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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Robot Consciousness: PSYC Call for Book Reviewers
Cc: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu,hougen@peca.cs.umn.edu,allsop@fc.hp.com 
Organization: The Armory
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 14:35:22 GMT
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In article <hubey.781043055@pegasus.montclair.edu>,
H. M. Hubey <hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu> wrote:
>hougen@peca.cs.umn.edu (Dean Hougen) writes:
>
>>In article <36fdvk$6l@tadpole.fc.hp.com> allsop@fc.hp.com writes:
>>>
>>>> 2. My position accords well with the decline of behaviorism, and
>>>> specifically the apparent decline of the behavioristic Turing Test (see
>>>> Rey, 1986) and any number of the Turing-like Tests proposed in the
>
>This is just another example of launching attacks on windmills.
>
>Selmer seems to be another Searlian, thinking he's attacking
>Skinner.  With good practical and common sense the people who
>"invented/discovered" the BB (black box) models work with what
>they can measure and what is accessible to us. That's more or
>less the purview of science.
>
>With just as much uncommon sense, people like Searle and Selmer
>seem to jump into the void between science and speculation. I`m
>beginning to think that they're behaving like the psychics
>that dot the pages of the National Enquirer. If they can produce
>any kind of an outrageous, untestable, unconfirmable, speculative
>idea, then perhaps one day they might hit somewhere close to home and
>maybe thousands of years later people will be saying that they
>were the first. Look at how atomism goes back to Plato etc. What
>happened to Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein etc ?
>
>
>
>
>>>> literature [NOTE #1]. Readers familiar only with Turing's original test
>>>> (Turing, 1964), and not with the variations that have been derived from
>>>> it, should imagine now an ever more stringent sequence of Turing-like
>>>> tests T1, T2, T3,..., the first member of which is the original
>>>> imitation game. How does the sequence arise? In T2 we might allow the
>>>> judge to observe the physical appearance of the contestants; in T3 we
>>>> might allow the judge to make requests concerning the sensorimotor
>>>> behavior of the contestants; in T4 we might allow the judge to take
>>>> skin samples; in T5 we might allow the judge to run brain scans, then
>>>> surgical probing, and so on. The point is that we can pretty much rest
>>>> assured that AI will gradually climb up the sequence; that soon we'll
>>>> have T.75,
>>>
>>>	What Selmer isn't telling us is that higher Turing-like tests
>>>start observing the actual creation processes since a Turing-like test
>>>somewhere around t.50(?) completely eliminates any ability to be
>>>molecularly distinguishable.  (maybe the Cartesian Dualists are still
>>>claiming the one created by procreation has been properly united with
>>>a soul?) t.75, of course, is where you observe the method of
>>>procreation.  The final only remaining distinguishable factor being:
>>>one is created in vitro and installed in the womb and the other is
>>>created via real go for it sex.  All other things like artificial
>>>wombs, genetic design other than sex selection, artificially
>>>accelerated nurturing of robots... (use a little imagination) are of
>>>course detected and ruled out in lessor T tests.  (I'm sure glad I'm
>>>not an in vitro person created and intentionally sex selected by man
>>>so that I can pass this test and no one can call me a robot or
>>>automata. ;)
>
>>I think perhaps you are confusing T.75 (i.e. T0.75 or T3/4) with T75.
>>(Why anyone gives a damn what the AI looks like or has for skin,
>>however, is beyond me.  Turing had it right.)
>
>How else could it be ? :-).
>
>
>Of course Turing had it right. About the only thing people like
>Searle don't say explicitly is that they mean pretty much:
>
>"If it ain't human, then it CANNOT <think><understand>....<...>"
>
>At least Selmer ups the ante by making it explicit. 
>
>The problem that they miss is that they keep confusing the "why"
>with the "how". Every "why-question" in science gets a
>"how-answer", which leads to more why-questions.  If you want to
>make progress, you're forced to work with what is accessible i.e
>measurable. That leads immediately to the BB model. And if you
>keep looking deeper and deeper all you get is more BB's inside
>other BB's; turtles all the way down.
>						-- Mark---
>....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
>where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
--------------------------------------
I am reminded, in all seriousness, of the Star Trek:TNG episode, I believe
it was called "The Measure of a Man", in which the human-made android
officer Data is tried by the Judge Advocate General to determine whether
"he" is property or whether he is a "man". Her words, (the JAG officer),
still haunt me; "These are questions best left to philosophers, or saints...
We've been dancing around the issue here, whether the android Data has a
soul. I don't know if he does! I don't know whether *I* do!!!"

What SHALL these poor heads do when, inevitably, they meet the object of
their doubts and he/she/it questions THEIR humanity!??!! Might it be that
WE are the ones who are "artificially intelligent", in the sense of simply
imagining we are intelligent, when in fact we cannot account for even 1% of
what we do!!!! Perhaps, even if as deterministic as the future follows from
the past, at least a machine being may actually be able to tell us
precisely down to the electrons, why they feel the way they do and believe
as they believe!!!!!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

