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Article 5951 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <1992May27.190604.6974@news.media.mit.edu>
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References: <4799@sheol.UUCP> <1992May27.042826.28187@Princeton.EDU> <BILL.92May27113824@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 19:06:04 GMT
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In article <BILL.92May27113824@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>  Turing, in his "Mind" article, began by saying that "thinking" is
>too vague a notion to be useful, and proposed his Test as a way of
>capturing operationally what is important about the human mind.  He
>clearly intended it as a *sufficient* test (for "whatever is
>important") and not as a *necessary* test.
>

He said: "The question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too
meaningless to deserve discussion.   Nevertheless I believe that at the
end of the century the use of words and general, educated opinion will
have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines
thinking without expecting to be contradicted."

Turing is kind enough to tell us his opinion of what will happen:
that, by the year 2000, an average interrogator will not have a better
than 70% chance of correctly guessing, in five minutes, whether the
other room contains a person or a machine.

But poor Turing himself never suggested that this was either a
necessary or a sufficient test for anything in particular.
Except for that, Skagg's captured his attitude nicely with the phrase,
"what is important about the human mind".  The critical point, it
seems to me, was that Turing regarded this as a relational rather than
an absolute matter: what sorts of activities would *other people*
regard as suitably lifelike.  

Turing appears to be saying that the TT (or the TTT, when you get
right down to it) will make people feel better, in the end, despite
the problems of "other minds".  He is saying that when the time comes
that you can't tell a person from a computer, then (maybe) you'll stop
trying to.





