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Article 6822 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mark_turnbull.g033@qmgate.mitre.org (Mark Turnbull)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.robotics,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Indistinguishability is a Scientific Criterion
Message-ID: <1992Sep8.205807.10882@linus.mitre.org>
Date: 8 Sep 92 20:58:07 GMT
References: <1992Sep6.200121.4383@Princeton.EDU>
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In article <1992Sep6.200121.4383@Princeton.EDU> 
harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) wrote:

> The real point of the TT is that if we had a
> pen-pal whom we had corresponded with for a lifetime, we would never
> need to have seen him to infer that he had a mind. So if a machine
> pen-pal could do the same thing, it would be arbitrary to deny it had a
> mind just because it was a machine. That's all there is to it!

> It is arbitrary to
> ask for more from a machine than I ask from a person, just because it's
> a machine (especially since no one knows yet what either a person or a
> machine REALLY is). So if the pen-pal TT is enough to allow us to
> correctly infer that a real person has a mind, then it must by the same
> token be enough to allow us to make the same inference about a
> computer, given that the two are totally indistinguishable to us.

>  Neither the appearance of the candidate nor
> any facts about biology play any role in my judgment about my human pen
> pal, so there is no reason the same should not be true of my
> TT-indistinguishable machine pen-pal.

Well, that's all there would be to it if, whenever I embarked on a 
lifetime pen-pal relationship, I could make no reasonable assumptions 
about the nature of the pen-pal.  I wouldn't arbitrarily deny a pen-pal 
its mind just because I knew it to be a machine of a different type than I 
am, nor would I expect its performance to be better in any respect than 
that of the human I assume has a mind, but isn't there a lot left out if one 
takes the responses, verbal and otherwise, of a device, to be the only 
relevant (and indeed, sufficient) information to be used in judging the 
presence of a mind?  I'm not willing to jettison all the other things I 
believe about my currently likely pen-pals and state that biological facts 
play no part in my assessment of the chances that my correspondent has a 
mind.  The TT is only "enough to allow us to correctly infer that a real 
person has a mind" with the appropriate background information.  Of 
course, you may be saying (and may have said elsewhere) that we have no 
reason to even consider anything other than the responses and that those 
who do consider other factors ought to rethink their habits ... 

I'll feel a lot more confident about making inferences about "having a 
mind" after we DO know "what a person REALLY is."  And, of course, 
creating an artifact that passes TT, TTT, and perhaps TTTT ought to at 
least provide some good clues about that.  Until then, I don't know why I 
should consider expert performance by a device dissimilar to myself to be 
evidence of anything but expert performance by a device dissimilar to 
myself.


Mark Turnbull
all my opinions are products of the Zeitgeist only, NOT my employer or 
school
mark_turnbull.g033@qmgate.mitre.org OR turnbull@cns.bu.edu


