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Article 1405 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the pos
Keywords: Dennett, Turing, Charlatan etc.
Message-ID: <1991Nov19.121101.5617@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 91 17:10:59 GMT
References: <39404@dime.cs.umass.edu> <11769@star.cs.vu.nl> <1991Nov19.114249.5611@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 106
Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <11769@star.cs.vu.nl>
peter@cs.vu.nl (Grunwald PD) writes:

>In article <39404@dime.cs.umass.edu>
>yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>>In article <11749@star.cs.vu.nl>
>>peter@cs.vu.nl (Grunwald PD) writes:

GPD:
>>>1936, when the Church-Turing thesis was developed.

That's 1935, in Church's article "An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary
Number Theory".  Church identified the class of *effectively* computable
functions with that of \lambda-definable functions, provably equivalent to
that of recursive functions; Turing, who at the time was Church's graduate
student at Princeton, merely extended the thesis in 1936 to what came to be
known as Turing machines, by proving that the class of functions computable
thereby is equivalent to the above.

GPD:
>>>                                                   In their respective
articl

es,
>>>Church and mainly Turing give a framework for everything that can be
computed

>>>at all.

I told you once: not `at all', but `effectively'.  If you can't read the
articles, try to listen.

GPD:
>>>        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.

VY:
>>1. What evidence is there  to support your claim that
>>computers are "the most general technologies thinkable by us human
beings"?
>>They seem pretty limited to me. Balky, picky, badly behaved, expensive,
>>tedious to use, error prone, and probably unhealthy.

GPD:
>I have to admit that I stated my point quite wrongly.
>
>I agree with you that there is more general technology thinkable or maybe
>someday even feasible.
>But such technology would - according to the Church-Turing thesis -
perform
>computations (or, if you want, actions) that cannot be repeated by human
beings

.

Nonsense.  Church never claimed that effective computability exhausted the
human potential.

GPD:
>Therefore, if you want to build an intelligent creature as a Turing
Machine,
>you do more than using 'current technology': you use the most general
>technology that yields results which you could repeat, if you had enough
time,
>by doing calculations on paper.

...if you were to restrict yourself to unimaginative rule-following.

GPD:
>Now I am not saying that a human is a Turing Machine,

Why not? strong AI proponents surely do.

GPD:
>                                                      the only point of my
>article was that a Turing Machine is certainly more than 'current
technology'.
>Why then use a computer to approximate it? (answer see below)

The Turing machine is an abstract model, after which the presently dominant
technology is fashioned.  Are you saying that there will be no more
technological progress?

>[...]

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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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