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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas)
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Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 21:07:21 GMT
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In article <jqbD0DDvB.MHy@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <D0Cwn2.1t9@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <D03L02.J5B@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>>In article <D01FA6.DuK@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>>>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>In article <Czzrvs.A1u@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>>>>In article <3b5d05$d2o@news-rocq.inria.fr>,
>>>>>Mikal Ziane (Univ. Paris 5 and INRIA)  <ziane@monica.inria.fr> wrote:
>>>>>......
>>>>>>
>>>>>>My point was precisely that I do not think TT is a very good definition
>>>>>>of intelligence and I think that this is what CR suggests albeit clumsily.
>>>>>
>>>>>It probably is not, but Turing thought that it was the best we could do and 
>>>>>not much chaged since then. Or perhaps you have a better definition?
>>>>>I can't see how CR suggests anything of the sorts. In fact, being methodolo-
>>>>>gically wrong, it does not suggest anything.
>>>>
>>>>Andrzej -- can I tell Ozan Yigit that you defend the TT?  From this,
>>>>but more from other articles, it seems to me that you do.
>>>>
>>>Depending what you mean by "defending". In a sense - yes. However, it seems
>>>to me that you are trying to box me into a silly position which I do not
>>>hold. 
>>
>>I am happy to be corrected.  If I seem to be saying you hold that P
>>when you actually hold otherwise, for any P, please let me know.
>
>How can one say when P is poorly formed?

In that case, say that P is poorly formed.

>>As for my dispute with Oz, I hope I turn out to be wrong.
>>If, in fact, many disagree with the TT I'd regard that as
>>an excellent result.
>
>It would help if you defined your shorthand "the TT" (I take it to be
>shorthand, since noun phrases don't make good propositions).  You might mean
>anything from "the TT is a useful tool" to "ability to pass the TT is the one
>and only possible definition of consciousness".

By "the TT" I mean the teletype-based Turing Test.  Perhaps you wanted
to know what I'd count as agreeing or disagreeing with the TT?  If so,
I'm interested in the whole range, including (on the agree/defend side)
"the TT is an interesting goal", "the TT is a good starting point",
"the TT is a useful tool", "the TT defines `consciousness'", your
"ability to pass the TT is the one and only possible definition of 
consciousness", and so on.

>>>Mark Rosenfelder presented a position which basically is the same as 
>>>mine.
>>
>>Really?  I agree with most of what he said, but I often feel I
>>disaagree with you.  (Not always, of course!)
>
>Could be a reading comprehension problem.

Could be.  Does Mark Rosenfelder agree with Andrzej Pindor's view
of the TT?  Perhaps he will say.

>>I think "understand" is an unfortunate choice.  I don't think the
>>sense of "understand" at issue w/ Searle is the quite same as that in,
>>say, "Bill understands Godel's theorem".  The Searlean sense is
>>more along the lines of whether words mean anything to Y (or does
>>Y treat them as meaningless symbols).
>
>Well, one of Searle's (and his cohorts in intellectual crime) tricks is
>to use a word with multiple, broad, or vague meanings and switch between them
>as serves the argument.
>
>It seem to me that you have simply moved the vagueness from "understanding"
>to "meaning".  Do Chinese words mean anything to the CR?  They certainly
>seem to.  By some possible accounts of meaning, it is meaningless to speak
>of symbols that are used in a process to be "meaningless".

So what?  The important issue is not what words mean but what is
the case.  We may need to look at a number of different accounts
of meaning.  But the important thing is what's so, not which words
we use to talk about it.

>How do we determine whether various sounds mean anything to a fellow
>human being?  How would you determine whether the Chinese words mean anything
>to me?  Would you look at my program?  Examine my interior dialog?

If I had your program, I'd look at it.

Interior dialogue is not something I say is necessary for
understanding, for consciousness, or for words to mean something.
I introduce it as another, perhaps less vague and otherwise
difficult, thing to test for.  

>>In any case, it does seem to be possible to pass tests without
>>understanding the subject or at least w/o understanding it as well
>>as the test results suggest.
>
>Amazing how induction can fail, isn't it?  The question is, how do we make
>the determinations we do, not how accurate they are.

The question is not how we make the determinations we do but how
we should make determinations when it comes to programs/computers.
How we (now) make the determinations we do is just one thing we
might consider.

>  Andrzej is wrong to
>say that we *define* "understanding" as "passing a test"; we define it as
>"grasping the subject", or some such; but our (necessarily fallible) *test*
>to *determine* whether the subject has been grasped is a TT of sorts.  In the
>same way, the TT is not a *definition* of intelligence, but it is a test of
>whether intelligence, however that attribute is defined, applies to a 
>particular subject.

Fair enough.  I merely say it's not already known that the TT is a
reliable test of, say, consciousness.  Or whether internbal dialogue
takes place, or whether the subject has any subjective experience
at all.

>>>>It may be that we will eventually establish that the TT is a
>>>>reliable test.  But that's not the only possible outcome.
>>>>
>>>Considering the vague notion of "understanding" we have now, basically based
>>>on passing sort of a TT, TT is good as it is. If we at some point require
>>>something "more", it will mean that have additional criteria what it means 
>>>to "understand" and hence that our notion will be different, as rightly
>>>pointed out by Neil Rickert.
>>
>>Well, if _that_'s the way you want to run it, I might even agree.
>
>Er, um, isn't this what everyone has been saying all along?

It might be when it comes to understanding, but not understanding
in Searle's sense.

>>At least I've often agreed with (and even made) that kind of argument
>>(e.g. a discussion in c.a.phil a fair while back about whether future
>>or alien maths could be radically different from ours.  I argued that
>>if it were sufficiently different, we wouldn't think it was maths at
>>all.)
>
>I don't think Andrzej was talking about radical differences of this
>sort. 

It seems to me a related issue.

>He was talking about the sort of difference between "gold is a shiny
>malleable yellow substance" and "gold is the element with atomic number 79".
>We still think that gold is gold, but we have a different notion of what
>it means to be gold, because we have a more refined understanding of the
>underlying mechanism that gives rise to the characteristics of gold.
>Rather than defining gold by its characteristics, we define it in terms of the
>underlying model.  Such may some day become the case for "understanding".
>
>It's interesting how many of these discussions seem to be based upon confusion
>about meaning and language.

But they're not addressed as such.  The arguments for the TT are
usuallky along the lines of: we use the TT for other humans so
it's arbitrary (or otherwise unjustified) to do anything different
for machines.

Moreover, we seldom find: my "understanding" I mean this, and here's
how the TT is a reliable test for it.  Instead, TT-defenders try to
present a choice like this:

  -- the TT and the associated verificationist/behaviorist
     attitide to questions of this sort.

  -- some unacceptable prejudice (e.g. judging by "looks").

  -- dualism, mysticism, vitalism, being unscientific, etc.

-- jd

