verificationism,
what reason is there to suppose that behaviour is the only
testable aspect of intelligence?  Internal causation is quite
accessible as well, for example.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


