Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Bag the Turing test (was: Penrose and Searle)
Message-ID: <jqbD0DF70.2KJ@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <D00167.91w@spss.com> <3bgdrn$6b@crl10.crl.com> <jqbD02pHI.EF5@netcom.com> <D0747A.9p1@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 04:01:47 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <D0747A.9p1@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <jqbD02pHI.EF5@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>
>>Everything I know about you and almost else on the net has been obtained
>>solely by examining your texts.
>
>Textual evidence is important, but not the whole story.  From what you
>write, and from what I know about computers and AI and the liklihood
>of aliens or dogs posting net articles, I conclude that you're a
>human.  And then there are many things I know about humans, and hence
>about you, that were not obtained by examining your texts.

There is nothing that you know about me that was not derived from my texts.
What you know about the subjects I write about is not about me; it does not
distinguish between me and anyone or anything else.  What you know about
the probability of me being human is not about me, because it does not
distinguish between me and anything else.  By your argument, you will conclude
that any intelligent program is actually a human because it is probably
a human.  All you have really stated here is that any set of texts that
sufficiently reference those things that you know about humans will convince
you that the author is human, which is, after all, what the TT is about.

-- 
<J Q B>
