From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!uunet!tdat!swf Wed Sep 16 21:22:54 EDT 1992
Article 6871 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!uunet!tdat!swf
>From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Don't try to "define" intelligence
Message-ID: <1042@tdat.teradata.COM>
Date: 11 Sep 92 01:21:01 GMT
References: <1992Aug29.143021.8163@Princeton.EDU> <715493498@sheol.UUCP> <1992Sep6.195000.3465@Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@tdat.teradata.COM
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit
Lines: 29

In article <1992Sep6.195000.3465@Princeton.EDU> harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
|
|Unfortunately, this misses the point of my suggestion not to try to
|define intelligence but to concentrate instead on generating
|Turing-indistinguishable performance capacity. Of course if
|
|(1) there were nothing special about mental states, or
|(2) performance capacity were identical with mental states, or
|(3) performance capacity picked out an interesting natural category
|    of its own (say, staying "cognitively aloft," which would be
|    analogous to the common property of both biological and artificial
|    flight)
|
|then Wayne's implied objection would be well taken. But none of the
|above is the case. We all know there is something special about having
|mental states, and no definitional constraint on performance will get
|around that  ...

No we *don't* all 'know' this.  Some of us (like you) might *believe*
this.  The most that could be stated without reservation is that the
truth values of the above possibilities are controversial.

I certainly find #1 quite reasonable.  I have yet to see any convincing
evidence that there *is* something special about mental states, and I am
very suspicious of anthropocentric, or even terracentric viewpoints.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com


