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Article 1376 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: peter@cs.vu.nl (Grunwald PD)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the posting
Summary: Alan Turing a charlatan?
Message-ID: <11749@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 18 Nov 91 14:21:31 GMT
References: <5639@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In article <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu>, zeleny@walsh.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
> In article <1991Nov15.003438.11323@grebyn.com> 
> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Oceanstar) writes:
> 
> >I asked Mikhail Zeleny to elaborate on his labeling of Dennett "a
> >charlatan," but he wrote me back that he will only do so if I make
> >it a "public" request.  I puzzled over this one for a couple of
> >days, and decided, finally, not to pursue the reasons behind his need
> >for me to go public.  Instead I will just comply, and ask again:
> >What did you mean, Mikhail?  I read enough mind-brain books, that
> >I'd like to hear other people's guidelines for telling the wheat
> >from the chaff.
> 
> My guideline is very simple: if you see someone offer a reductive argument
> purporting to explain the properties of mind, such as consciousness,
> cognition, and intentionality, in terms of the alleged computational
> properties of the brain, you may conclude that he is a charlatan or an
> ignoramus.  This conclusion might be justified historically, by observing

So Alan Turing in his 1950 paper 'Can Machines Think' was  charlatan or
ignoramus? 
Come on...

> the earlier attempts to explain the functioning of human mind by reference
> to the capabilities of the dominant contemporary technology (e.g. clockwork
> mechanisms, chemistry, steam engines, etc.), or its behaviorally manifested
> properties -- by reference to observable physical properties of human
> organs (remember phrenology?).  If the brain can be seen as the seat of
> consciousness, why not the liver or the kidneys?  Moreover, there also
> exist sound theoretical reasons for rejecting any theory that purports to
> reduce human intelligence to the rank of properties of Turing machines.
> For those unconvinced by the arguments of Penrose, I have a challenge of my
> own making: develop an adequate semantical theory that would characterize
> the relevant relations of expressing and denoting, and could be implemented
> by a finite state automaton.  So far, John McCarthy has failed to come up
> with an answer; anyone who feels that he can do better, is hereby invited
> to try.

'dominant contemporary technology': your claim might hold for the world until
1936, when the Church-Turing thesis was developed. In their respective articles,
Church and mainly Turing give a framework for everything that can be computed
at all. As computers are (approximations to) Turing Machines and the machine to
implement intelligence would be a computer, this is not just 'contemporary
technology' but the most general technology thinkable by us human beings.

Whether you find Penrose's et al. arguments convincing or not (I do find
them a little convincing myself, I must say) you must not be blind to the fact
that the reductionist claim has at least the Turing machine behind itself and
that is definitely more than current technology and therefore certainly 
not charlatanesque or ignoramusque.

In effect (I don't know if they would agree on this, these are my own
conclusions)
Dennett says: 'What we call Consciousness is an automatic by-product of certain,
		very complicated, (Turing-) machines'
Searle says: 'Machines can never be conscious (or even intelligent (!?)) because
		they inherently lack 'semantics', which is necessary for
		consciousness and inherently only available to human beings '

I would not dare to say who is the charlatan...both, neither or one of them?


Ciao,
Peter


