From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Tue Nov 26 12:30:42 EST 1991
Article 1415 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett
Message-ID: <15019@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Nov 91 20:23:14 GMT
References: <1991Nov16.014015.1074@yarra-glen.aaii.oz.au> <OZ.91Nov17172508@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <1991Nov18.083024.5560@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 60

In article <1991Nov18.083024.5560@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <OZ.91Nov17172508@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:

>>Your charge that Dennett has been intellectually dishonest is a
>>serious one.  You are no doubt prepared to substentiate this charge,
>>not with vague generalities, but with specific references to Dennett's
>>work.

>I am sorry, but I was making a general statement about the AI field, as
>exemplified e.g. in the Boden anthology, "The Philosophy of Artificial
>Intelligence", which starts out from an unconvincing and fallacious
>argument replete with hidden premisses (_the brain_ *can* be imputed
>with computational properties, therefore _the mind_ *must* be 
>computational in its nature, implicitly assuming that man is a finite 
>being in every relevant aspect), --

Since it is possible to generate an infinite number of sentences from
the 26 letters of the alphabet perhaps you can make explicit this
implicit assumption (that man is finite in every relevant aspect) which
you impute to Boden? She would not of course have used the phrase
"imputed with" but I'll allow you that rhetorical licence.  On the face
of it you seem to have made a silly remark.

> -- includes but one genuine objection to the program
>(Searle's "Chinese Room" argument), --

In her own paper Boden considers only two objections, the well-known
"Robot Reply", and a novel one based on the fact that Searle-in-the-room
has to understand _something_ -- the programming language he is
following, because they have something in common she wishes to discuss.
Since she includes in the previous chapter Searle's summaries and
replies from his original BBS response-to-peer-criticisms, something
many other anthologists fail to do, she can hardly be accused of failing
to include them in her book, nor can Searle be accused of unfairly
describing them.  Yet you mention her treatment of "but one genuine"
objection as though she were being ignorant or incomplete. This suggests
that you either have read this book very carelessly, or are being
culpably unfair and ad feminam in order to bolster your own position.

> -- and curtly dismisses it without
>inquiring into its implications.

Curtly? In my copy of the book she seems to spend at least ten pages
enquiring into many of its implications. Could it be that you are upset
because in those ten pages she fails to consider those particular
implications of which you are especially fond?

In sum, you initially accused Dennett of intellectual dishonesty. When
asked to substantiate this you said you meant not Dennett in particular,
but the artificial intelligentsia in general. You then substantiate this
by making specific but apparently unfounded accusations about a book of
Margaret Boden's.

Unless you can re-interpret your remarks in a more favourable light I
fear you have once again dug a pit and jumped into it, but this time all
by yourself.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


