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Article 7219 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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Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 21:39:44 GMT
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In article <Bvypp5.98s@cs.bham.ac.uk> axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) writes:

>Chris Malcolm's comment "nobody in the field is bothering to refute it"
>may be based on the perception that most people working in AI feel
>that the early reviews adequately demolished Penrose's position.
>My own opinion, after reading the book, was that there was quite a
>lot more to be said, both:
>(a) as to why the published criticisms of Penrose were partially or
>wholly unsuccessful (either because of technical errors or omissions
>or because they attacked a subtly different position from his)
>and
>(b) as to why Penrose really was mistaken concerning a number of issues.

For what it's worth, I think:

(1) That Penrose wrote a fascinating book about all kinds of
scientific issues;

(2) That he's very naive about AI (take a look at his comments about
a computer feeling pain via a "pain-meter" in the first chapter, for
instance);

(3) That there's only one substantive argument against AI in his
entire 466 page book, and that only takes up a page or two; and

(4) That this argument is essentially a rerun of Lucas's argument in
subtly different trappings, and fails for precisely the same reasons.

Points (2)-(4) were very surprising to me, when I read the book, as
I have the greatest respect for Penrose's mind.  When I was at Oxford
as a graduate student in mathematics a few years ago, I was in the
same department as him and in a closely related area (although I
worked with Michael Atiyah, not Penrose); Penrose's stature there
is enormous.  The only explanation I can find is that Penrose has
always been a very "intuitive" mathematician and physicist, thriving
in particular on his very deep geometric intuitions.  When he turned
his hand to another field, he came at it with the same intuitive
approach, but here his intuitions failed him.

-- 
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."


