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Article 1409 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the posting
Message-ID: <5656@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Nov 91 18:57:19 GMT
References: <5639@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu> <11749@star.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 40

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

But that isn't what Searle says.  He doesn't restrict it to humans
and doesn't even say machines can't be conscious or understand.

Roughly, the idea is (1) humans, indeed brains, can do it; (2)
computers can't do it merely by running the right program (the
Chinese Room and related arguments); (3) anything with the same
relevant causal powers as the brain can do it.  (Where "it" is
understanding.)

In my opinion, the debate stands as follows:

1. We don't know enough about brains, humans, programs, or what
   machines are capable of to say that machine intelligence is
   definitely possible, much less how it would work.

2. We might nonetheless be able to show that Searle has failed
   to prove his case.  I'm incluned to think he has failed, though
   I don't think I could state, right now, just what arguments
   convinced me of this.

3. Searle might nonetheless have refuted or damaged some of the
   arguments common in the AI community.  I think he has at least
   seriously damaged the Turing Test.  We might some day be able
   to show that the right behavior cannot be accomplished without
   real understanding, but we cannot do that now.

To McCarthy and O'Rourke: Remember our discussion of whether
the input to the Chinese Room could be interpreted as moves
in a Chess game (at least difficult) or stock market reports
(easy)?  Here's another example for you: messages found by
playing records backwards.  Some people think that if a message
appears it must have been put there intentionally.

-- jd


